IBM and XPRIZE, a non-profit organisation focused on designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve real world problems, launched IBM Watson AI XPRIZE in 2016. The competition aims to accelerate the adoption of AI technologies to solve societal challenges.  

“The IBM Watson AI XPRIZE is more than a competition– it is a future-thinking initiative aimed at establishing a more balanced dialogue around AI– in particular about how humans and machines can collaborate towards a better future,” said Amir Banifatemi, General Manager of Innovation and Growth at XPRIZE. 

Earlier this week, the winners of the competition for 2021 were announced. Let’s take a look at the top three winners of the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE: 

Zzapp Malaria 

Zzapp Malaria won the grand prize, taking home $3 million and the People’s Choice Award for the ‘Most Inspiring Team’. 

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Zzapp Malaria is on a mission to eliminate malaria, which kills over four lakh people every year. Co-founded by Arnon Houri-Yafin and Ari Eichler in 2016, Zzapp Malaria’s software solves operational challenges of targeting stagnant water bodies for mosquito control. 

Its AI algorithm analyses satellite images and topographical maps to identify malaria transmission hotspots, that is, areas where human populations and water bodies coincide. In addition, Zzapp Malaria uses a weather analysis algorithm to optimise the timing of interventions. The algorithm is exclusively developed by the IBM Data Science and AI Elite team for this purpose.

The AI strategies are then communicated to field workers using a map-based mobile application. The app further guides field workers to identify, report and treat water bodies. Finally, the data collected by field workers are fed back into the system to improve the algorithms and recommendations. 

At present, Zzap Malaria is running antimalarial in Ghana, Zanzibar and Tanzania. The startup has tied up with local partners, including municipalities, foundations, gold mines, and NGOs, to curb the mosquito menace. According to media reports, the co-founders soon plan to expand operations to Kenya, India and Mozambique. 

Before starting Zzapp Malaria, Co-founder and CEO Arnon was a key member of the team that developed Parasight, a machine vision-based malaria diagnostics device sold in more than 20 countries. 

Aifred Health 

Based out of Montreal, Aifred Health uses machine learning to treat depression. The company was founded in 2017 by Robert Fratila and Sonia Israel. 

Aifred Health’s clinical decision support tool is accessible on all devices, supporting telehealth and in-person appointments. The algorithm processes the patient’s behavioural health information. The output helps the physician understand where the patient stands on the disease cycle, monitor them over time and determine the way forward. Its solution uses AI to learn from a pool of patients to offer treatment and reduce the time taken for a patient to reach remission. Aifred Health uses IBM Watson Health to get access to millions of records of observational depression data and improve the model.

Once approved by FDA and Health Canada, Aifred Health plans to combine the clinical decision support tool with AI model for treatment selection, to create an end-to-end solution for the treatment of depression.

Aifred Health won the second prize of $1 million. 

Marinus Analytics 

Headquartered in Pittsburgh, United States, Marinus Analytics was founded in 2014 by Cara Jones and Emily Kennedy. The company uses AI and machine learning to deploy SaaS applications in the law enforcement and public sector. The company’s mission is to protect the vulnerable and end systemic exploitation.

Marinus Analytics’ services extract actionable insights from big data for detectives, social workers and cyber fraud investigators. Its flagship product Traffic Jam aims to prevent human trafficking, recover victims, and dismantle organised criminal networks. The firm uses tools including IBM Watson Discovery and IBM Watson Assistant. 

Marinus Analytics does not engage in the widespread use of facial recognition. It is one of the three organisations allowed to continue using Rekognition tools, to aid in the rescue of sex trafficking victims. 

The AI company is backed by the United States National Science Foundation and Bank of New York Mellon. Marinus Analytics won the third prize of $500k. 

The competition received 150 entries from across the globe. The teams were evaluated on the basis of four parameters– technical impact, real-world impact, scalability of real-world implications, ethics and safety. 

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There is a growing need for statisticians and data analysts nationwide, as computational advancements have afforded researchers the ability to generate and analyze mass quantities of data. To meet the demand, employment opportunities for statisticians are expected to grow by 33 percent within the decade.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Center for Predictive Analytics is leading a statewide fellowship program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture through its Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates program.

Under the direction of C-PAN Director Carolyn Butts-Wilmsmeyer, the project, Preparing Undergraduates for New Frontiers in Data Analysis: Experiential Learning in Applied Statistics (ELIAS) Fellows, is concurrently training undergraduate students in real-world data analysis and hands-on research in a greenhouse, laboratory or field setting.

Institutional collaborators include the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois State University, Northeastern Illinois University and Parkland Community College. 

“The overall goal of the ELIAS fellowship program is to produce students who can meet the need for an increasingly data-driven workforce, particularly in the life sciences,” Butts-Wilmsmeyer explained. “Upon graduation, students in statistics and data science are placed in multidisciplinary teams consisting of chemists, biologists and business personnel.

“However, current training in data science and statistics often does not occur in laboratory, greenhouse, field or other applied research settings, making it difficult for graduates to understand the limitations in these research environments and to communicate findings across disciplinary bounds. Through this program, students are placed in a two-year, dually immersive research experience in applied statistics/data science and a laboratory, greenhouse or field research environment, based on the students’ interests.”

Fellow Sam Garcia, an environmental science major at NEIU, is in her second year of the program.

“I have been passionate about environmental science since I learned about climate change in elementary school,” she said. “I particularly became interested in data-driven research because quantifying and analyzing data brings order and significance to the information that can be found through science.”

Under the mentorship of Geddes, and in collaboration with Urban Rivers, Garcia is analyzing the effects of artificial floating wetlands on macroinvertebrate communities in the Chicago River.

“The ELIAS program has provided me the opportunity to carry out my own independent research project, which is preparing me for graduate school,” Garcia said. “After graduate school, I plan to pursue a research career in the marine or atmospheric science field at NOAA, NASA or a similar organization. My long-term intentions are to use science as a tool to incite change that will help preserve the environment.”

Butts-Wilmsmeyer notes the USDA’s recognition of the need for programs that support the recruitment and training of traditionally underrepresented groups in the food and agricultural sciences. As such, the ELIAS Fellows’ recruitment efforts emphasize women and minorities, as well as transfer students from community colleges.

“While the fellowship program is open to all students in the agricultural and life sciences, and all fellows will be provided with unfailing support, we recognize that there may be some hurdles which female students, transfer students and underrepresented minorities may face at a higher frequency than their classmates,” Butts-Wilmsmeyer explained. “Our mentor team actively works with all of our fellows to identify ways to overcome any hurdles they may face during the completion of their degree and progression toward their desired careers.”

Participating students receive full funding for their research, as well as a $7,250 stipend each year of the fellowship. They will present their findings at UIUC Agronomy Day, symposia at their respective institutions and at a scientific conference of their choosing.

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6.5 trillion: That’s the astonishing number of online threats that staff at Microsoft’s Cyber Defence Operations Centre see each day.

And quite a portion of those attacks are aimed at the company itself. The highest number of attempted intrusions into Microsoft’s network of products and services ever detected in one 24-hour period was 1.5 billion.

Keeping these so-called “bad actors” at bay is the overall responsibility of Ann Johnson. She is the company’s Corporate Vice-President, in charge of the Cybersecurity Solutions Group.

“It is obviously complex, and that’s coming in at a global scale,” she told RTÉ News during a visit to Dublin this week.

“So we use a lot of machine learning technology, we use a lot of artificial intelligence and automation. We want to parse the threats. We want to see what is real. Separate the signal from the noise.

“The other thing is we want to automate the response as much as we can. Because at the end of the day, 6.5 trillion and 1.5 billion is not something any amount of humans can consume, right?

“So the landscape is increasingly complex, the attacks are coming from around the world. But we feel like we have some pretty good system defences in place, based on the intelligence we see.”

And “around the world” means, literally from everywhere. From cyber-criminals, from nation states, from random hackers working by themselves, in every part of the globe.

Their targets are diverse, from Microsoft’s business applications, through to its Azure cloud services and its Office 365 suite of apps.

But because Microsoft’s business is now hugely focused on cloud-based products, it means the challenge and method of defending each area is more or less the same, Ms Johnson said.

Cyber security and the threat posed by nation states have been very much in the mainstream news lately because of the focus on Huawei and the US government’s stated concerns that the telecoms firm’s equipment could be used by the Chinese government as a back door for spying and cyber-attacks.

These concerns recently led the Trump administration to ban US companies from selling products and services to the Chinese manufacturer.

Google has already signalled it will limit Huawei’s access to its Android mobile operating system, while Facebook has suspended pre-installing its apps on Huawei devices.

Microsoft, though, has said little publicly about how it intends to handle the situation, despite also being a significant supplier to Huawei.

“Microsoft will comply with anything that the United States government requires us to comply with obviously because we are a United States company,” Ms Johnson said.

And what about the alleged threats posed by China?

“I think that there are a wide variety of actors globally that we need to continually be vigilant about,” she said diplomatically.

That vigilance has to take many different forms, as the threat posed by hackers evolves by the second. But sometimes the security response doesn’t change quite so fast.

Take, for example, passwords, which have been the main means of authenticating identity for decades now, but which can be highly insecure.

“We are on a mission to be passwordless and we think our customers should be on a mission to be passwordless and we think consumers should be on a mission to be passwordless.”

“At the end of the day research still shows that … 76% of breaches start with some type of stolen credential. So the more we can get passwords out of the ecosystem the higher the cost to the attackers, they actually have to come up with new methods, and obviously the more secure our infrastructure is going to be and the more secure our customers are going to be,” said Ms Johnson.

Passwords will, she predicted, give way increasingly to biometrics, which are more frictionless, offer ease of use and a variety of alternative form factors, including even ear profiles.

And the Microsoft cyber general said we shouldn’t be concerned about the risk of biometric data being stolen and misused in the same way passwords have been, as long as it is secured using best practice techniques used to protect other forms of data from theft.

“There is nothing particularly unique about biometric data than any other IP data in your organisations,” said Ms Johnson, who comes from New York but now lives in Seattle.

“You encrypt the data, you hash the data, you secure access to the data, you make sure access to the network it is on is secure. It is not unique in any way. But you do need to treat it as high-value data.”

Another high risk when it comes to cyber-threats are people themselves, something Microsoft is all too well aware of.

Earlier this year, the company admitted its Outlook.com service had been breached by a hacker, allowing unauthorised access to some accounts, after a support agent’s credentials were compromised.

According to Ms Johnson, we need to become less dependent on the human firewall by instead building technologies that protect people as much as the data.

“They are going to click on the link, so let’s build technologies behind clicking on the link that keeps them secure,” she explained.

“Let’s build technologies that allow them to get rid of their passwords. Let’s make sure we educate the humans as much as possible, but also put in the controls behind them so we are not solely dependent on them.”

One of the most difficult dangers to solve right now though is a less obvious one to industry outsiders.

A talent shortage is currently gripping the cyber-security world, with 1.5 million openings at present, 2,500 of which are in Ireland.

By 2022, it is estimated that global industry talent shortfall will have risen to a staggering three million people.

“It is something that the entire industry needs to get oriented around with regard to how we recruit and how we retain … and how we train them,” she said.

But how does the gap get filled, and quickly?

“I think there’s a few different things,” Ms Johnson outlined.

“To start with we need to solve the diversity problem. Cybersecurity is still 10-15% female so that is easy math …The second thing though is that educational background, we have to stop being so dug in that there must be a STEM degree or they must have a certain background.

“The thing about machine learning and the thing about artificial intelligence is that you want different perspectives to train those engines anyway. So there is a huge benefit.

“The other thing is that we need to think about non-traditional channels. We do a lot of work, for example, with the US military, transitioning military members.

“You kind of have to pull all those levers.”

Ms Johnson believes some of the gap, but not all, can be filled by evolving technology, including artificial intelligence.

“I’m not a big believer in a silver bullet or a single solution,” she said.

“I think AI can go a long way towards helping solve the problem. But it is still pretty nascent … we are still discovering what those use cases are.”

Public concerns about cyber-security don’t, however, seem to be putting people off using the cloud for services and data storage.

Here, 85% of people already interact digitally with public sector cloud-based services, such as MyGovID, Motortax.ie and MyWelfare.ie, according to a recent Microsoft survey.

A similar number have heard of the cloud.

But trust isn’t as high, with 40% concerned about the safety of their personal data held by public cloud-based services.

Ms Johnson says that situation is changing rapidly though.

“When I started in Microsoft three-and-a-half years ago, I was still getting questions, ‘oh, is the cloud secure?’,” she said.

“Just the opposite (now). I’ve customers coming to me today saying, ‘look, I want to go to the cloud because I believe you can keep me more secure. You have the people, you have the tools. You have the global intelligence, you have the learnings. You can actually keep my infrastructure more secure than I can keep it myself’.”

That’s a big responsibility for any person or corporation to carry. But Ms Johnson said it isn’t necessarily the biggest risk Microsoft has to deal with, with the global economy and physical risks also looming in the background too.

“I never want to be an alarmist. I think we are doing an okay job,” she said.

“For everything you see on the news we have prevented 100 things. So I want people to know we are actually doing an okay job in the world of cyber-security today.”

“One thing we are seeing an increase in is the sophistication of cyber-crime gangs. So not nation states, but actually cyber-crime attacks.”

“They are increasing globally and they are pretty sophisticated and they are widespread. So there will always be a different kind of attack or a new actor coming in that we need to be thinking about and we need to be predictive about and build the right defences in advance,” added Ms Johnson.

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