AI for Dummies --- Before artificial intelligence gives us super-smart robot companions, it will probably help create streamlined fast-food kitchens

"Artificial intelligence might one day be used to power genuinely humanlike cyborgs or other figments of humanity's fertile imagination. For now, Ingo Stork is using the technology to help restaurant chains waste less food and do more with fewer workers.

Dr. Stork is co-founder of PreciTaste, a startup that uses AI-based sensors and algorithms to accomplish one fairly specific task: predict how much food people will order at any given moment, and make sure that it's being prepared in a timely fashion.

The idea -- to reduce waste -- came in part from a visit Dr. Stork made to a quick-service kitchen one afternoon a few years ago, where he watched a cook fire up 30 burger patties, and then throw them all away when no one showed up to eat them. Why, he wondered, should this cook have to follow that day's schedule, written in anticipation of a normal day at the restaurant, instead of the slow one it turned out to be?

"Each of those burgers is a 50-mile car ride in terms of CO2 emissions," he says, referring to the energy required to raise the cows and eventually transform them into burgers. "Think of all the logistics just to get them there, all just to go to waste and be discarded."

Using AI tools to reduce waste and increase productivity in fast-food joints is hardly the stuff of science fiction. It isn't as flashy as some of the artificial intelligences that have been getting wider attention lately, such as DALL-E, which can create clever images based on text suggestions, or GPT-3, text-generation software good enough to write scientific papers about itself. And it's not as likely to make headlines as Google's LaMDA chatbot, which can produce such humanlike conversation that one of the company's engineers declared it to be sentient -- a notion the company flatly rejected.

But, with a few exceptions, these headline-grabbing systems aren't having a material impact on anyone's bottom line yet.

The AI systems that currently matter the most to companies tend to be far more humble. Were they human, they would probably be wearing hard hats and making cameos on the reality show "Dirty Jobs."

When entrepreneur Phuc Vinh Truong found himself holed up in his Massachusetts home because of Covid-19 lockdowns, he hit on a simple idea. What if you could see contaminants in a stream of liquid, and suck them out one by one?

That led to Phuc Labs, a startup working on a new way to use AI to make recycling electronic waste more efficient.

The system starts with the chopped-up debris left after recyclers of batteries and other e-waste crush old electronics. Typically, this waste is processed with a variety of techniques, including chemical separation. Instead, Phuc Labs suspends the particles in water, then channels the resulting slurry through tiny tubes, where a camera captures its passage at 100 frames per second.

Each frame is analyzed by a computer running a machine-vision algorithm that has been trained to tell the difference between the metal particles valuable to recyclers, and everything else. When a particle travels to the end of the tube, a tiny, powerful jet of air fires at the stream, redirecting the "slice" of water containing the particle into a reservoir. The water is recirculated through the system repeatedly until nearly all the valuable bits of metal have been separated out.

Phuc Labs' "vision valve" technology is still in its early stages, but the company is working on a pilot program with IRI, one of the biggest recyclers of e-waste in the Philippines, says IRI President Lee Echiverri.

This novel kind of filtration would be impossible without AI, but it's not fancy AI. Machine-vision systems are probably the best-studied flavor of AI, and have been refined for decades. They're used in everything from the face-recognizing camera in your phone to autonomous-driving systems to the missiles taking out Russian tanks in Ukraine.

Mr. Truong's team was able to build one of the first versions of their system using an off-the-shelf computer-vision system called Roboflow. They trained it by manually identifying a few hundred images of particles -- drawing boxes around particles and labeling them accordingly -- and Roboflow's software did the rest.

While AI is a unique enabler of Phuc Labs' filtration system, it works because the system asks so little of the AI at its heart -- just "is this a piece of metal or not?" In essence, his engineers are creating a simple game for their AI to learn, and games like chess and Go are things AI has already proved to be excellent at, says Mr. Truong.

In many other real-world applications of AI, engineers have found that trying to do less with AI is what ultimately leads to success.

A prime example of this is autonomous driving systems, which have consistently failed to deliver on earlier promises of full autonomy, but are finding success in navigating some vehicles in more limited and forgiving environments, such as the ones traversed by trains, oceangoing ships and long-haul trucks.

Every fast-food restaurant chain that Dr. Stork's New York City-based company, PreciTaste, works with presents a new set of challenges for his engineers and the AI-powered restaurant-management systems they build.

"Each food chain has its own menu, operations, equipment and way of handling things," he says. The array of wall-mounted cameras equipped with machine vision that can track an order from the moment its raw ingredients leave a refrigerator until it's ready to be handed to a customer may have to be laid out differently, for example. And the number of preparation steps can vary greatly by restaurant.

PreciTaste says it can't disclose which chains are considering its technology. But it's working with the commercial-kitchen fabrication giant Franke to pilot its tech in a handful of national fast-food and fast-casual restaurants, says Greg Richards, vice president of business development at the company. (Franke has since the 1970s been a supplier to McDonald's.)

To make its system work, depth-sensing cameras must be trained to recognize how much of an ingredient -- say, rice -- remains in a prep tray. Knowing when to replenish it depends on what will happen to demand, which in turn depends on factors including weather and local holidays that might determine whether people will go out to eat and what they'll order. All of this and more is fed into the same kind of prediction algorithms that help retailers like Amazon manage their logistics networks.

Today's AI systems lack common sense, can behave erratically when faced with unexpected events, and have minimal ability to transfer knowledge "learned" from one task to analogous situations. In this way, it could be said that today's artificial intelligence possesses no intelligence at all -- it is, as one AI pioneer put it, just "complex information processing."

The result is that engineers and data scientists have to do a lot of hand-holding for their fragile AIs, including planning, hardware engineering, and writing software. All that to build a scaffolding within which an AI can be trained to accomplish a set of tasks that have been defined as narrowly as possible.

While we wait for today's AI models to find more applications outside R&D labs, such research into related systems that get us part way there is proving useful.

Someday, the big, fancy models that garner attention might apply to everyday companies' work -- but not yet. Getting there may take big leaps, such as giving AI common sense, including knowledge about the real world, so that it can derive meaning from all the data it ingests." [1]

1. EXCHANGE --- Keywords: AI for Dummies --- Before artificial intelligence gives us super-smart robot companions, it will probably help create streamlined fast-food kitchens
Mims, Christopher. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 23 July 2022: B.2.

 

Ar kas nors Lietuvoje gali padaryti darbą? Kas nors, ypač tarp jų šviežiai iškeptas imperatorius Vytautas Landsbergis? Ne.

„Pagrindiniai „Volkswagen AG“ akcininkai suvienijo jėgas su darbuotojų lyderiais, kad nušalintų generalinį direktorių Herbertą Diessą, kuris stengėsi Vokietijos automobilių bendrovę paversti geriausia elektromobilių gamintoja.

 

    P. Diessą pakeis Oliveris Blume'as, VW sportinių automobilių gamintojos „Porsche AG“ generalinis direktorius ir ilgas „Porsche-Piech“ šeimos, valdančios daugumą VW balsavimo teisių, sąjungininkas. Ponas Blume'as išliks savo pareigose vadovauti „Porsche“, kurios pirminis viešas akcijų platinimas numatytas šį rudenį.

 

    Pasitraukiantis generalinis direktorius ne kartą konfliktavo su profesinėmis sąjungomis, kurios užima pusę vokiško atitikmens bendrovės direktorių valdyboje vietų. Iki šiol jis išlaikė šeimos, VW Beetle išradėjo Ferdinando Porsche įpėdinių, paramą.

 

    D. Diessas buvo informuotas apie ketvirtadienio vidurdienį, kad pagrindiniai bendrovės akcininkai ir darbuotojų atstovai nusprendė jį atleisti. Platesnė stebėtojų taryba apie tokį sprendimą sužinojo posėdyje apie 16.30 val. penktadienį vietos laiku, pasak su procesu susipažinusio asmens.

 

    Staigus pasitraukimas įvyko po atsinaujinusių vidinių nesutarimų dėl lėtos pažangos, kuriant pagrindinę programinę įrangą naujos kartos elektromobiliams. Dėl delsimo kai kurių modelių pristatymas buvo atidėtas ir Porsche-Piech šeimai kilo abejonių dėl D. Diesso gebėjimo tesėti savo pažadus, sakė su situacija susipažinę žmonės.

 

    Dėl VW vadovavimo krizės įmonės elektromobilių strategija tapo neapibrėžtumu ir kilo klausimų dėl bendrovės valdymo, kuriame dominuoja šeimos akcininkų triumviratas, Vokietijos Žemutinės Saksonijos žemė ir didžiausia šalyje profesinė sąjunga.

 

    „Stebėtojų tarybos viltis turi būti, kad naujasis grupės vadovas Blume'as turės daugiau sėkmės, vadovaudamas grupės programinės įrangos strategijai“, – pranešime klientams sakė „Bernstein Research“ analitikas Danielis Roeska. „Tačiau naujam planui parengti prireiks mėnesių, o neramumų kėlimas, grupei artėjant į sudėtingus 2023-uosius, mūsų nuomone, yra netinkamas laikas.

 

    Su p. Diessu nepavyko susisiekti dėl komentarų. P. Diessas yra sakęs, kad, prieš prisijungdamas prie VW, jis atmetė Elono Musko darbo pasiūlymą, kas paskatino spėliones, kad jis galėtų prisijungti prie „Tesla Inc.“, jei paliks VW.

 

    Automobilių pramonės vadovai grumiasi, kaip geriausiai pereiti prie naujų technologijų, kurių dauguma nėra jų įmonių kompetencijos pagrindas ir reikalauja kitokio mąstymo, sąnaudų struktūrų ir įgūdžių.

 

    Automobilių vadovai patiria spaudimą aplenkti naujus konkurentus, kurių daugelis yra Silicio slėnyje, kurie turi gilesnes kišenes ir nėra apsunkinti seno kapitalo imlaus verslo, orientuoto į benzinu varomų transporto priemonių gamybą.

 

    Detroite „General Motors Co.“ ir „Ford Motor Co.“ vadovybė pastaraisiais metais apibūdino drąsius žingsnius, siekdama pakeisti savo veiklą, įskaitant naujų akumuliatorių tiekimo grandinių kūrimą ir naujų talentų samdymą. „Ford“ šiais metais žengė neįprastą žingsnį – savo benzininių variklių ir elektromobilių operacijas padalino į du atskirus padalinius. Vadovų teigimu, šis žingsnis padės jai greičiau pereiti prie naujų technologijų.

 

    Tuo tarpu investuotojai agresyviai lažinasi dėl elektromobilių erdvės, bandydami išsiaiškinti, kas bus kita Tesla.

 

    P. Diessas pramonės iššūkį apibrėžė, kaip perėjimą nuo metalo daužymo į automobilius prie įgūdžių, išteklių ir vizijos tobulinimo, kad būtų galima sukurti programine įranga apibrėžtus automobilius – transporto priemones, kurios daugeliu atžvilgių turi daugiau bendro su „iPhone“, nei įprastu automobiliu.

 

    Jo bandymą pasivyti Teslą sutrukdė sunkumai, paverčiant VW programinės įrangos, kuri yra šiuolaikinių elektromobilių ir būsimų savarankiškai važiuojančių automobilių širdis, kūrėju.

 

    Pastarosiomis savaitėmis žmonės, susipažinę su kompanija, teigė, kad ji iš naujo paleido planą sukurti vieningą operacinę sistemą savo automobiliams, nes dėl kodo pristatymo problemų VW „Audi“ ir „Porsche“ prekės ženklai atidėliojo naujų aukščiausios kokybės elektrinių modelių pristatymą.

 

    Neįmanoma nustatyti, ar J. Blume'as ir toliau laikysis D. Diess strategijos – pagrindinės programinės įrangos kūrimo įmonės viduje, ar jis kreipsis į „Alphabet Inc.“ „Google“ ar „Apple Inc.“, kaip tai daro kai kurie konkurentai.

 

    Kovo mėnesį ponas Blume'as sakė, kad jis ir jo valdymo komanda susitiko su „Apple“ vadovais ir aptarė įvairius galimus projektus. P. Blume'as daugiau detalių neatskleidė.

 

    Ferdinandas Dudenhoferis, Duisburgo (Vokietija) Automobilių tyrimų centro direktorius, sakė, kad buvo galima tikėtis, kad ponas Blume'as pristatys naują įmonės programinės įrangos strategiją.

 

    „Ši didelė programinės įrangos apibrėžto automobilio problema yra didžiulis iššūkis įprastiems automobilių gamintojams“, – sakė J. Dudenhoferis. „Arba automobilių gamintojai taps tokiomis technologijų įmonėmis kaip Google, Apple ir Microsoft, arba taps priklausomi nuo technologijų gigantų."

 

    Ponas Diessas išgyveno keletą iššūkių savo pareigoms. Gruodžio mėn., kilus konfliktui su darbo atstovais, direktoriai atleido jį iš jo kai kurių pareigų ir pertvarkė vadovų komandą. Tačiau šios savaitės žingsnis jį išstumti įvyko staiga ir nebuvo susijęs su jokiu incidentu, sakė su sprendimu susipažinę žmonės.

 

    Šeimos ir profesinių sąjungų lyderiai sutiko pašalinti D. Diessą, tikėdami, kad 2015 metais „Porsche“ generaliniu direktoriumi tapęs 54 metų Blume'as vadovaus sutarimu tarp vadovybės ir VW suinteresuotųjų šalių, sakė su sprendimu susipažinę žmonės. P. Blume'as, pagal išsilavinimą inžinierius, jau seniai buvo Porsche-Piech šeimų ir profesinių sąjungų lyderių mėgstamas kaip D. Diesso įpėdinis. Tačiau J. Blume'as ne kartą yra sakęs, kad, „Porsche“ dirbdamas, jis yra laimingas.

 

    Nors profesinių sąjungų vadovai pripažino P. Diesso strateginę viziją ir jo pasiekimus keičiant VW kultūrą elektromobilių amžiui, jie suabejojo ​​jo gebėjimu atlikti darbą, kaip parodė programinės įrangos problemos. [1]

 

 

Visos Lietuvos įmonės ir valstybinės kontoros turi atlikti tokį pat darbą, kurio nepadarė ponas Diessas. Kitaip pralaimėsime konkurencijoje, kaip kadaise pralaimėjo suomių Nokia amerikiečių Apple kompanijai. Ar kas nors Lietuvoje neteks darbo rugsėjį? Neįmanoma. Tiesiog pakeisime orkestro poziciją šiame skęstančiame Lietuvos laive. Gaila tautos.

  1.  VW CEO Diess to Step Down After Clash With Labor Unions
Boston, William; Kantchev, Georgi. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 23 July 2022: A.1.

Can anybody in Lithuania execute? Anybody, including Emperor Vytautas Landsbergis? Nope.

"Key shareholders in Volkswagen AG joined forces with labor leaders to oust Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess, who was in the midst of a push to turn the German auto company into a top maker of electric vehicles.

Mr. Diess will be succeeded by Oliver Blume, CEO of VW's sports-car maker Porsche AG and long an ally of the Porsche-Piech family that controls a majority of VW voting rights. Mr. Blume will retain his job running Porsche, which is slated for an initial public offering this autumn.

The departing chief executive had repeatedly clashed with unions, which hold half the seats on the German equivalent of the company's board of directors. Until now he had retained the support of the family, heirs to the VW Beetle inventor, Ferdinand Porsche.

Mr. Diess was informed around midday Thursday that the company's core shareholders and labor representatives had decided to fire him. The broader supervisory board learned of the decision at a meeting at around 4:30 p.m. Friday local time, according to a person familiar with the proceeding.

The sudden ouster comes after renewed internal strife over the slow progress developing core software for the company's new generation of electric vehicles. The delays have caused the launches of some models to be pushed back, raising doubts among the Porsche-Piech family about Mr. Diess's ability to deliver on his promises, people familiar with the situation said.

VW's leadership crisis has plunged the company's electric-vehicle strategy into uncertainty and has raised questions about the company's governance, which is dominated by a triumvirate of family shareholders, the German state of Lower Saxony and the country's biggest trade union.

"The hope of the supervisory board must be for new group CEO Blume to have more success in guiding the software strategy of the group," Daniel Roeska, analyst at Bernstein Research, said in a note to clients. "However, it will take months to come up with a new plan, and creating unrest as the group is heading into a challenging 2023 is the wrong time, in our view."

Mr. Diess couldn't be reached for comment. Mr. Diess has said that before joining VW, he had turned down a job offer from Elon Musk, which has fueled speculation that he could join Tesla Inc. if he left VW.

Auto industry CEOs are wrestling with how best to transition to new technologies -- much of which aren't core to their companies' expertise and requires different thinking, cost structures and skill sets.

Car executives are under pressure to get ahead of new rivals, many of them in Silicon Valley, which have deeper pockets and are unencumbered by a capital-intensive legacy business focused on making gasoline-powered vehicles.

In Detroit, the leadership at General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. have outlined bold moves in recent years to transform their operations, including the creation of new supply chains for batteries and the hiring of new kinds of talent. Ford this year took the unusual step of splitting its gas-engine and EV operations into two separate divisions, a move that executives have said will help it be more agile in its shift to new technologies.

Meanwhile, investors are aggressively betting on the EV space, trying to figure out who will be the next Tesla.

Mr. Diess has defined the industry's challenge as shifting from banging metal into cars into developing the skills, resources and vision to create software-defined cars, vehicles that in many ways have more in common with an iPhone than a conventional car.

His attempt to catch up with Tesla was hampered by difficulties turning VW into a developer of software, which is the heart of modern electric vehicles and future self-driving cars.

In recent weeks, people familiar with the company said it had rebooted its plan to develop a unified operating system for its cars after trouble delivering the code led VW's Audi and Porsche brands to postpone the launch of new premium electric models.

It couldn't be determined whether Mr. Blume would continue to pursue Mr. Diess's strategy of keeping core software development in-house or whether he would turn to Alphabet Inc.'s Google or Apple Inc. as some rivals have.

In March, Mr. Blume said he and his management team met senior Apple executives for a meeting at which they discussed a range of potential projects. Mr. Blume disclosed no further details.

Ferdinand Dudenhoffer, director of Center for Automotive Research in Duisburg, Germany, said it was to be expected that Mr. Blume would present a new software strategy for the company.

"This big issue of the software-defined car is a huge challenge for conventional auto makers," Mr. Dudenhoffer said. "Either auto makers will become tech companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft, or they will become dependent on the tech giants."

Mr. Diess survived several challenges to his position. In December, following a clash with labor representatives, directors stripped him of some of his responsibilities and reshuffled his management team. But this week's move to push him out came suddenly and wasn't linked to any single incident, people familiar with the decision said.

The families and union leaders agreed to remove Mr. Diess in the belief that Mr. Blume, 54 years old, who became CEO of Porsche in 2015, would lead with more consensus among management and VW stakeholders, people familiar with the decision said. Mr. Blume, an engineer by training, has long been a favorite of the Porsche-Piech families and union leaders as a successor to Mr. Diess. But Mr. Blume has repeatedly said he was happy at Porsche.

While union leaders have acknowledged Mr. Diess's strategic vision and his achievement in transforming VW's culture for the EV age, they have questioned his ability to execute, as highlighted by the software problems. [1]

All firms and government shops have to make and didn't make the same transition that Mr. Diess didn't make. We definitelly will lose in competition like Finnish Nokia lost to American Apple. Will anybody in Lithuania  be losing their job in September? Impossible. We just will change the position of the orchestra in this going down to the fishes ship of Lithuania. Too bad for the nation. 

1.  VW CEO Diess to Step Down After Clash With Labor Unions
Boston, William; Kantchev, Georgi. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 23 July 2022: A.1.

German minister rejects idea of ​​compulsory military service

   "Despite the fact that Russia's military operation in Ukraine has been going on for almost 6 months, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock rejects the possibility that her country could return to compulsory military service. She stated this on Friday during a question-and-answer session in Munich, informs the news agency dpa. The minister believes that compulsory military service would not make sense from a security perspective, especially when so many young and old people want to serve in the army themselves, and said that there is currently insufficient funding and training programs to ensure that all those who want to serve in the German military can do so properly.

    The minister commented on the issue of compulsory military service during a meeting with people in Munich. Recently, A. Baerbock visited various German cities to find out public opinion on security issues. The round of meetings with people came as the German Foreign Ministry prepares the government's first comprehensive national security strategy."

 

 

 

Vokietijos ministrė atmeta privalomos karinės tarnybos idėją

"Nepaisant to, kad Rusijos karinė operacija Ukrainoje tęsiasi jau beveik 6 mėnesius, Vokietijos užsienio reikalų ministrė Annalena Baerbock atmeta galimybę, kad jos šalis galėtų grįžti prie privalomos karinės tarnybos. Tai ji pareiškė penktadienį per klausimų ir atsakymų sesiją Miunchene, informuoja naujienų agentūra dpa. Ministrė mano, kad saugumo požiūriu privaloma karinė tarnyba neturėtų prasmės, ypač kai itin daug jaunų ir vyresnių žmonių patys nori tarnauti kariuomenėje. Ji taip pat sakė, kad šiuo metu neužtektų finansavimo ir karių rengimo programų tam, kad visi, norintys tarnauti Vokietijos kariuomenėje, galėtų tai tinkamai padaryti. 

Privalomos karinės tarnybos klausimą ministrė komentavo susitikimo su žmonėmis metu Miunchene. Pastaruoju metu A. Baerbock lankėsi įvairiuose Vokietijos miestuose, kad sužinotų visuomenės nuomonę saugumo klausimais. Susitikimų su žmonėmis turas vyko tuo metu, kai Vokietijos užsienio ministerija vyriausybei rengia pirmąją išsamią nacionalinio saugumo strategiją."