Latest news with #Vivatech
Kuwait Times
4 days ago
- Science
- Kuwait Times
Startups show off ocean-preserving tech at Paris trade fair
PARIS: Harnessing ocean currents to boost fuel efficiency of vessels, or tracking whales using sensor data and AI — startups at Paris trade fair Vivatech have been showing off the latest innovations aimed at protecting the environment. Recently developed AI programs capable of learning from vast datasets have boosted projects trying to understand and predict real-world phenomena, several company founders told AFP. 'We have to use AI because in the natural world there are too many variables' to deal with manually, said Emily Charry Tissier, a biologist and founder of Canadian startup Whale Seeker, which is developing technology to track sea mammals. Powered by 'neural network' systems that ape the functioning of the human brain, the learning systems behind today's AI models 'can calculate a weather forecast 1,000 times faster than a standard digital model running on a supercomputer', agreed oceanographer Alexandre Stegner. He flagged an AI model developed by his firm, Amphitrite, that he said could predict ocean currents by crunching 'several layers of satellite data corresponding to different physical variables'. It can forecast currents up to 10 days in advance, he said, offering sea captains 'a simple way to save fuel' by slightly changing course and using currents to gain a speed boost of up to four knots. That could save operators money on fuel, reduce the carbon emissions from shipping, and avoid the classic solution of telling sea captains to reduce their speed. Global protection push Technologies like these were being shown off in the halls of Vivatech as the UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) drew to a close hundreds of kilometres to the south in French Mediterranean city Nice. The conference has pushed a treaty to protect 60 percent of the world's oceans closer to becoming law, with 55 signatures — just five shy of the number required for its enactment. New technologies could be 'a very good thing' for the oceans, said Andre Abreu, International Affairs Director at the Paris-based Tara Ocean Foundation. But he warned that innovation should not be harnessed to allow more fish to be caught. 'That would mean shooting ourselves in the foot' on goals like preserving marine biodiversity, he said. That ambiguity can be seen in technology from OceanEyes, a Japanese startup using AI analysis of satellite data to predict sea conditions. The company hopes to cut the time fishing boats spend tracking down a catch. 'A big problem in Japan is the efficiency of the fishery operations. Many fishers spend a lot of time searching for fish in the water,' said boss Yusuke Tanaka. With less fuel burnt, operators will save money and greenhouse emissions can be slashed. Anticipating concerns about overfishing, OceanEyes said it also aimed to help vessels comply with recently updated Japanese regulations that oblige fishers to 'ensure sustainable use of marine resources'. 'Can' vs 'should' Whale Seeker's Tissier said technology could be used in a considered way to find sustainable solutions. 'I'd like the market to recognise its own limits—not the limits of what we can do, but what we should do,' she told AFP. That attitude pushed her to refuse to work with a company that wanted to use whale detection to identify nearby fish to catch. But startups cannot grow without funding and, in the context of oceans, investments are likely to come from big firms keen to make a saving—from fishing and ship management companies to haulage and logistics giants. This could well limit their ability to stand on principle. Stegner called for 'regulations that would push the maritime sector to reduce carbon emissions'. But Charry Tissier said the initiative could come from business. 'Technology is developing so much faster than regulation... what I'd like is for big companies to decide for themselves to be responsible,' she said. — AFP
France 24
5 days ago
- Politics
- France 24
Africa on display at Vivatech 2025
In tonight's edition: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa blames climate change for "catastrophic" floods, as the death toll climbs to 78. Also, we focus on Vivatech, a major technology event in Paris where business meets innovation. The 2025 edition brought back the AfricaTech Awards with a new set of exciting startups – we speak to one of the finalists. Plus Lake Dembel, in central Ethiopia, is being pumped dry and could disappear, threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Kuwait Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Kuwait Times
AI's arrival at work reshaping employers' hunt for talent
PARIS: Predictions of imminent AI-driven mass unemployment are likely overblown, but employers will seek workers with different skills as the technology matures, a top executive at global recruiter ManpowerGroup told AFP at Paris's Vivatech trade fair. The world's third-largest staffing firm by revenue ran a startup contest at Vivatech in which one of the contenders was building systems to hire out customisable autonomous AI 'agents', rather than humans. Their service was reminiscent of a warning last month from Dario Amodei, head of American AI giant Anthropic, that the technology could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. For ManpowerGroup, AI agents are 'certainly not going to become our core business any time soon,' the company's Chief Innovation Officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic said. 'If history shows us one thing, it's most of these forecasts are wrong.' An International Labor Organization (ILO) report published in May found that around 'one in four workers across the world are in an occupation with some degree of exposure' to generative AI models' capabilities. 'Few jobs are currently at high risk of full automation,' the ILO added. But the UN body also highlighted 'rapid expansion of AI capabilities since our previous study' in 2023, including the emergence of 'agentic' models more able to act autonomously or semi-autonomously and use software like web browsers and email. 'Soft skills' Chamorro-Premuzic predicted that the introduction of efficiency-enhancing AI tools would put pressure on workers, managers and firms to make the most of the time they will save. 'If what happens is that AI helps knowledge workers save 30, 40, maybe 50 percent of their time, but that time is then wasted on social media, that's not an increase in net output,' he said. Adoption of AI could give workers 'more time to do creative work' - or impose 'greater standardization of their roles and reduced autonomy,' the ILO said. There's general agreement that interpersonal skills and an entrepreneurial attitude will become more important for knowledge workers as their daily tasks shift towards corralling AIs. Employers identified ethical judgment, customer service, team management and strategic thinking as top skills AI could not replace in a ManpowerGroup survey of over 40,000 employers across 42 countries published this week. Nevertheless, training that adopts those new priorities has not increased in step with AI adoption, Chamorro-Premuzic lamented. 'For every dollar you invest in technology, you need to invest eight or nine on HR, culture transformation, change management,' he said. He argued that such gaps suggest companies are still chasing automation, rather than the often-stated aim of augmenting human workers' capabilities with AI. AI hiring AI? One of the areas where AI is transforming the world of work most rapidly is ManpowerGroup's core business of recruitment. But here candidates are adopting the tools just as quickly as recruiters and companies, disrupting the old way of doing things from the bottom up. 'Candidates are able to send 500 perfect applications in one day, they are able to send their bots to interview, they are even able to game elements of the assessments,' Chamorro-Premuzic said. That extreme picture was not borne out in a survey of over 1,000 job seekers released this week by recruitment platform TestGorilla, which found just 17 percent of applicants admitting to cheating on tests, and only some of those to using AI. Jobseekers' use of consumer AI tools meets recruiters doing the same. The same TestGorilla survey found almost two-thirds of the more-than-1,000 hiring decision-makers polled used AI to generate job descriptions and screen applications. But a far smaller share are already using the technology to actually interview candidates. — AFP Where employers today are focused on candidates' skills over credentials, Chamorro-Premuzic predicted that 'the next evolution is to focus on potential, not even skills even if I know the skills you bring to the table today, they might be obsolete in six months.' 'I'm better off knowing that you're hard-working, that you are curious, that you have good people skills, that you're not a jerk - and that, AI can help you evaluate,' he believes. — AFP
Qatar Tribune
6 days ago
- Business
- Qatar Tribune
AI-powered solutions emerge at Vivatech to tackle ocean challenges
Agencies Harnessing ocean currents to boost fuel efficiency of vessels, or tracking whales using sensor data and AI -- startups at Paris trade fair Vivatech have been showing off the latest innovations aimed at protecting the environment. Recently developed AI programs capable of learning from vast datasets have boosted projects trying to understand and predict real-world phenomena, several company founders told AFP. 'We have to use AI because in the natural world there are too many variables' to deal with manually, said Emily Charry Tissier, a biologist and founder of Canadian startup Whale Seeker, which is developing technology to track sea mammals. Powered by 'neural network' systems that ape the functioning of the human brain, the learning systems behind today's AI models 'can calculate a weather forecast 1,000 times faster than a standard digital model running on a supercomputer', agreed oceanographer Alexandre Stegner. He flagged an AI model developed by his firm, Amphitrite, that he said could predict ocean currents by crunching 'several layers of satellite data corresponding to different physical variables'. It can forecast currents up to 10 days in advance, he said, offering sea captains 'a simple way to save fuel' by slightly changing course and using currents to gain a speed boost of up to four knots. That could save operators money on fuel, reduce the carbon emissions from shipping, and avoid the classic solution of telling sea captains to reduce their speed. Technologies like these were being shown off in the halls of Vivatech as the U.N. Ocean Conference (UNOC) drew to a close hundreds of kilometers to the south in French Mediterranean city Nice. The conference has pushed a treaty to protect 60 percent of the world's oceans closer to becoming law, with 55 signatures -- just five shy of the number required for its enactment. New technologies could be 'a very good thing' for the oceans, said Andre Abreu, International Affairs Director at the Paris-based Tara Ocean Foundation. But he warned that innovation should not be harnessed to allow more fish to be caught. 'That would mean shooting ourselves in the foot' on goals like preserving marine biodiversity, he said. That ambiguity can be seen in technology from OceanEyes, a Japanese startup using AI analysis of satellite data to predict sea conditions. The company hopes to cut the time fishing boats spend tracking down a catch. 'A big problem in Japan is the efficiency of the fishery operations. Many fishers spend a lot of time searching for fish in the water,' said boss Yusuke Tanaka. With less fuel burnt, operators will save money and greenhouse emissions can be slashed. Anticipating concerns about overfishing, OceanEyes said it also aimed to help vessels comply with recently updated Japanese regulations that oblige fishers to 'ensure sustainable use of marine resources'. Whale Seeker's Tissier said technology could be used in a considered way to find sustainable solutions. 'I'd like the market to recognize its own limits -- not the limits of what we can do, but what we should do,' she told AFP. That attitude pushed her to refuse to work with a company that wanted to use whale detection to identify nearby fish to catch. But startups cannot grow without funding and, in the context of oceans, investments are likely to come from big firms keen to make a saving -- from fishing and ship management companies to haulage and logistics giants. This could well limit their ability to stand on principle.
Japan Today
6 days ago
- Business
- Japan Today
Anthropic looking to power European tech with hiring push
As the AI race heats up, so does the race to find talent in the sector, which is currently dominated by US and Chinese companies By Tom BARFIELD American AI giant Anthropic aims to boost the European tech ecosystem as it expands on the continent, product chief Mike Krieger told AFP at the Vivatech trade fair in Paris. The OpenAI competitor wants to be "the engine behind some of the largest startups of tomorrow... (and) many of them can and should come from Europe", Krieger said. Tech industry and political leaders have often lamented Europe's failure to capitalise on its research and education strength to build heavyweight local companies -- with many young founders instead leaving to set up shop across the Atlantic. Krieger's praise for the region's "really strong talent pipeline" chimed with an air of continental tech optimism at Vivatech. French AI startup Mistral on Wednesday announced a multibillion-dollar tie-up to bring high-powered computing resources from chip behemoth Nvidia to the region. The semiconductor firm will "increase the amount of AI computing capacity in Europe by a factor of 10" within two years, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang told an audience at the southern Paris convention centre. Among 100 planned continental hires, Anthropic is building up its technical and research strength in Europe, where it has offices in Dublin and non-EU capital London, Krieger said. Beyond the startups he hopes to boost, many long-standing European companies "have a really strong appetite for transforming themselves with AI", he added, citing luxury giant LVMH, which had a large footprint at Vivatech. Mistral -- founded only in 2023 and far smaller than American industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic -- is nevertheless "definitely in the conversation" in the industry, Krieger said. The French firm recently followed in the footsteps of the U.S. companies by releasing a so-called "reasoning" model able to take on more complex tasks. "I talk to customers all the time that are maybe using (Anthropic's AI) Claude for some of the long-horizon agentic tasks, but then they've also fine-tuned Mistral for one of their data processing tasks, and I think they can co-exist in that way," Krieger said. So-called "agentic" AI models -- including the most recent versions of Claude -- work as autonomous or semi-autonomous agents that are able to do work over longer horizons with less human supervision, including by interacting with tools like web browsers and email. Capabilities displayed by the latest releases have raised fears among some researchers, such as University of Montreal professor and "AI godfather" Yoshua Bengio, that independently acting AI could soon pose a risk to humanity. Bengio last week launched a non-profit, LawZero, to develop "safe-by-design" AI -- originally a key founding promise of OpenAI and Anthropic. "A huge part of why I joined Anthropic was because of how seriously they were taking that question" of AI safety, said Krieger, a Brazilian software engineer who co-founded Instagram, which he left in 2018. Anthropic is still working on measures designed to restrict their AI models' potential to do harm, he added. But it has yet to release details of its "level 4" AI safety protections foreseen for still more powerful models, after activating ASL (AI Safety Level) 3 to corral the capabilities of May's Claude Opus 4 release. Developing ASL 4 is "an active part of the work of the company", Krieger said, without giving a potential release date. With Claude 4 Opus, "we've deployed the mitigations kind of proactively... safe doesn't have to mean slow, but it does mean having to be thoughtful and proactive ahead of time" to make sure safety protections don't impair performance, he added. Looking to upcoming releases from Anthropic, Krieger said the company's models were on track to match chief executive Dario Amodei's prediction that Anthropic would offer customers access to a "country of geniuses in a data centre" by 2026 or 2027 -- within limits. Anthropic's latest AI models are "genius-level at some very specific things", he said. "In the coming year... it will continue to spike in particular aspects of things, and still need a lot of human-in-the-loop coordination," he forecast. © 2025 AFP
