Author: IBL News

IBL News | New York

The photo and video editing app Lensa AI reached the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store and went viral with its new “magic avatar” feature.

This feature allows users to turn their selfies into styled, attractive portraits of themselves as sci-fi and fantasy characters with slimmer bodies and following the ideals of beauty in today’s culture.

It uses AI technology to render photos into artwork based on text prompts.

The app uses an open-source neural network model called Stable Diffusion trained on Internet data to generate images.

The success of Lensa AI — with over 15 million global installs in December — has pushed other AI photo editors apps into the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts.

The AI Art: AI Image Generator app ranks in second place, while Dawn — AI Avatars is in the No. 3 position.

As a result, an influx of AI-generated selfies are popping up across social media in recent weeks.

Another phenomenon is image-generating AI models like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, which can replicate aspects of images from their training data copying from the public internet data including copyrighted images on which they were trained.

ImagenAI, which uses AI to help photographers edit photos and automate post-production work, raised $30M from Summit Partners, bringing total raised to $34M (@kyle_l_wiggers / TechCrunch)https://t.co/B4gJwjaoKwhttps://t.co/9O7I33HXwW

— Techmeme (@Techmeme) December 19, 2022

IBL News | New York

Instructure Holdings, Inc. (Instructure) (NYSE: INST) announced the acquisition of LearnPlatform, a 70-employees start-up based in North Carolina, this month. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2015, LearnPlatform provides solutions to modernize learning environments.

“The acquisition of LearnPlatform underscores Instructure’s commitment to building an open global education platform,” said Steve Daly, CEO at Instructure.

With this acquisition, Instructure, the owner of canvas LMS, continues expanding its partner ecosystem. Salt Lake City-based Instructure currently has more than 600 partners.

IBL News | New York

John Peacock, currently General Manager at Course Hero, will take on the role of CEO, the company announced. Peacock was appointed to the position by Course Hero Co-Founder Andrew Grauer.

The nomination came as Grauer stepped into the CEO role at Learneo, a new platform of businesses that includes Course Hero in its portfolio.

IBL News | New York

Coursera (NYSE: COUR) released its report, The Job Skills of 2023, yesterday, noting what skills trends are critical and increasingly critical in a digital economy. [PDF: Job Skills of 2022]

The analysis draws on data from Coursera’s 4 million enterprise learners across 3,000 businesses, 3,600 higher education institutions, and governments in over 100 countries.

The report highlights that:

• Communication skills remain vital for hybrid workplaces.
• Management skills to guide teams through change are among the fastest growing.
• The fastest-growing digital skills have changed more rapidly than the fastest-growing human skills.

Around 85 million jobs are expected to be displaced by 2025 due to the rapid automation of jobs. As a result, 40% of core skills will change for workers.

However, research suggests that new roles will outpace those lost to automation, with the global workforce being offered 149 million new technology-oriented jobs by 2025.

Surveys suggest that a majority of companies globally experience a shortage of candidates today.

IBL News | New York

While the Federal Reserve continues its battle against inflation by raising its benchmark interest rate — yesterday, half a point to the highest level in 15 years — Bank of America’s Global Research economists and strategists said that recessions are expected in the U.S., Euro Area, and the UK in 2023.

As a result of the recession shock, economic growth will come under pressure in the first half of the year.

Candace Browning, Head of BofA Global Research, said, “in 2023, inflation should come down, but it will take time for central banks to declare victory.”

These are some of Bank of America’s predictions:

• A recession is all but inevitable: Expect a mild U.S. recession in the first half of 2023 with a risk that it starts later. Europe likely sees recession this winter with a shallow recovery thereafter as real incomes and likely overtightening pressure demand.

• Markets turn “risk on” in mid-2023: The S&P is expected to end the year at 4000 and S&P earnings per share to total $200 for the year. Bonds should offer opportunities in the first half of the year;

• U.S. Rates stay elevated but expect a decline by year-end 2023: Both two-year and ten-year U.S. Treasuries should end 2023 at 3.25%.

• China’s reopening happens but could be bumpy until later in 2023.

• After a volatile start to 2023, Emerging Markets should produce strong returns.

• Labor markets should finally ease in 2023, and the U.S. unemployment rate should peak at 5.5% in the first quarter of 2024, hindering consumer spending.

• Total returns of approximately 9% are expected in investment grade credit in 2023, in addition to a default rate peak of 5%, far below past recessions.

IBL News | New York

The proportion of organizations using AI has plateaued between 50% and 60% for the past few years. Despite the high adoption, it has more than doubled since 2017.

This is the main conclusion of this year’s McKinsey Global Survey on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Leaders in AI are making larger investments and engaging in advanced practices to enable scale and faster development.

On talent and upskilling, the data show that there is significant room to improve diversity in teams, as these correlate with outstanding performance.

Also, in the last five years, the average number of AI capabilities that organizations use, such as natural-language generation and computer vision, has doubled.

Among these capabilities, robotic process automation and computer vision have remained the most commonly deployed each year, while natural-language text understanding has advanced from the middle of the pack in 2018 to the front of the list just behind computer vision.

On the other hand, the talent shortage in AI-related roles — especially among AI data scientists —threaten to slow that shift for some companies.

Michael Chui, Partner at McKinsey Global Institute, said, “We have seen the “AI winter” turn into an AI spring, but after a period of initial exuberance, we appear to have reached a plateau.”

“Companies taking a longer view have made steady progress by transforming themselves into learning organizations that build their AI muscles over time. These companies gradually incorporate more AI capabilities and stand up increasingly more applications progressively faster and more easily thanks to lessons from past successes as well as failures. They not only invest more, but they also invest more wisely, with the goal of creating a veritable AI factory that enables them to incorporate more AI in more areas of the business.”

IBL News | New York

John King, the former U.S. Education Secretary and York York Education Commissioner was named SUNY (State University of New York) Chancellor this week.

A Brooklyn native and the state’s first Black and Puerto Rican chancellor, John King will start in January 2023 heading the 64-campus system of SUNY.

He will succeed interim SUNY Chancellor Deborah Stanley, who has been filling the leadership post since Jim Malatras resigned a year ago.

The SUNY Board of Trustees unanimously selected John King after a yearlong, nationwide search.

IBL News | New York

Edtech firm Top Hat acquired New York-based STEM education startup Aktiv Learning (101 Edu, Inc.) for an undisclosed amount.

“This acquisition reflects our commitment to being the partner of record for higher education institutions — from broad engagement to discipline-specific solutions that enable active, personalized learning, especially in STEM courses that are so crucial to the overall student experience,” said Joe Rohrlich, CEO of Top Hat.

Toronto-headquartered Top Hat offers student-centered teaching practices through interactive content, tools, and activities in in-person, online, and hybrid classroom environments.

Since launching in 2016, educators at 700 institutions have embraced Aktiv Learning’s platform for STEM to drive engagement and outcomes in critical introductory courses. Its inaugural product, Aktiv Chemistry, helps 120,000 students learn each year, and the company has recently expanded with new offerings in mathematics.