The 2025 Security Innovator Award

 

The Security Innovator Award is the industry’s only 100% peer-nominated program to recognize the innovative contributions made by individuals in the security industry – from integrators to consultants, to end-user practitioners, to manufacturers and service providers.

This award is open to anyone in the security industry to be able to recognize a fellow employee or a partner with whom they work closely for being innovative. We think it fills a unique void in this industry for peer-nominated recognition.

“The Security Innovator Awards emphasize industry innovation and reward those individuals who actively demonstrated an outstanding level of excellence,” explains SecurityInfoWatch Editorial Director Steve Lasky.

Your nominee can be an employee, colleague, friend, or business partner. There is no fee to nominate an individual. Nominations will close on May 16. 

Remember, this is an award for individuals, not organizations, and it is not a memorial award or a lifetime achievement award for a retired person. The nominations will be vetted to ensure that the person is an active member of the security industry. 

Honored individuals will be featured in the July issue of Security Business, the July/August issue of Security Technology Executive, and on SecurityInfoWatch.com.

There will be an opportunity to upgrade an honoree’s recognition with special packages designed to highlight and enhance the acknowledgment.

Visit: https://innovatorawards.org/

AI’s Energy Conundrum

Google said this week that its greenhouse gas emissions have surged 48% in the past five years due to the expansion of the data centers it uses to underpin artificial intelligence systems, leaving its commitment to get to Net Zero by 2030 in doubt. It is the latest big tech company to publicly reveal a struggle to reconcile the energy use needed to fuel its AI ambitions with climate goals.

Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and is building its own AI tools, in May said its emissions have risen by almost a third since 2020, as the push to build out the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence threatens its climate goals. The nearly 30% increase in emissions was in large part due to the construction of the data centers that AI and cloud computing systems run on, Microsoft said in its annual sustainability report.

The computational power required for sustaining AI’s rise is doubling roughly every 100 days. To achieve a tenfold improvement in AI model efficiency, the computational power demand could surge by up to 10,000 times. The energy required to run AI tasks is already accelerating with an annual growth rate between 26% and 36%. This means by 2028, AI could be using more power than the entire country of Iceland used in 2021.

The AI lifecycle impacts the environment in two key stages: the training phase and the inference phase. In the training phase, models learn and develop by digesting vast amounts of data. Once trained, they step into the inference phase, where they’re applied to solve real-world problems. At present, the environmental footprint is split, with training responsible for about 20% and inference taking up the lion’s share at 80%. As AI models gain traction across diverse sectors, the need for inference and its environmental footprint will escalate.

Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates recently claimed that artificial intelligence will be more of a help than a hindrance in achieving climate goals, despite growing concern that an increase in new data centers could drain green energy supplies.

Speaking at a June 27 conference in London hosted by his fund Breakthrough Energy ,Gates told journalists that AI would enable countries to use less energy, even as they require more data centers, by making technology and electricity grids more efficient.

That may turn out to be prescient but to align the rapid progress of AI with the imperative of environmental sustainability, a meticulously planned strategy is essential, Beena Ammanath, a board member at the Centre for Trustworthy Technology, wrote in an essay published by The World Economic Forum in April.

She cites research about the actionable steps that can be taken today to align AI progress with sustainability. For example, capping power usage during the training and inference phases of AI models presents a promising avenue for reducing AI energy consumption by 12% to 15%, with a small tradeoff on time to finish tasks with GPUs expected to take around 3% longer.

Another impactful tactic is optimized scheduling for energy savings. Shifting AI workloads to align with times of lower energy demand — like running shorter tasks overnight or planning larger projects for the cooler months, in place where air conditioner usage is widespread — can also lead to substantial energy savings, she notes.

Finally, moving towards the use of shared data centers and cloud computing resources instead of individually commissioning private infrastructure can centralize computational tasks in collective infrastructures and reduce the energy consumption associated with AI operations. This can also lead to financial savings on equipment and potentially lower energy bills, especially when resources are strategically located in areas with lower energy costs, says Ammanath.

Beyond immediate measures, the near-term focus should be on harnessing AI’s own capabilities to foster sustainability, she says. AI, used right, can be a powerful tool for meeting the ambitious target of tripling renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency by the decade’s end, established in last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28).

AI can bolster climate and energy transition efforts in different ways, including the development of new materials for clean energy technologies; the optimization of solar and wind farms, improving energy storage capabilities and carbon capture processes, enhancing climate and weather predictions for better energy planning, and catalyzing novel breakthroughs in green energy sources like nuclear fusion., she says.

“By strategically harnessing AI to enhance our renewable energy landscape, the future of AI holds the promise of not only becoming green in its own operations but also aid in building a more sustainable world,” she says.

IN OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK

DATA CENTERS

Europe Wants To Send Energy Guzzling Data Centers Into Space

The rise of artificial intelligence is skyrocketing demand for data centers to keep pace with the growing tech sector — and pushing Europe to explore space options for digital storage, in a bid to reduce its need for energy-hungry facilities on the ground, reports CNBC.

Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty, a 16-month-long study that explored the feasibility of launching data centers into orbit, has come to a “very encouraging” conclusion, according to Damien Dumestier, manager of the project.The 2 million euro ($2.1 million) ASCEND study, coordinated by Thales Alenia Space on behalf of the European Commission, claims that space-based data centers are technically, economically and environmentally feasible.“The idea [is] to take off part of the energy demand for data centers and to send them in space in order to benefit from infinite energy, which is solar energy,” Dumestier told CNBC.

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Making stuff here – leading innovator releases blueprint to reinvigorate Australian economy

Darwin, Australia, Feb. 26, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Australia is the land of plenty. But building home-grown, green and gold prosperity depends on a growing domestic industry that adds real value to our resource wealth. This means backing Australian businesses to not just deliver the raw materials – like iron ore and cotton – but to growing the value chain from sophisticated metals processing to weaving, data centres, and beyond. Doing so requires leadership, a willingness to put money, time, and support behind innovators.

As the co-founder of the Darwin-based high-speed metal 3D printing a start-up, SPEE3D, Camilleri has been at the forefront of commercialising Australian inventions for decades. But with their 3D metal printing technology in daily use on the battlefields of Ukraine and supporting the logistical planning of militaries from the United States to Japan – Camilleri and his colleagues know that having real support at home is essential for any local business with the next big idea.

As Australia’s next Federal Election races towards us, Camilleri’s blueprint is a call to arms for all those hoping to lead Australia in the coming years. Australian industry is in crisis and plans to rebuild a future-proofed Australia must be founded in our domestic industry. Australia spends just 1.8% of GDP on R&D – well below the OECD average of 2.7% and far behind leaders like Israel and South Korea, who are investing over 4%. As a consequence, Australia exported just $7.77 billion worth of high-tech goods in 2023, that’s equivalent to $294 per capita. Compare this to Singapore at $33,339 per capita, South Korea at $4,055, or Germany at $3,018.

Australia’s decision-makers know that this is a crisis. It was heartening to see that the first publication from the Government’s R&D review, released by the Minister for Industry last week, did not shy away from the consequences or proportions of our collapse in innovation. But we need real action. If innovators are to prosper in Australia, Government needs to find innovative solutions to the problem. This cannot wait for the conclusions of a year-long review; in an environment where technology makes quantum-leaps by the week, change cannot be postponed.

Camilleri said today that “meeting this challenge needs the commitment of every policymaker, every investor, every entrepreneur, and every Australian. We’re a country of disruptors, and we need to support that culture in industry.”

“Decisive actions taken today will allow small Australian manufacturers to climb the value chain and unite Australia’s world-leading foundations in energy, materials, and expertise to generate enormous economic returns.”

“The global 21st Century economy can be built here in Australia. But that means making stuff here, and its Australia’s innovators who will deliver it. For innovative industry to prosper, we must look beyond exporting raw materials and instead manufacture the high-tech goods of the future - from aerospace components to underwater vehicles.”

About Steven Camilleri and SPEE3D:

Steven Camilleri is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SPEE3D, an Australian company revolutionizing metal 3D printing with supersonic deposition technology—the world's first high-speed metal additive manufacturing system capable of producing industrial-grade parts at production scale. 

A seasoned innovator and holder of multiple patents, Steve has a Master’s degree in Engineering and has spent his career at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and commercial success. 

Before SPEE3D, Steve co-founded In Motion Technologies, a Charles Darwin University spin-off focused on axial flux electric motors. The company was later acquired by Fasco Motors, a division of NYSE-listed Regal Beloit, further solidifying his track record of bringing breakthrough technologies to market. 

His product innovations span industries, from world-record-holding solar cars to high-efficiency electric motors, electric bicycles, and advanced pool pumps. His ability to bridge research and real-world applications has made him a leading figure in advanced manufacturing and engineering. 



Beyond his technical expertise, Steve is a lifelong learner with diverse interests across science, engineering, and manufacturing—and he speaks several languages. He is committed to disruptive innovation, proving that bold ideas, backed by smart execution, can redefine industries. 

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What Would It Take To Make AI Greener?

With record heat waves globally and extreme flooding impacting Europe and China, now is a pivotal moment to interrogate the interplay of technology and the environment, including the role of artificial intelligence (AI).

What would it take to make AI ‘greener’? On the one hand, we first need to collectively recognize that there are tangible costs to the creation and use of AI systems – and, in fact, they can be quite large. GPT-3, a recent powerful language model by OpenAI, is estimated to have consumed enough energy in training to leave a carbon footprint equivalent to driving a car from Earth to the moon and back.

There are beneficial impacts that AI can have on our relationship to the environment as well. A comprehensive study in 2020 assessed the potential impact of AI on the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, encompassing societal, economic and environmental outcomes. The researchers found that AI could positively enable 93% of the environmental targets, including the creation of smart and low-carbon cities; Internet-of-Things devices and appliances that can modulate their consumption of electricity; better integration of renewable energy through smart grids; the identification of desertification trends via satellite imagery; and combating marine pollution.

Cement and Telecom

AI use cases in industry can serve to help the environment and reduce carbon emissions. For example, OYAK Cimento, a Turkish based cement manufacturing group is using AI to significantly reduce their carbon footprint. According to Berkan Fidan, Performance & Process Director at OYAK Cimento: “Enterprise AI-assisted process control helps to increase operational efficiency, which means higher production with lower unit energy consumption. If we consider a single moderate capacity level cement plant with 1 million tons of cement production, just a 1% of additional clinker reduction – with AI-assisted process and quality control – produces a reduction of around 7,000 tons of CO2 per year. This equals CO2 absorption of 320,000 trees in a year.”

According to the think tank Chatham House, cement accounts for approximately 8% of CO2 emissions. Thus, there is a clear environmental need to improve efficiency in cement manufacturing and one tool to do so is AI.

Another example of AI having a positive environmental impact concerns Entel, the largest Chilean telecommunications company, and sensor data to identify forest fires. It takes a collaborative effort to successfully fight forest fires that have been raging in many parts of the world, including Greece and Northern California. Chile is frequently impacted by severe climate change and catastrophic weather conditions, which previously led to the worst wildfire in Chile’s history in 2017 that resulted in the burning of around 714,000 acres. For a country steeped in natural wonder, with a population and economy that depends heavily on thriving forests, any type of wildfire is a devastating tragedy.

Entel Ocean, the digital unit of Entel, sought to identify fires earlier using IoT sensors. These sensors act as a digital “nose” placed on trees, capable of detecting particles in the air. The data produced by these sensors enabled Entel Ocean to use AI for automatically predicting when a forest fire would start. “We have been detecting a forest fire 12 minutes before traditional methods – this is a big deal when it comes to preventing fires,” says Lenor Ferrebuz Bastidas, enterprise digital solutions spokesperson for Entel Ocean. “Considering fire can spread in a matter of seconds, every minute helps.”

Trade-offs

Through these applications, AI can be a powerful tool to combat climate change. But its role also as a contributor cannot be overlooked. To that end, the first step is to promote the practice of more holistic and multidimensional model evaluation. To date, the major focus of research and innovation has been on improving accuracy or creating new algorithm methods. These aims often consume larger and larger amounts of data, building ever more complex models. The most telling example is in deep learning, where computational resources went up 300,0000 times between 2012-2018.

Yet, the relationship between model accuracy and complexity is logarithmic. For exponential increases in model size and training requirements, there are linear improvements to performance. In the hunt for accuracy, less priority is given to developing methods with improved time-to-train or resource efficiency. Moving forward, we need to recognize the trade-off between model accuracy and efficiency and the model’s carbon footprint, regarding both during training and when making inferences.

The carbon footprint of a model can be complicated to determine and compare across modelling approaches and data center infrastructures. A reasonable place to start may be by assessing the number of floating-point operations – that is, a discrete count of how many simple mathematical operations (for example, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, and variable assignment) – that need to be performed to train a model. This factor and others can impact energy consumption along with the architecture of the model and the training resources, such as hardware like GPU or CPUs. Additionally, the physical considerations of the storage and cooling of the servers comes into play. As a final complication, it also matters where the energy is sourced from. Energy primarily from renewable resources compared to natural gas or coal will have a reduced carbon footprint.

Let’s ask: “How much more can we do with less?” Taking into account energy-conserving constraints may drive us towards new and creative innovations in AI. By pivoting to this mindset instead of bigger is always better and by pursuing AI use cases in the environmental space, AI can remain at the cutting edge, becoming a sustainable technology of the future and a major asset in the protection of our global climate.

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How Platform Business Models Are Changing Healthcare

That is where This covery came in. The University of Cambridge spin-out, which is backed financially by not-for-profit companies, uses a platform business model to connect innovators, device manufacturers, patients and clinicians on a platform network to crowdsource design ideas.

“We are changing the way healthcare is delivered to end-users by using the platform model as a kind of conceptional model as well as a business model,” says Ruth Cousens, This covery CEO and Co-founder Ruth Cousens.

The platform runs online projects which gather the knowledge and experience of people who use, deliver and influence health and care services. Insights gathered allow its clients to solve real problems by shaping innovative evidence-based solutions. For example, it was used to work with maternity staff and families across England to develop new approaches for identifying and managing situations where babies are experiencing difficulties during labor. “This is being piloted and we hope will eventually be rolled out across the UK,” says Cousens, who will be a speaker at the Platform Leaders Conference in London on November 13. “There is a huge potential for platform models to influence public health policy and the delivery of health services,” she says.

Around the world, healthcare has struggled with uneven access and quality for decades. To try and change that dynamic healthcare professionals, such as the President and CEO of the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, have publicly urged a move from traditional, linear pipeline-service-model thinking to a platform approach that fundamentally changes how healthcare and advance cures are provided.

Andreessen Horowitz, a top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm, supports the shift. “We strongly believe there is a trillion dollar opportunity in becoming the front door to healthcare—the marketplace where consumers go to find and book appointments across multiple conditions and specialties, buy the lowest cost drugs, and even shop for insurance,” the VC firm wrote in an article published last year entitled “Healthcare Marketplaces Where Art Thou?”

The need is there. “There is a big gap between consumer expectations and what health care systems offer today,” says Laure Claire Reillier, Co-founder and CEO of Launchworks & Co, the organizer of the Platform Leaders conference. “They are used to choice, convenience and speed when they book a taxi, or a holiday and the platform economy plays a huge part in that. If you compare that with healthcare services, it is like day and night.”

Healthcare systems are huge, run in silos, are fragmented and full of inefficiencies and complexities. “It is really hard to navigate these systems,” she says. “Platforms can bring a lot of value in terms of coordination and better use of resources at scale by bridging the gap where there are pockets of unmet demand.”

For example, Florence, a U.K. marketplace that will participate in a panel at the Platform Leaders conference, matches nurses with healthcare providers that need them, says Reillier. “There are so many gaps and unmet needs.”

Helping Mental Health Patients

In the U.S. mental healthcare platforms are one of the first successful use cases of healthcare platforms, according to Andreessen Horowitz. The VC firm cites U.S. platforms Headway, Alma, Sondermind, and Path as examples. All four are platforms which are helping mental health professionals take insurance and connect them to consumers who need their services.

Most mental health providers historically have not accepted insurance. They’re often solo practitioners who don’t have the bandwidth to contract with each insurance company, and basic insurance contracts pay less than the provider could make by charging consumers directly. New mental health marketplace companies propose to handle the complex logistics around insurance contracting and billing and negotiate better payment rates than providers could get on their own, notes Andreessen Horowitz. On the backend, these marketplaces are structured as MSOs (Managed Service Organizations) that deal with the logistics of insurance and other backoffice support services.

In mental health, the drivers of successful growth have been:Very high consumer demand driven by increased incidence of mental health issues and the cultural destigmatization of therapy
Widespread adoption of telehealth, propelled by both necessity during the pandemic, and favorable regulatory changes
A historical dearth of therapists who take insurance, which has resulted in…
…insurance companies that are desperate to expand their mental health provider networks, and are therefore willing to pay competitive rates to platforms that can expand their network coverage

The key element that makes these marketplaces work is the fact that they offer deep supply-side services that benefit both the provider (by diversifying their revenue stream beyond cash pay clients) and consumer (reduces out-of-pocket costs per appointment), according to the venture capital firm.

U.S.-based Resilience Lab, which is using a platform business model to deliver mental health care at scale, is doing just that and more. It has developed its own methodology to train and certify therapists, to manage the quality of the care and ensure quality across all its certified providers. Then, it connects clients with mental health issues to the certified clinicians. Like other companies in the space the platform makes treatment assessable and affordable through insurance partnerships. But now Resilience Lab is taking its offer one step further. On October 8 the U.S. company announced the acquisition of Options MD, a leader in online psychiatric medication management for severe and treatment-resistant depression, a serious and often overlooked mental health condition that contributes to high costs of care and high level of patient disability.

The acquisition means that Resilience Lab can now offer integrated medication management and psychotherapy for moderate to severe mental illness, including mood and anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Resilience Lab has also gained Option MD’s clinical intake and AI decision support platform which offers intelligent differential diagnosis and treatment recommendations that aim to improve diagnosis and help clinicians create the most effective care plan, according to the company. Clients of Resilient Lab who suffer from moderate to severe mental illness can now undergo an assessment and be referred to a specialized clinician for medication management, while Options MD Clients can complement their treatment with a qualified therapist to accelerate their mental health recovery.

“Primary care physicians do not know how to deal with these patients,” says Resilience Lab CEO Marc Goldberg. “The problem is systemic as primary care providers usually prescribe antidepressants after five minutes of a patient interview and do not have the time, training and incentive to provide care for any mental health issue,” he says. His company is operational in five U.S. states and works with 12 insurance companies that together cover 24 million people. The next step is to expand the platform to include corporates and their employees, says Goldberg.

Using Platforms To Mind The Gaps In the U.K.’s Healthcare System

In the U.K. the National Health Service is overwhelmed. Lengthening NHS waiting lists, which hit a peak of nearly 7.8 million in England in September, have prompted more people to take out private medical insurance in recent years, despite its rising cost, dipping into savings or taking out loans to pay for routine operations, often spending thousands of pounds. Many are not sure which clinician or hospital to turn to.

That is where MeditSimple, a UK healthcare marketplace, comes in. On October 28, the platform, which was launched in 2019, announced MeditSimpleAI, an AI tool providing what the company says is “responsible, personalized” healthcare guidance to patients who find it increasingly difficult to access timely and effective care.

“MedSimpleAI helps lower the pressure on healthcare systems without compromising quality,” says Laurence Lévy, MeditSimple’s CEO. “According to the OECD 20% of healthcare costs are wasted on unnecessary tests and consultations,” she says. “We can reduce this to 5%.”

It works like this: patients enter their symptoms in MeditSimpleAI, and the platform will identify related symptoms, medications, and medical conditions that may impact their current state. Based on this assessment MeditSimpleAI provides a ranked list of the best care options, complete with clear, actionable explanations, the company says. It also flags any symptoms to monitor that might indicate a need for urgent care.

MeditSimpleAI offers recommendations based solely on medical relevance and patient preferences—free from ads or affiliations, says Lévy.

“Most of the patients we support are insured and benefit from a streamlined process that ensures they are fully prepared for treatment from an administrative standpoint – something hospitals greatly appreciate,” she says. “Hospitals also value our efforts to make their services more accessible and understandable for patients. Through our integrated search engine patients can easily explore and navigate available services, enabling immediate insurance refunds and significantly enhance both the accessibility and transparency of the care provided.”

The platform has agreements with hospitals, clinics and imaging centers. “Our mission is to make healthcare sustainable and responsible for both patients and healthcare professionals,” says Lévy. “Unlike other marketplaces we don’t encourage consumption of healthcare services but rather promote better, more efficient care while alleviating burdens on medical facilities and professionals.”

Healthcare Needs Its Own Platform Strategy

Earlier this year research published by MIT Sloan Management Review found that best practices that have proven successful for digital platforms in other business contexts are less useful in the context of healthcare. An article entitled “Healthcare Platforms Need a Strategy Overhaul” sheds light on how platform strategy must evolve as it is applied to solve new problems in new markets.

Researchers Marcus Holgersson, Joakim Björkdahl, Anna Essén, and Johan Frishammar identified the unique challenges digital health care platforms face, based on four-year-worth of study. From 2018 through 2022, the authors studied digital health platforms in Sweden, focusing on platform strategy, ecosystem management, and user behavior. They conducted 108 interviews in 14 organizations — four major digital primary care platforms, two platform technology developers, five established public and private health care providers, two health care agencies, and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions — and with individual users of digital health platforms.

What they found was that due to the special nature of the healthcare sector, network effects don’t work in the same way and that due to regulatory restraints that can differ from country to country and even region to region, it is much more difficult to scale them, Holgersson said in an interview with The Innovator.

In their article the researchers outlined a three-part approach for making health platforms grow and succeed. To avoid costly mistakes, organizations need to shift their mainstream assumptions about platform strategy and make different decisions about key domains to align with a digital health perspective:Market Entry — Unlike platforms such as Airbnb and Amazon, healthcare platforms are not a substitute but rather a complement to established services. Digital health platforms should focus on a narrow and well-defined scope and integrate with established ecosystems.
Scaling the Business — The concept of network effects is central to platform strategy. Having an increased number of users is important for platforms such as Facebook, but for health care platforms, learning from and leveraging data from users will improve adoption and retention. Digital health platforms should use data to develop operational excellence and for business model development.
Ecosystem Governance — Organizations such as Apple centralize orchestration among their ecosystem of apps and developers, but health care platforms must function under distributed orchestration among physicians, health care organizations, governments, insurance companies, and more. Digital health platforms need to build sociopolitical legitimacy and proactively participate in regulatory development.

“Digital health care platforms, if done right and implemented well, can be a large step in solving the productivity crisis in healthcare,” researcher Frishammar, a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, was quoted as saying in a press release about the study. “There is still much to be explored in what these platforms can do and should do, but ultimately they can make healthcare more accessible and more affordable.”

“The potential is huge in terms of cost savings and quality improvement,” says Holgersson.

Moving From The Periphery To The Core

The question is whether it will really be possible to transform huge healthcare systems. “I think the answer is yes,” says Launchworks’ Reillier. She cites the example of a platform in the UK called Patients Know Best which, with a patient’s permission, aggregates all their healthcare data from various practitioners in one place, giving them access to their own healthcare data and the power to share it. The service is going to be rolled out across the U.K. It is an example of how platforms can move from the periphery to the core of healthcare, she says.

There is a huge pent-up demand not just for medical care but also for preventative care, says Reillier. Daniel Ek, the founder of music sharing service Spotify, recently opened a business in London called Neko Health that offers people full body scans for 299 British pounds. Within the first month 30,000 people had signed up and there is a waiting list to be seen.

This kind of affordable prevention should be integrated into healthcare services, says Reillier. “We need to avoid a two- speed system where only those that can afford healthcare will have access,” she says. “Platforms can be part of the answer to coordinate participants and help orchestrate the emerging healthcare systems of tomorrow. Since they are smaller and nimble, they can begin by complimenting existing services and eventually transform them.

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AI the most critical tech for business profitability, innovation today, say corporate leaders

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the centrepiece technology that will drive profitability and business innovation for the next half-decade, a new survey by global advisory and accountancy firm HLB International reveals.

More than two-thirds (69%) of surveyed corporate leaders rate AI as the business world’s most important and impactful technology over the next five years – a clear increase on the previous year’s figure of 65%.

Globally, 71% are seeking to harness AI for predictive analytics to track future trends, while 55% are using the technology to improve business agility,“Many leaders have refined their approach, transitioning from broad experimentation with technology to targeted strategies aimed at enhancing the performance of their workforces, analytics, and, ultimately, profitability,”

Kukreja noted that nearly half (44%) of highly profitable companies are ahead on the AI maturity curve.

“Profitability is essential for the growth and sustainability of any enterprise, particularly given the current market conditions that are demanding greater agility. AI is increasingly used as part of business strategy, he said.

Business leaders also noted a correlation between profitable businesses and those with a strong culture of innovation, singling out those organisations moving to break silos, encourage collaboration and leverage AI and data analytics to understand market trends and customer behaviour.

“These actions create fertile ground for sustained profit and growth. In this year’s research, a shift in focus is evident: profitability takes centre stage over high growth rates,” Kukreja said.



“In terms of using AI in the workforce, these include AI-driven training programs, streamlined recruitment processes, and predictive workforce analytics that support better decision-making across teams.”

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Manufacturing’s Next Challenge: Scaling Industry 4.0 Technologies

Amid warnings of a global recession, energy price hikes and disrupted supply chains, many manufacturers are struggling to scale the use of Industry 4.0 technologies.

“It’s hard enough to digitize a single site. But then how do you scale from one site to many?”, asked Enno de Boer, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company and Global Lead of its digital manufacturing work.“Especially small sites, all different from each other, with old equipment and old ways of working. That’s what keeps so many companies from digitizing successfully—they think it can’t be done at scale, so they don’t try. And they’re left vulnerable to the next big shock.”

But factories invited to join The World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network this week are proving that “transformation at scale is possible,” Francisco Betti, the Forum’s Head of Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains, said during an October 13 webcast that he co-hosted with de Boer. These manufacturing sites are leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence, 3D-printing and Big Data analytics to achieve “productivity, sustainability and resiliency all at the same time,” he said.

Amid warnings of a global recession, energy price hikes and disrupted supply chains, many manufacturers are struggling to scale the use of Industry 4.0 technologies.

“It’s hard enough to digitize a single site. But then how do you scale from one site to many?,” asked Enno de Boer, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company and Global Lead of its digital manufacturing work, “Especially small sites, all different from each other, with old equipment and old ways of working. That’s what keeps so many companies from digitizing successfully—they think it can’t be done at scale, so they don’t try. And they’re left vulnerable to the next big shock.”

But factories invited to join The World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network this week are proving that “transformation at scale is possible,” Francisco Betti,the Forum’s Head of Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains, said during an October 13 webcast that he co-hosted with de Boer. These manufacturing sites are leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence, 3D-printing and Big Data analytics to achieve “productivity, sustainability and resiliency all at the same time,” said Betti.

The new lighthouses, run by companies such as Cipla, Danone and Sany Heavy Industry, are deploying large digital transformation programs at scale across 20 to 40 factories in parallel, with thousands of people involved, dedicated governance in place and deploying multiple innovative yet standardized technology use cases, over time spans of just 18 to 24 months.

The 11 new lighthouses includeAgilent Technologies in Singapore: With the ambition to simplify high-tech manufacturing in low-volume, high-complexity instruments to meet rising customer demand, Agilent Singapore deployed Industrial Internet of Things-powered digital twin, AI and robotic automation technologies to achieve sustainable growth, overcoming bottlenecks from specialized manpower and transforming the workforce into scalable Industry 4.0-ready generalists. The company said ths resulted in an increased output by 80%, improved productivity by 60%, improved cycle time by 30% and quality cost by 20%.CATL in Yibin, China: In order to cope with significant business growth, and higher quality and sustainability expectations, CATL builds up a large greenfield in Yibin city. The plant further deployed AI, IoT and flexible automation in addition t lighthouse digital initiatives at its headquarters. The company said this helped them achieve 17% increased line speed, 14% reduced yield loss, and zero carbon emission.Cipla in Indore, India: To preserve access to high quality affordable drugs globally while facing an increase in material and labor costs, Cipla deployed digital, automation and analytics technologies to 22 Indian sites in parallel. Indore’s Oral Solid Dosage facility led this journey by implementing 30 Industry 4.0 use cases, moves it said improved total cost by 26% and enhancing quality by three times, while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 28%.Danone in Opole, Poland: To address an increasing product portfolio complexity, Danone Opole engaged its whole workforce in a digital transformation journey to deploy connected shopfloor, artificial intelligence and automation at scale. As a result, the company said it improved costs by 19%, efficiency by 12% while improving quality and reducing GHG emissions by close to 50%. The site became a transformation leader for the other 39 Danone plants in Europe and top employer in the local market.Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories in Hyderabad, India: Facing business challenges from severe price erosion and rapidly evolving quality expectations, the 25-year-old site embarked on large scale digitalization to sustain and grow in the generics pharma market. The site deployed more than 40 Industry 4.0 use cases by operating in “garage mode” and leveraging Industrial Internet of Things technology and a democratized platform for advanced analytics. As a result, the company said it improved manufacturing cost by 43% while proactively enhancing quality and reducing energy by 41%.Flex in Sorocaba, Brazil: To improve site competitiveness, sustainability and health, Flex implemented Industry $.0 initiatives along the end-to-end value chain, such as IoT-enabled recycling of electronic waste and supply chain control tower. It says its digital transformation journey resulted in a 50% labor cost improvement, an 81% material loss reduction, while increasing customer satisfaction by more than 18% and improving employees well-being.Haier in Qingdao, China: Facing growing demand for customized design, fast delivery and high quality, Haier refrigerator factory leveraged Big Data, digital twin and advanced visual inspection technology to accelerate R&D, upgrade manufacturing process and logistics scheduling mode. The company says order response lead time has been shortened by 35%, production efficiency has been increased by 35% and quality performance has been improved by 36%.Midea in Shunde, China: In order to meet demand for high quality products delivered in shorter lead times, Midea Shunde factory has deployed AI, digital twin and other Industry 4.0 technologies in the end-to-end value chain. The company sais this has helped them achieve 24% lower unit production cost, 41% shorter lead times, 30% shorter R&D lead time and 51% less defect rate.Mondelēz in Sri City, India: Driven by the aspiration to outgrow the market through superior volume delivery, cost leadership and building further resilience and diversity in a volatile environment, Mondelez’s Sri City deployed end to end digitalization, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and advanced automations which the company said increases labor productivity by 89%, reduce manufacturing costs by 38% and sustain 50% female workforce. Thus, making it a benchmark manufacturing site for Mondelez globally.Sany Heavy Industry in Changsha, China: To address the challenges from industry specific market cycle fluctuations and product complexity, Sany Changsha leveraged flexible automation, AI and Industrial Internet of Things technologies at scale to build a digital and flexible heavy equipment manufacturing system. As a result, the company said the site expanded capacity by 123%, improved labor productivity by 98%, and reduced unit manufacturing cost by 29%.Western Digital in Shanghai, China: To address a 250% annual growth rate, short technology transition pace of 18 months and workforce challenges, Western Digital semiconductor backend factory in Shanghai implemented diverse Industry 4.0 use cases such as automated product design system, Machine Learning-based virtual wafer test and an intelligent planning system. The company said the site reduced time to market by 40%, product cost by 62% and improved productivity by 221%.

The latest cohort of lighthouses also includes four sites designated as Sustainability Lighthouses operated by Arçelik in Ulmi, Romania, Micron in Singapore, Unilever in Dapada, India, and Western Digital in Shanghai, China.

IN OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK:

FOOD

Israeli Startup Strikes Partnership To Boost 3D Printed Meat Sales In Europe

Israel’s Redefine Meat has struck a partnership with importer Giraudi Meats to drive European distribution of its “New Meat” steak cuts produced on 3D printers.The start-up, which raised $170 million in a series A financing round this year, operates large-scale meat printers at its Rehovot headquarters south of Tel Aviv, and a new factory in the Netherlands, hoping to establish its products as an alternative to conventionally produced meat.

AVIATION

Delta Invests In Electric Air Taxi Startup, Plans Last-Mile Airport Service

Delta Air Lines has invested $60 million in air taxi startup Joby Aviation, which is planning to build and operate an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOL, effectively an air taxi. The partnership that will initially offer passengers air taxi transport to and from airports in New York and Los Angeles.Delta will also have an exclusive five-year partnership with Joby operating eVTOLs as part of the Delta network. Delta CEO Ed Bastian envisions moving passengers to and from airports quicker and with less hassle.

MOBILITY

VW To Take 60% Stake in $2 Billion Tech JV With China’s Horizon Robotics

Volkswagen’s software unit Cariad will spend more than $2 billion and take a 60% stake in a new venture with Chinese technology firm Horizon. Together the companies will develop technology that can integrate numerous functions for autonomous driving onto a single chip that will be available only in China.The venture will mean Volkswagen has a supplier in each major region – North America, Europe and China – given its existing supply relationships with U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm and Franco-Italian STMicroelectronics.In contrast to the partnership with Qualcomm, Volkswagen’s software unit Cariad will play an active role in developing the chip technology with Horizon Robotics, and the know-how will be shared across the Volkswagen Group, the carmaker’s China chief Ralf Brandstaetter told Reuters.

Starbucks Wants To Become The Gas Station Of The Future For EVs

By 2030, there could be 26 million electric cars in the U.S., meaning there will be a need for more than 10 times as many EV chargers. Starbucks, with its 15,000 locations across the country, thinks that it could help fill part of the gap.I n a pilot this year, the company is partnering with Volvo and Chargepoint to install EV chargers in its parking lots along a 1,350-mile route from Denver to Seattle, with stops available roughly every 100 miles.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

America’s Oldest Bank To Safeguard Digital Assets Alongside Traditional Investments

BYN Mellon, America’s oldest bank said it would begin receiving clients’ cryptocurrencies on October11, becoming the first large U.S. bank to safeguard digital assets alongside traditional investments on the same platform. BNY Mellon won the approval of New York’s financial regulator earlier this fall to begin receiving select customers’ bitcoin and ether starting this week. The bank will store the keys required to access and transfer those assets, and provide the same bookkeeping services on those digital currencies that it offers to fund managers for their portfolios of stocks, bonds, commodities and other assets. The move marks an important milestone for traditional banks and their growing acceptance of digital assets as a legitimate market and a source of new business. While many Wall Street executives still question crypto’s potential and aim to tread cautiously until Washington clarifies how the market will be regulated, firms have responded to calls from a growing number of large investment-firm clients to step into their traditional role as intermediaries.

COMPUTING + BIOLOGY

Brain Cells In A Dish Played Video Game Pong, Researchers Say

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Neuron, researchers claim they were able to demonstrate “the neurons could adapt activity to a changing environment, in a goal-oriented way, in real time.” “From worms to flies to humans, neurons are the starting block for generalized intelligence,” first author Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer at Cortical Labs in Melbourne, Australia, said in a statement. “So, the question was, can we interact with neurons in a way to harness that inherent intelligence?” Kagan said the team chose Pong due to its simplicity and familiarity, adding that it was one of the first games used in machine learning. His team is now testing other games. Kagan told CNN that in the short term, the technology could be used for “better drug discovery, disease modeling, and understanding how intelligence arises – which in turn could be used to develop new algorithms for machine learning.” To learn more about the potential impact of this discovery on business read The Innovator’s recent in-depth article.

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Newly Exposed AI Shortcomings Have Serious Downsides

An AI-powered transcription tool widely used in the medical field to help doctors communicate with their patients touts itself as having “human-level robustness and accuracy” But the tool sometimes invents things that no one ever said, posing potential risks to patient safety, and deletes the underlying audio from which the transcriptions are generated, leaving medical staff no way to verify their accuracy, AP News reported on October 26.

Meanwhile, Wired reported October 24 that AI-enhanced search engines from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity have been surfacing debunked and racist research claiming genetic superiority of white people over other racial groups. This finding, revealed through investigative work by Hope Not Hate, a UK-based anti-racism organization, has added to concerns about racial bias and radicalization in AI-powered search.

Both stories illustrate the gulf between AI hype and reality as well as the dangers of overestimating the technology.

Careless Whisper: Speech-to-Text Hallucination Harms

There has been a rush by medical centers to utilize AI to transcribe patients’ consultations, even though OpenAI, the developer of the underlying technology, has warned that the tool should not be used in “high-risk domains.”

OpenAI’s Whisper is integrated into medical transcription services from Nabla, which the company says are used by over 30,000 clinicians at more than 70 organizations. Nabla told AP its product had been used to transcribe around 7 million medical visits.

Whisper is also embedded in Microsoft’s and Oracle’s cloud computing platforms and integrated with certain versions of ChatGPT. Despite its wide adoption, researchers are now raising serious concerns about its accuracy.

In a study conducted by researchers from Cornell University, the University of Washington, and others, researchers discovered that Whisper “hallucinated” in about 1.4% of its transcriptions, sometimes inventing entire sentences, nonsensical phrases, or even dangerous content, including violent and racially charged remarks.

The study, Careless Whisper: Speech-to-Text Hallucination Harms, found that Whisper often inserted phrases during moments of silence in medical conversations, particularly when transcribing patients with aphasia, a condition that affects language and speech patterns.

In these cases, the AI sometimes fabricated unrelated phrases, invented fictional medications like “hyperactivated antibiotics” and even injected racial commentary into transcripts, AP reported.

Such mistakes could have “really grave consequences,” particularly in hospital settings, Alondra Nelson, who led the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for the Biden administration until last year, told AP. “Nobody wants a misdiagnosis,” said Nelson, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. “There should be a higher bar.”

Whisper also is used to create closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing — a population at particular risk for faulty transcriptions. That’s because the deaf and hard of hearing have no way of identifying fabrications “hidden amongst all this other text,” Christian Vogler, who is deaf and directs Gallaudet University’s Technology Access Program, was quoted as saying in the AP article.

OpenAI’s Whisper is being used in a slew of industries worldwide to translate and transcribe interviews and public meetings, generate text in popular consumer technologies and create subtitles for videos. These applications are also plagued with hallucinations.

A University of Michigan researcher conducting a study of public meetings, for example, said he found hallucinations in eight out of every 10 audio transcriptions he inspected, before he started trying to improve the model, according to the AP story. A machine learning engineer said he initially discovered hallucinations in about half of the over 100 hours of Whisper transcriptions he analyzed. A third developer said he found hallucinations in nearly every one of the 26,000 transcripts he created with Whisper.

The problems persist even in well-recorded, short audio samples, according to the AP story. That trend would lead to tens of thousands of faulty transcriptions over millions of recordings, researchers told the AP.

The prevalence of such hallucinations has led experts, advocates and former OpenAI employees to call for the federal government to consider AI regulations. At minimum, they said, OpenAI needs to address the flaw.

An OpenAI spokesperson told AP the company continually studies how to reduce hallucinations and appreciated the researchers’ findings, adding that OpenAI incorporates feedback in model updates.

Microsoft, which offers Whisper as part of its cloud computing services, advises companies incorporating it in the solutions they offer to “obtain appropriate legal advice to review your solution, particularly if you will use it in sensitive or high-risk applications.”

Disseminating Disinformation

Search engines are having accuracy problems of their own.

Patrik Hermansson, a researcher with anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, was investigating the resurgence of scientific racism when he found that AI-driven search engines often promote discredited “race science.”

When searching the average IQ scores in different nations, the Google’s AI-driven “Overviews” feature displayed figures derived from the work of Richard Lynn, a University of Ulster professor who died in 2023, which relies on dubious samples and questionable methodologies and has been used to support racial hierarchies.

A Wired investigation confirmed Hermansson’s findings and found that Microsoft’s Copilot—integrated into Bing— and Perplexity also referenced Lynn’s work when queried about IQ scores in various countries.

Lynn’s flawed research has long been used by far-right extremists, white supremacists, and proponents of eugenics as evidence that the white race is superior genetically and intellectually from non-white races. Experts worry that its promotion through AI could help radicalize others, says the Wired story.

The misinformation appeared in Google’s AI Overviews, which as launched earlier this year as part of the company’s effort to revamp its powerful search tool for the age of AI. For some queries, the tool, which is only available in certain countries right now, gives an AI-generated summary of its findings. The Tool pulls the information from the Internet and gives users the answers to queries without needs to click on a link.

When contacted by Wired, Google said it has guardrails and policies in place to protect against low quality responses and when it finds that Overviews don’t align with its polices it takes action. But even after Google removed the information Wired said that Overview still amplified the flawed figures from Lynn’s work in what is called a “featured snippet” which displays some of the text from a website before the link.

Google told Wired that part of the problem it faces in generating AI Overviews is that for some very specific queries there is an absence of high-quality information on the Web.

Microsoft, for its part, told Wired that Copilot answers questions by distilling information from multiple web sources into a single response and “the user can further explore and research as they would with traditional search.”

Based on this week’s news, perhaps AI-powered transcriptions and search results should come with a label that says “caveat emptor.”

IN OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK:

SUSTAINABILITY

Sweden’s Syre and Selenis Forge Strategic Partnership To Establish A U.S.-Based Textile-To-Textile Recycling Plant

Syre, a new venture to scale textile-to-textile recycled polyester, is partnering with Selenis, a global supplier of high-quality specialty polyester solutions, to establish a textile-to textile recycling plant in Cedar Creek, North Carolina, USA, to be operational in mid-2025. The two companies said their partnership will combine new technologies in depolymerizing and polymerizing for textile-to-textile recycling all in one place, allowing for a cost efficient, industrial scale operation. Syre, which is backed by H&M – one of the world’s largest and most recognizable fast fashion brands – and Vargas, a Swedish impact company builder behind H2 Green Steel and Northvolt, launched in March this year with a mission to establish multiple textile-to-textile gigascale plants producing circular polyester across the globe, reducing CO2 emissions by up to 85% compared to the production of oil-based virgin polyester. The new plant, which will deliver volumes up to 10,000 metric tons of circular polyester annually, is scheduled to be operational in mid-2025, with the aim of making its first commercial sales to customers later that year. For more on Syre read The Innovator’s story about its launch.

Data Centers Could Be Source of Heat for European Cities

Data centers, often criticized for their intensive need for energy, could become a critical source of heating for cities if properly located, according to the boss of one of Europe’s leading energy transition companies. Kim Fausing, chief executive of Danfoss, a privately owned Danish company that provides heat pumps and data center cooling systems, told the Financial Times that Frankfurt could have all its heating needs met by excess heat generated by data centres by the end of this decade.

MOBILITY

Toyota, NTT To Invest $3.26 Billion In AI Self-Driving Technology

Toyota Motor and Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) will invest 500 billion yen ($3.26 billion) in research and development to create artificial intelligence software to improve self-driving. The automaker and the Tokyo-headquartered telecommunications major are planning to develop automotive software which will use AI to anticipate accidents and take control of the vehicle, according to newspaper reports.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Scikit-learn Practitioner Certification Program Launched

As machine learning continues to grow at an unprecedented pace, so does the demand for professionals who can validate their expertise with recognized credentials. To meet this need, France’s Probabl is launching the first official global scikit-learn practitioner certification program, developed in partnership with members of the scikit-learn core team, industry leaders, and expert trainers. The certification program is designed around three levels—Associate, Professional, and Expert—each tailored to different stages of a data science career. Scikit-learn positions itself as an open-source alternative to proprietary AI platforms. With over 80 million downloads each month, scikit’s role as middleware makes it fundamental to nearly a million projects and more than 15,000 structured packages. Probabl said Inria, the French national research institute for digital science and technology, which has supported the creation of scikit-learn since its launch, will keep certifications connected to the latest research advances in the field while Artefact, an AI and data consultancy with expertise in industrial applications of machine learning and machine learning’s impact on business, will help ensure certifications are relevant to industry practices and needs.

Visit: https://innovatorawards.org/

Rethinking Intellectual Property Rights In The Age Of AI

In early October DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Google, and German drug maker BioNTech separately announced that they will be launching AI lab assistants to help advance science. At the same time BioNTech’s London-based AI subsidiary InstaDeep presented AI models that could help the drug maker identify or discover new targets to tackle cancers.

The announcements underscore how AI could accelerate scientific discoveries but also raises a host of thorny questions: If human scientists collaborating with AI lab assistants makes an important discovery – say a drug that can cure a lethal disease – who should receive the patent: the person or company who developed the AI assistant, the scientist who instructed and collaborated with the AI assistant, the AI assitant itself or a combination of all three? And if such a discovery can be made in a day or even minutes, at a fraction of the current cost, do we need to rethink the whole economic model underlying drug discovery and prescription drug pricing and ensure that the patent system grants early and fair access to people around the globe?

As AI accelerates scientific progress and patent creation, the clash between the human right to benefit from scientific progress and its application (the human right to science) and the right for innovators to protect their inventions is intensifying. How can we design future protection models that balance innovation, access, and fairness in a rapidly evolving technological landscape? That is the main question that will be posed during a panel discussion which will be moderated by The Innovator’s Editor-in-Chief at the invite-only annual summit of The Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), on Oct. 9-11.

Under the theme of “The Great Scientific Acceleration” GESDA, a Swiss Foundation initiated by the Swiss Federal Government and the City and Canton of Geneva, whose vision is to “use the future to build the present” by bringing together different communities to jointly anticipate scientific and technological advancements and, based on them, develop inclusive and global solutions for a sustainable future, will convene 1,000 scientists, diplomats, policymakers, innovators, executives and citizens from around the world to explore the acceleration of science and its applications to help solve some of humanities biggest global challenges.

Panelists tackling the issues around IP include James Donovan, OpenAI’s head of science policy and partnerships, Ken-Ichiro Nasume, Assistant Director General at the World Intellectual Property Organization ( WIPO), Antony Taubman, the former Director, Intellectual Property, Government Procurement & Competition Division of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Christine Allan de Lavenne, an intellectual property lawyer and human rights and innovation expert.

A Growing Tension

There is a growing tension between two human rights guarantees from Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): the human right to participate in and benefit from scientific progress and its applications and the right of creators, including scientists and investors, to protect their work, says GESDA’s Gerard Escher, a biologist by training. These human rights have historically co-existed but as scientific discovery accelerates through technologies such as AI, quantum computing and biotechnology, the there is an opportunity to reexamine the tensions between these rights, he says.

Emerging technologies could worsen existing power imbalances by enabling major corporations, particularly in sectors like pharmaceuticals, to innovate more quickly, secure more patents and exert greater control over scientific knowledge. This raises critical questions around access, equity and fairness. How can science benefit all, including developing nations and marginalized communities when intellectual property laws often seem to lock away innovations. The panel will explore the challenges, opportunities and potential new models for IP that ensure that scientific discovery remains incentivized (a duty of the human right to science) while ensuring global access to life-saving advancements, especially in fields like healthcare and environmental technology.

While a lot of attention is given to how to best leverage AI, the world is still not fully leveraging human advances in science, says Escher. A recent article on Science.org points out that inventors often don’t credit public research, so they don’t have to list a co-inventor. “With AI, inclusion of all would become a necessary routine,” says Escher, since AI is trained on publicly available data.

“There is an opportunity to rethink the system,” says Escher. “There is a chance to break down the silos in science and include small labs with experimental research. This could be a chance to share better, to share differently, and benefit from scientific advances in new ways.”

The issues are not limited to AI. In the field of quantum computing if a company discovers a way to advance the field “they hide it to squash the competition,” he says. “There is a return of the commercial secret before the patent, and it is really terrible for innovation.”

Going forward could a new way be developed for inventors to securely deposit what they have developed to advance the science or technology and allow others to use it for the benefit of society while still profiting from their invention?

“The human right to science part of the equation has been in the sleeping beauty stage for too long,” says Monika Plozza, GESDA’s Advisor on the Human Right to Science and Lecturer at the University of Lucerne. “In recent decades IP laws have steadily expanded, increasingly favoring protection and exclusion. IP interests have been successfully implemented, as states and private actors have invested more time and resources into developing these legal frameworks, while the human right to science remains neglected, under-developed and underused.” It’s time to change that, she says.

GESDA is actively bringing all the stakeholders around the table to find a path forward. But it is clear from interviews with the panelists that there is not yet a consensus on how to do that.

Tech Is Testing The Boundaries Of The IP System

“Every time there is a technological disruption there is pressure to rewrite the rules and rebalance the intellectual property system,” says panelists Taubman, the former WTO official. “It was the case with the introduction of photography, sound recording, the Internet and digital music, he says. “The reality is that the rule makers will never catch up and anticipate the changes. With AI we are seeing that in spades now,” he says. It is a natural cyclical upheaval of the IP system, he says, “but change never happened spontaneously. It always results in hard core litigation that tests the boundaries of the existing system.”

Technology is stretching those boundaries on multiple fronts. Up until about 20 years ago all the content that required licensing was embedded in the physical world and was easier to track and understand. What’s more the current IP system, where everything is defined and managed nationally, makes less and less sense in a digital borderless world and AI is rapidly changing the role of humans as creators and inventors. “The idea that the original artist or creator is a sophisticated computer program undermines the very tenants of the IP system,” says Taubman. “The debate we see now is a healthy response to the systemic challenges.”

The Challenges Ahead

WIPO’s Natsume says his organization has been grappling with those challenges since 2019. It convenes member states and all the emerging stakeholders, including companies, individuals and academia, twice a year to discuss how to deal with the impact of technology on IP systems and the question of how to balance the human right to benefit from scientific advances and the right for innovators and creators to protect their work. At the last meeting the focus was on GenAI and how the data training is handled. At the next meeting, in November, the discussion will center on how the patent system should deal with GenAI’s output.

By way of example, under the current IP framework so called ” obvious innovations”, where the inventive contribution made is not very big, should not benefit from patent protection. But if GenAI can produce a huge amount of inventive ideas in a few seconds “how do we evaluate if a step is big enough?” to merit a patent, asks Natsume. And if AI is trained on other people’s data, how should those people be compensated for the use of their data and how do you determine how much of an idea is derivative and who should own the rights to a resulting invention?

One idea being discussed outside of WIPO could be creating a universal basic income to compensate the entire global population for its contribution to training AI, says GESDA’s Plozza.

Many challenges to the current system have no clear answer, says Natsume. “We are at the stage of considering different views,” he says.

Finding common ground will not be easy. For example, on the question of whether AI-generated artwork can be protected by copyright, the U.S. appears to take a more restrictive view than China.

And so far, courts have refused to grant patents to inventions made by either machines or algorithms. The leading patent case is in the name of Thaler (the human) and DABUS (the claimed AI ‘inventor’). It concerns two patent applications filed in 2018 by Dr Stephen Thaler at the UK’s intellectual property office, where he asserted that the inventions were created by an AI machine called DABUS without the involvement of a human inventor. Patent experts like Taubman think governments will eventually need to weigh in and that some form of protection will ultimately be granted to non-human inventors.

Is IP Dead?

Due to accelerated scientific progress and new tech developments, there is a need for changes in the current IP framework, says IP lawyer Allan de Lavenne, “but we won’t ditch IP altogether, IP is not dead.” IP and the right to science “are not the enemies they are often claimed to be, but rather have beneficial interactions/areas,” she says. There are three main “dials” in current IP law: exclusions, exceptions and expiration that, through better cooperation between human rights and intellectual property actors, can be adjusted to find the new balance between IP and the right to science we need, she says.

She points out that there are already exceptions to patent law that place certain advances outside the scope of protection for the purpose of scientific progress as well as exceptions allowing for them to benefit the largest number of people. Compulsory licenses for vaccines were granted during COVID and will continue, with adjustments, to be issued, she says. The 20 years duration of patent protection might need to be rethought, as well as practices such as improvement patents which end up granting protection forever, she says, “but overall IP law has the tools we need to make the adjustments.”

Defining The Way Forward

Taubman, the former WTO official, says it is important to remember that the solutions don’t have to be binary. “The future should not be limited to an extension of the current patent system or nothing,” he says. Perhaps a “patent-like” tool could be created that would still include economic incentives and recognition to this new category of AI ‘inventors’ without granting exclusive rights. “Changing innovation models may lead us to rethink the way drug discovery is financed,” he says. “But if we don’t want exclusive rights who is going to pay? Early innovation is one thing, but drug development will remain costly and risky. Governments and philanthropic initiatives can complement private sector players. New models need to be discussed and explored.” In a world of accelerating AI and scientific discoveries, says Taubman, “we can’t afford to be stuck with one narrow innovation model.

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Diary Of An Ongoing Software Supply Chain Cyberattack

On June 15, 2022, a shadowy hacker group known as TA551 set its sights on a company that offers training and certification to IT administrators, system administrators and other vital IT personnel working for some of the world’s largest corporations.

From there it was game on. The hackers replaced the original exam simulator software of the education company infecting the IT personnel who used it. Then, via use of stealer malware that was undetectable to antivirus software, they began seizing IT personnel’s user identities, giving them a back door into the networks of dozens of the education site’s corporate clients, including Fortune 500 companies. The corporate clients, in turn, unknowingly infected their suppliers.

TA551, a financially motivated threat actor which has targeted the energy, healthcare, finance, manufacturing and insurance sectors in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. · next sold tailored access to other hacker groups.

Total victim count is difficult to pin down but is estimated to be around 15,000 with an estimated 7.5 million lines of data stolen, says Berk Albayrak, a veteran analyst at Prodaft, the cyber threat intelligence company that discovered the breach. He is scheduled to outline the supply chain attack – which has not previously been reported in the press- at a conference on supply chain security hosted by Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology’s (EPFL) Center For Digital Trust on March 30 in Lausanne.

When active connections from infected victims are analyzed, most had been ongoing for more than six months. No one suspected anything until Prodaft’s stealth mode monitoring of the group exposed the hack.

Even now, there are still multiple active connections to victim’s computers that haven’t been shut down, says Albayrak, who is shielding the names of the companies impacted because the attack is still in progress. “This is still an ongoing attack. It is hard to calculate the damage,” he says.

The TA 551 supply chain attack demonstrates how an attacker can distribute its malicious code to thousands, if not millions, of victims. Supply chain attacks target software updates, build processes, and source code by seeking vulnerabilities and unsecure servers and protocols. This enables hackers to alter source code and hide malware or backdoors in the updates or design builds. Because these apps and updates are released by trusted vendors the malicious code is unleashed without either the victims or the vendors being aware of the compromise or vulnerability.

A Growing Number Of Attacks

SolarWinds was the hack that put software supply chain attacks on the map. Its IT monitoring system, Orion, which is used by over 30,000 organizations including federal, state, and local agencies, was compromised by hackers.. This enabled the hackers to deliver backdoor malware in an Orion software update.Not only could the hackers access and imitate the victims’ accounts/users, the malware could also access system files and work among SolarWinds’ legitimate activities, going undetected even by antivirus software. The attackers went unnoticed from when they first hacked into the system in September 2019 to the first public discovery/report of the attack in December 2020.

Overall, approximately 18,000 customers installed the malicious Orion update, allowing the hackers to unleash even more malware and havoc on their systems. Those affected included Cisco, Deloitte, Intel, Microsoft, FireEye, and various government departments, including the U.S. government agency Homeland Security.

Several other supply chain hacks made the headlines in 2021.The Colonial Pipeline attack, which took place in May of that year and shut key conduits delivering fuel from Gulf Coast refineries to major East Coast markets in the U.S, was due to the breach of a single password.

In July 2021, IT management software company, Kaseya, announced it had been the victim of a supply chain attack after hackers exploited a vulnerability in its vector signal analysis (VSA) software. The attackers, later revealed to be a group known as REvil, used the vulnerability to carry out ransomware attacks on multiple managed service providers and their customers. By hacking the VSA server, which is used to deploy various automated IT tasks and software, hackers were able to infiltrate systems via a fake update. Kaseya estimated that 60 of its customers and a further 1,500 businesses were affected by the attack.

At the end of 2021, Log4j, a Java-based logging utility, was victim to a vulnerability called Log4Shell that put millions of computers at risk. Built by the Apache Software Foundation, Log4j is open-source software that records diagnostic information about systems and communicates them to users and administrators. The Log4Shell vulnerability meant attackers could break into systems, steal data, uncover logins and passwords, and unleash further malicious software. Since Log4j is used by a large number of individuals and organizations, it put an extraordinary amount of users and businesses at risk of attack.

While incidents like the SolarWinds hack and its fallout showed how wrong things can go when attackers infiltrate commonly used software, the Log4j meltdown speaks more to how widely the effects of a single flaw can be felt if it sits in a foundational piece of code that is incorporated into a lot of software.

The number of supply chain attacks is expected to continue to rise. Attack techniques used to compromise suppliers in supply chains include not only software vulnerabilities and malware infections but also social engineering, brute force attacks, exploitation of configuration problems and modifying hardware, according to a report by the European Union’s Agency for Cybersecurity.

The Evolution of Malware

A major reason for the increase in financially motivated supply chain attacks is that it is getting easier and less risky to launch them, says Ege Balci, a Prodaft Threat Intelligence Division Manager, who is scheduled to speak at the Lausanne conference about the evolving malware industry.

“By using Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) platforms less skilled cybercriminals are transferring the risk of maintaining infrastructure to more professional hacker groups,” says Balci.

Take the case of Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) offerings such as Raccoon Stealer. The service allows would be hackers to lease software and hardware for carrying out cyberattacks. Owners of MaaS servers provide paid access to a botnet that

distributes malware. Typically, clients of such services are offered a personal account through which to control the attack, as well as technical support, says Balci.

The Genesis Market, an invitation-only market online shop that sells login credentials, cookies and device fingerprints that help hackers thwart security protocols, is another example of how much easier it is for hacking groups to gain access to corporate networks.

Cyber criminals are also using anonymity browsers to steal credentials. These browsers allow criminals to import everything on a users’ browser. “From that point on there is no way of differentiating the attacker and the victim,” says Balci. “They can get onto every kind of platform and every kind of account held by the victim, bypassing all the safeguards.”

Mitigation Strategies

The sophisticated tools in current use by cyber criminals make it hard to prevent attacks, he says. “There is no magic formula to prevent this but having some sort of threat intelligence service or consulting will help a lot as will employee awareness training.”

The ongoing TA551 supply chain attack should serve as a warning to companies, says Balci. “There are very similar cases happening daily.

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Banks Ordered To Take Full Responsibility When Using AI

Banks and investment firms in the European Union can’t dodge boardroom responsibility and a legal obligation to protect customers when using AI, The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) said in its first statement on the technology.

The edict serves as a reminder that boards of all companies will increasingly be held accountable for their companies’ use of AI because it affects every aspect of their oversight duties.The World Economic Forum’s AI toolkit for boards explains that board attention is necessary because: Strategy is often influenced and executed by AI technologies and its impact on strategy will grow as AI shapes lives, customer expectations, markets and the supply chain; AI will affect financial reporting as it is put to work to process financial data; AI amplifies existing ethical issues and creates new ones that boards should heed; the management of the data, algorithms and people involved in AI requires governance mechanisms for decision-making that are consistent with and assist the organization’s overall governance

In the case of financial services, while AI holds promise in enhancing investment strategies and client services, it also presents inherent risks, and the potential impact on retail investor protection is likely to be significant, ESMA said in its May 30 statement.

ESMA outlined how financial firms regulated in the EU can use AI in day-to-day operations without violating the bloc’s Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID) securities law. “Importantly, firms’ decisions remain the responsibility of management bodies, irrespective of whether those decisions are taken by people or AI-based tools,” ESMA said. “Central to the use of AI in investment services is the unwavering commitment to act in clients’ best interest, an overarching requirement which applies irrespective of the tools that the firm decides to adopt in the provision of services.”

ESMA’s statement covers not just instances where AI tools are developed or adopted by a bank or investment firm itself, but also the use of third-party AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, with or without the direct knowledge and approval of senior management, ESMA sai d.”The firm’s management body should have an appropriate understanding of how AI technologies are applied and used within their firm and should ensure appropriate oversight of these technologies,” ESMA said.

The EU Watchdog’s statement should serve as a warning to other sectors, says industry observers, as any corporate using AI in consumer-facing applications is likely to be held accountable when things go wrong. Already, Air Canada was held liable in court for a chatbot giving a passenger bad advice. “Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights consumer advocacy group based in Nova Scotia, told BBC that the case “ establishes a common sense principle: If you are handing over part of your business to AI, you are responsible for what it does.”

Businesses are increasingly aware of the regulatory and reputational risks. IBM recently surveyed over 1,600 senior European executives on how the AI revolution is transforming the role of company leaders as they seek to maximize its opportunities while also navigating its potential threats in an evolving regulatory and ethical landscape.The survey found that generative AI deployment was at the top of CEOs’ priorities for 2024, with 82% of the business leaders surveyed having already deployed generative AI or intending to this year. A growing sense of urgency is driven by a desire to improve efficiency by automating routine processes and freeing employees to take on higher-value work and enhancing customer experience. Despite this enthusiasm, the report showed that concerns around security and privacy are tempering the rate of adoption – while 88% of business leaders were excited about the potential of AI within their business, 44% did not feel ready to deploy the technology yet, with privacy and security of data (43%), impact on workforce (32%) and ethical implications (30%) identified as the top three challenge facing business leaders.

Instead of solely focusing on the financial benefits of AI, it seems business leaders are increasingly realizing that they must actively address the societal costs and risks associated with AI or face the consequences of failing to do so.

IN OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Google Course Corrects AI Search Results

Google is refining the use of artificial-intelligence overviews in response to search queries after some strange results, weeks after it started rolling out AI-powered answers to U.S. users.The Alphabet unit was prompted to pull back on the new feature after users reported strange and incorrect answers, such as promoting rock consumption for health benefits and using glue to keep cheese sticking to pizza.AI overviews, launched earlier this month, provide users with a passage of text answering questions at the top of Google search results before the list of links. Google said it was able to observe patterns where the problems occurred and made a dozen technical improvements to the feature.The response is the second time this year that Google has had to publicly course correct after a major AI release.

QUANTUM COMPUTING

JPMorgan Chase Demonstrates Quantum Speed-Up

In a new paper in Science Advances on May 29, researchers at JPMorgan Chase, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Quantinuum have demonstrated clear evidence of a quantum algorithmic speedup for the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA), a development that has potential applications in fields such as logistics, telecommunications, financial modeling, and materials science.

“This work is a significant step towards reaching quantum advantage, laying the foundation for future impact in production,” Marco Pistoia, Head of Global Technology Applied Research at JPMorgan Chase. The team examined whether a quantum algorithm with low implementation costs could provide a quantum speedup over the best-known classical methods. The results “show how high-performance computing can complement and advance the field of quantum information science,” says Yuri Alexeev, a computational scientist at Argonne.

CYBERSECURITY

Intercontinental Exchange Fined $10 Million For Failure To Expose Cyber Intrusion

The Intercontinental Exchange(ICE) has been hit with a $10 million penalty for the failure of its subsidiaries – including Nyse – to quickly report a cyber intrusion to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In April 2021, according to the SEC, a third party informed ICE that the exchange operator was potentially hit by a system intrusion involving a previously unknown vulnerability in its VPN. ICE investigated and immediately found malicious code in a VPN device used to remotely access the group’s corporate network.However, ICE staffers failed to notify the legal and compliance officials at the company’s subsidiaries of the intrusion for several days in violation of internal cyber incident reporting procedures.

FUSION ENERGY

UK And Sweden Strengthen Collaboration On Fusion Energy

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), the UK’s national fusion energy laboratory, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Novatron Fusion Group, a Swedish company that aims to fast-track the transition to commercial fusion power. Novatron Fusion Group is developing an innovative machine solution (currently the only mirror machine-concept in Europe) for stable magnetic plasma confinement at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The MOU is a strengthening of a Strategic Partnership – signed by Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in October 2023. Both nations committed to ‘exploring opportunities for collaboration on fusion energy’ after acknowledging the emerging technology’s ‘importance for long-term sustainable energy supply”.

E-COMMERCE AND PAYMENTS

India’s Adani Group Plans Push Into E-Commerce And Payments


India’s Adani Group is in talks to expand into ecommerce and payments, according to a report in The Financial Times, as the conglomerate builds a digital business to compete with the likes of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. The company is now weighing applying for a license to operate on India’s ubiquitous public digital payments network, the Unified Payments Interface, and is in talks with banks to finalize previously announced plans for a co-branded Adani credit card, sources told the FT. Separately, Adani is in negotiations to offer online shopping through India’s fast-growing, government-backed public ecommerce platform, the Open Network for Digital Commerce.( ONDC) ONDC and UPI make up part of India’s digital public infrastructure “stack”, which attracts hundreds of millions of users a month and has become popular with groups competing to build consumer technology businesses. If finalized, the services will be available through Adani’s consumer app Adani One, which was launched in late 2022 and offers travel services such as flight and hotel bookings.

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