In a new partnership, Zindi will use Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure to power their platform.
Social enterprise Zindi is on a mission to build the data science ecosystem of Africa. Building Africa’s first data science competition platform in the process. Microsoft is partnering with Zindi. Offering to power Zindi’s data science competition platform on their Azure cloud.
As part of the partnership Microsoft is sponsoring two Agritech competitions. Wazhihub soil humidity prediction challenge using sensor data from IoT and FarmPin a crop detection challenge using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.
Currently it hosts an entire data science ecosystem of scientists, engineers, academics, companies, NGOs, governments and institutions focused on solving Africa’s most pressing problems.
Help rural farmers in Africa predict soil humidity using sensor data from IoT.
Wazihub and Microsoft are partnering with Zindi Africa to create the Wazihub Soil Moisture Prediction Challenge competition. The competition seeks to create a machine learning model capable of predicting soil humidity. Using past data from the soil and getting results in a very short time.
Find out more about the Wazihub challenge
In the face of climate change, the agricultural sector in Africa needs to adapt its practices. Being able to accurately measure and predict soil humidity in their fields will allow farmers to prepare their irrigation schedules optimally and efficiently.
Sensor-based irrigation and machine learning algorithms can provide farmers with a solution to manage water usage more efficiently. However, current machine learning algorithms built on sensor data require a lot of data for proper training. Stable sensor data is difficult to obtain in rural Africa where many problems arise such as accessibility, limited battery power, lack of internet, humidity/heat problem.
The objective of this Zindi competition is to create a machine learning model. Capable of predicting the humidity for a particular plot in the next few days, using data from the past. A part of the challenge is to design algorithms that are resilient and can be trained with incomplete data. (E.g. missing data points) and unclean data (e.g. lot of outliers).
This resulting model will enable farmers to anticipate water needs and prepare their irrigation schedules. This competition is sponsored by Wazihub[webpage] and Microsoft.
Microsoft used its latest mixed reality capture technology to create an on stage human sized hologram. Well this isn’t new. What is new this time around is that the hologram from the demo below was speaking Japanese. A language Microsoft CVP, Azure Marketing doesn’t speak.
Using mixed reality and Azure AI services Microsoft was able to translate her speech into Japanese, training the hologram to speak and sound like her. This Microsoft says is “The magic of AI neural TTS and holograms”.
Watch Microsoft Demo AI technology and holographic experience on stage at Microsoft Inspire
Julia shares that to do this Microsoft used;
Mixed reality technology to create and render hologram
Azure speech-to-text capability in English transcription to get her speech
Azure translate to get her English speech into Japanese and then applied
Neural text-to-speech technology to make the Japanese sound like her.
What do you think about this ai technology? Getting ideas on other areas this can be used? Microsoft says the tech is here. Share your thoughts.
Four years ago, on the 29th of July 2015, Microsoft globally launched Windows 10. The latest version of its operating system(OS) for users of Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and Window 8 Mobile. Introducing a much more user friendly OS with innovations, features and security capabilities. Satya Nadella who had been named new Microsoft CEO in February 2014 opted for an unusual mode of announcement. Deciding to join in the Windows 10 launch fans celebrations in Kenya.
Satya citied Microsoft’s core mission as well as wanting to go meet Microsoft’s global user base as reason for the decision. Read the full interview here.
“I’m here in Kenya and in Nairobi to listen and learn. The core mission of Microsoft is to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more. I felt that in order to realize that mission with the Windows 10 launch we wanted to celebrate with our fans all over the world instead of going to a media-rich country. We wanted to go out there where our fans are because we are a truly global product and we have usage everywhere.”
Watch Satya Nadella talk about why he was in Kenya
Satya Helps students upgrade PCs to Windows 10
Windows 10 Launch Party
https://youtu.be/sciCLq4IReI
Satya Nadella Joins Window 10 fans celebrations in Nairobi
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