LUCA Artificial Intelligence of Things, how things plan to make our lives simpler Just as in the Grimm Brothers fairy tale where two little elves teamed up to help the cobbler have a better life, Artificial Intelligence and IoT, Big Data technologies...
Patrick Buckley The Hologram Concert – How AI is helping to keep music alive When Whitney Houston passed away in 2012, the world was shocked by the sudden and tragic news of her death. Fans gathered around the Beverly Hills hotel in Los...
Richard Benjamins. Artificial Intelligence for warfare or for maintaining peace On July 3, 2019, I attended an event organized by the Spanish Center for National Defense Studies (CESEDEN) and the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) on the impact of AI...
Olivia Brookhouse The Big Data and IoT applications fighting coronavirus The coronavirus pandemic has truly turned our lives upside down, changing how we work, study and interact in every way. The global health crisis has tested every government’s ability...
LUCA Deep Learning and satellite images to estimate the impact of COVID19 Motivated by the fact that the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused worldwide turmoil in a short period of time since December 2019, we estimate the negative impact of...
LUCA Success Story: LUCA Transit and Highways England The transport industry is very receptive to the application of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence strategies, as there are clear use cases that can maximize a companies’ efficiency and...
LUCA Movistar Team: the best cyclists, the best behind the scenes team, the best strategy and Big Data By Mikel Zabala, PhD (Sport Scientist, Lecturer at Granada University and member of the team of trainers for the Movistar Team), Javier Carro (Data Scientest en LUCA), y Pedro...
LUCA Success Story: LUCA Transit and Highways England The transport industry is very receptive to the application of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence strategies, as there are clear use cases that can maximize a companies’ efficiency and...
The Big Data hiding behind HalloweenOlivia Brookhouse 31 October, 2019 Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are shaping the future of business with data insights, personalised content and improved user experiences and Halloween, one of the biggest consumer holidays, is no exception. The data is not only being used to inform companies on consumer habits and trends but to help generate costume ideas, design candy routes and most importantly, scare. Halloween spending in the US peaked last year at an incredible $9 billion, with an average spend per person of around $86.79 on costumes, masks, candy, decorations and food. 30% of this spending starts in September, 40% within the first two weeks of October and the rest in the final run up to the 31st. People spend the most money on costumes, but not just for themselves, for their pets too… Source The 5 most popular costumes amongst adults last year were, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, Pirates and, Avengers. Amongst children the costumes of choice were Princesses, Superheroes, Batman, Starwars characters and Witches. Finally, owners dressed their pets as Pumpkins, Hot Dogs, Bumble Bees, Devils and Cats. One of the biggest dilemmas every halloween is what to wear and how to be original in a sea of witches and ghosts. Well AI and Big Data can stop your anxiety about what to wear with costume generators. What should I wear? Janelle Shane, a research scientist and soon to be author shared how she used a bot to generate costume ideas. She built a unique neural network which can produce costume ideas, many of which had never been worn before. She fed the system 4,500 costume names and whilst it produced some crazy results at first, it soon learnt that a sexy lamp might not be all too sexy. Some of the most innovative ideas included a the following… Original source Machines that scare Whilst personalised advertising finds the best way to capture our attention and compel us to buy a product, at Halloween the aim is to scare. A team of MIT media lab scientists designed a “hot or not” nightmare machine to create zombified versions of photographs. Each time someone rates a picture, the information helps the algorithm learn which factors in these images induce fear. The system slowly improves to ensure 100% scare rate. The extra information in how humans perceive horror can be exploited to make even scarier faces Pinar Yanardag, a postdoc at the MIT Media Lab. A design agency is using AI to design scary Halloween masks. Using a general adversarial network (an algorithm implemented in machine learning systems) two systems work together, constantly improving to create the mask. Whilst one half generates Halloween masks, the other half judges how well it has performed. It continues until it produces the desired result. The Neural network was supplied with 5,000 images of Halloween mask examples on which it based its terrifying creations. Whilst each mask is based off the data it has been supplied, each result is unique. What if the system learnt to produce what each of us found the most terrifying. Do we need AI to make Halloween scarier or, is part of the fun being creative? Trick or Treating with Data So now we have our scary masks and unique outfits, how can Big Data perfect trick of treating. Abdul Rehman, a Data Scientist was asked by his 12-year-old son how he could get more candy than the previous year. As a Data Scientist he was keen to optimize his son’s route to ensure maximum time and sweet efficiency. From the 117 houses he visited, he collected his own data which he later complemented with public data. He was able to create a database with information on: Demographic of house members; name, age and political affiliationGender of children in houseRent and socioeconomic status There was a strong correlation between age and generosity: Wife aged 41 – 50 and Husband aged 51 – 60 = 100% candy rate.Wife > 51 = 25% candy rate.Either couple > 71 = Very low candy rateParents with young children = High candy rate. (On average they spend $10-30 more on sweets than those without children) Abdul Rehman There was no strong correlation between rent or birth location and their generosity, proving that purse strings do not govern the holiday spirit. Newcomers to the area were very generous so make sure you visit them to get the most sweets. The data also provided insight into the type of sweets given away by each household. The houses with girls were likely to give away Hershey, Twix and Dove whereas houses with boys offered KitKats, Snickers and M&M’s. From the information he was able to design a route which favoured the sweets that his son like, avoiding those which he doesn’t. Abdul Rehman To stay up to date with LUCA, visit our Webpage, contact us and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn o YouTube. The highlights of LUCA Innovation Day 2019. What did you miss?Big Data, the fuel for Digital Banks
Patrick Buckley The Hologram Concert – How AI is helping to keep music alive When Whitney Houston passed away in 2012, the world was shocked by the sudden and tragic news of her death. Fans gathered around the Beverly Hills hotel in Los...
Patrick Buckley Robot Waiters – The future or just a gimmick? As we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality industry is looking to technology as a way to keep workers safe. Could robot waiters be the answer? In...
Patrick Buckley How will AI change the labour market for the better? From the way we shop, to the way we learn, the digital world in which we live is unrecognisable from the reality of a decade ago. One area which...
Patrick Buckley How AI is helping fashion retailers stay afloat With an estimated current global market value surpassing 406 billion USD, the fashion industry is one of the most significant yet vulnerable industries out there. In an ever-worsening socio-economic...
LUCA La transformación digital en la gestión del agua, ahora más que nunca Hoy en día mantenemos la incertidumbre de cuándo dispondremos de una vacuna o cuál será el impacto real en la sociedad y en la economía que nos deja esta...
Patrick Buckley Thanks to AI, the future of video-conferencing is in sight. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, video-conferencing has become the backbone of both our work and social lives. Today, on #WorldHugDay, we take a look at some of the ways in which...