New trends and Free Courses – Here are the Important Data Science News’

Data science professionals and students, make note of this.

Behind every successful company, data science is a silent hero. In this digital world, we are producing several TBs of data that consists of valuable information for organizations. Data science is a disruptive technology that extracts gold out of the flood of information. This makes data science critical for businesses around the world. Data professionals carefully observe the industry and look for trends and innovations that will affect their work, whereas young individuals who aspire to make a mark in the tech industry choose data science as a profession and look for the right opportunities to strike.

So, What Latest in the Data Science World? Here’s a list of the Top News Stories.

1. SoftBank is Ready to train Miami Residents for Data ScienceJjobs

SoftBank Group International, a Miami-based office of the global venture giant, announced that they are sponsoring about a thousand Miami-Dade residents in a data science training course. Along with Miami-Dade County, the Miami-Dade Beacon Council economic development organization, the city of Miami, and other partners, SoftBank aims to develop the necessary skills and advance the careers of young adults from Black, Latino, female, and LGBTQ+ communities. It’s a 13-week Data Science for All online program that will upskill the lives of underrepresented backgrounds.

2. Experts Reveal Three New Data Science Trends

Synechron, a leading digital transformation consulting firm launched an annual report, Top Strategic Technology Trends. The report noted data science as one of its eight major trends for 2021, and the company’s experts put our three critical trends. The first trend talks about the business applications of self-supervised models, where AI teaches itself to solve problems without human classification of data. The second trend refers to the increased adoption of the Natural Language Generation that uses AI to create several hand-produced documents that are needed every day. The third and final trend is concerned with technologies like ML, Optical Character Recognition, and NLP that will increase efficiency, reduce costs, and detect financial crimes during KYC.

3. Indian EdTech AlmaBetter has Announced a Training Session for Data Science Aspirants

AlmaBetter, which focuses on community and cohort-based data science learning has set aside a budget of INR 2 crore to train 25,000 data scientists by March 2022. Some percentage of the funds will also provide scholarships based on merit, financial aid, and necessary devices like laptops and internet connection to these students. Through this thoughtful initiative, AlmaBetter aims to close the skill gap in the data science industry.

4. Rasgo Intelligence Raises Funds to be the GitHub of Data Science

Rasgo Intelligence helps data scientists to easily use raw data and build models on its platform. To eliminate the factor of excessive time consumption while processing data, the company uses a community-based, repository approach like GitHub. Developers can explore, clean, and transform data using a pre-set blocks and functions library. To leverage this, Rasgo Intelligence raised a total of US$25 million, after generating global enterprise customers across 5 industries and 70,000 open-source downloads.

5. Another Indian EdTech, SkillEnable, is Gearing up to Help Aspiring Data Scientists

A lot of organizations and startups have realized the skill gap in the data science industry, and SkillEnable has decided to aid the situation. This employability-based edtech company is using a unique fee payment structure to ensure students pursue this field without worrying about the financial burden. SkillEnable is using an Income Sharing Agreement to provide a solution for huge upfront fee concerns. After the online course is completed, the fee is charged as a percentage of the salary, once the student gets placed and starts to earn income.

6. Analytics Insight has made a List of the Best Free Online Data Science Courses

Offered by reputed universities like Harvard, UC San Diego, MIT, and Georgia Tech, these online data science courses are for professionals and students who have finished beginner-level courses. They’re free of cost and cover critical topics like big data analytics using Spark, statistical modeling and computation in applications, and machine learning with Python, to name a few. Read the full list here.

7. The Top IITs are Offering Data Science Degrees

India’s eminent tech institutions, IITs, are now offering several PG and UG courses in data science. To help budding data scientists get recruited by top companies around the world with lucrative salary packages, IITs are offering courses that range from B.Sc degree in programming and data science, M.Tech in data science, M.Tech in AI, and data science, and BS-MS in data science, amongst many others. Read the full article here to know the details.

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Know all about US India Artificial Intelligence Initiative (USIAI). United States India Artificial Intelligence, USIAI initiative has been launched to enhance the technological relationships between the two countries.

US India Artificial Intelligence Initiative: Why in News?

United States India Artificial Intelligence, USIAI initiative has been launched to enhance the technological relationships between the two countries.  DST secretary Ashutosh Sharma in the curtain raiser of the event talked about the importance of scaling up the S&T relationship between India and the United States. This would also be helpful in solving problems of both countries and overcoming barriers for growth, he said. 

Sharma also added, “research, technology in artificial intelligence is being promoted and implemented in the country through a network of 25 technology hubs working as a triple helix set up under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS)”. 

US India Artificial Intelligence Initiative: Details

It is an initiative of Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and it was established in March 2000. 

The Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India, and the U.S. Department of State are respective nodal departments for IUSSTF.

USIAI would focus on AI cooperation in critical areas that are priorities for both US and India. 

US India Artificial Intelligence Initiative: Significance

1. The cooperation will provide an opportunity to discuss the emerging AI landscape, and address the challenges of developing an AI workforce.
2. As per the official statement,” USIAI will serve as a platform to discuss opportunities, challenges, and barriers for bilateral AI research and development collaboration, enable AI innovation, help share ideas for developing an AI workforce, and recommend modes and mechanisms for catalysing partnerships”
3. USIAI would aid AI cooperation in critical areas like healthcare, smart cities, materials, agriculture, energy, and manufacturing which are useful for both the countries. 

India is already prepared:

1. India has recently launched National AI strategy through NITI Ayog and National AI Portal (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology). 
2. It has also spread AI in various sectors like education, healthcare, agriculture and commerce etc. 
3. Also MyGov Corona Helpdesk Chatbot was the winner at CogX 2020 under two categories: Best Innovation for Covid-19 – Society and People’s Choice Covid-19 Overall Winner.
4. India is also a member of Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI).
5. India reported a 45% increase in the use of Artificial Intelligence, the highest among all countries
6. Responsible AI for Social Empowerment 2020 (RAISE 2020) was jointly organised by the NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)

Artificial Intelligence:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. AI can also be used  for any machine that demonstrates traits associated with a human mind such as learning and problem-solving. Artificial intelligence has an ability to rationalize and take actions that can achieve a specific goal. AI includes technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, big data, neural networks, self algorithms etc.

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Smart Agriculture Conference (SAC 2020), hosed by XAG, co-organised by Chinese National Precision Agricultural Aviation Centre and partnered with Alipay, was held in Beijing on December 19. The conference featured XAG’s new product launch as well as a Smart Agriculture Report published by global strategy consultancy CLEAR. 400 global audiences, including agricultural experts, government officials, foreign diplomats and agri-business, had convened to share views on developing innovative human-centred strategy for a smart agriculture ecosystem.

Vincent Martin, FAO Representative China, argued that we must introduce technology to overhaul the traditional resource-intensive food system, to better resolve the pain points of sustainable agriculture development. “The transformation of agricultural production, rural economy and natural resource management requires the support of business innovation.”

Foreseeing the Future of Agriculture 4.0

Justin Gong, Co-founder and Vice President of XAG, kicked off the conference by carefully elaborating the Smart Agriculture POV Report 2020. This report for the first time clarifies the definitions regarding digital agriculture, precision agriculture and smart agriculture.

• Digital agriculture is the technology that digitalises the planning, process and result of agricultural production, such as big data, AI, cloud computing and blockchain.
• Precision agriculture is the agricultural technology that harnesses information technology to achieve precision management, such as drone, robot and intelligent irrigation.
• Smart agriculture is the all-new agricultural production mode and ecosystem based on digital agriculture and precision agriculture. It creates new production scenarios to cope with population explosion, climate change and food crisis.
• Heralding the advent of agriculture 4.0, the report

also identifies the biggest emerging opportunities and delivers strategies along the Smart Agriculture Roadmap. The objective is to sustainably feed the populated world with high-quality, nutritious food.

• There are five important emerging trends set to radically reshape the future of agriculture, including 5G revolution, robotic labour, technology cross-border, disintermediated supply chain and increasing demand for transparency.
• Digitalisation along with blockchain technology will be deployed to enhance the visibility, transparency and traceability of the supply chain.
• Information technology, artificial intelligence and biotechnology are three fundamental variables that enormously affect agriculture 4.0.
• To unleash the potential of smart agriculture, manufactures need to evolve beyond a purely ‘engineering mindset’ and take a human-centred approach.
• Smart agriculture propositions leverage mobile communication and deploy data analytics to help smallholders secure and management finance with ease.

XAG is one of the key participants to fulfil the vision of smart agriculture. Following the Smart Agriculture Roadmap, XAG has actively united data & information, tech-empowered tools and precision management approach as one integrated solution to optimise workforce and solve farmers’ needs.

More Than Drone, Towards A Smart Agriculture Ecosystem

To establish an integrated smart agricultural system, XAG has released R80 Agricultural Utility Vehicle (XAUV™), AutoPilot Console (XAPC™) and Smart Agriculture System (XSAS™) at SAC 2020. This complements XAG’s existing drone-based solutions and automates every production process from planting, seeding, management to harvest.

XAUV™ R80 is an autonomous, multifunctional farm robot which allows third-party payloads and adapts to both plain fields and sloped terrains. While inheriting XAG’s technical advantages in centimetre-level RTK navigation and variable-rate application, XAUV™ R80 can support 80L payload capacity and embark different agricultural devices, such as JetSprayer™ and XIoT™, for orchard spraying, open field weeding, crop monitoring and farm transportation.

As an automated steering system, XAPC™ is designed to improve operation precision and performance of medium-to-large agricultural equipment, such as tractors and harvesters. Simply connected to smartphone or tablet and primed by easy tabs, XAPC™ provides access to RTK high-accuracy navigation network which helps avoid skips, overlaps and crop damage.

XAG Smart Agriculture System provides smallholders and farm owners with meticulous production management solutions from seeding, fertilisation, crop protection to harvest. With simple interface and rich toolkit, XSAS™ integrates precision farming devices, agricultural IoT and AI to build scientific crop model, digitalise farming logs and achieve in-season crop growth objectives. According to Pengbin, CEO and Founder of XAG, China’s Jiangsu Dazhong Farm has introduced XAG P Series Plant Protection UAS, XMission Multifunctional UAS and XSAS™ to improve management efficiency and production quality on its 5,000 hectares of rice and wheat.

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