Andersen Capital Management CIO Peter Andersen discusses technologys influence in the markets, his outlook for Apple and the Federal Reserves management of rate hikes.

Thomson Reuters recently released generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform features an "AI skills factory" that allows subject-matter experts who are not engineers or software developers to safely experiment with building new AI tools to address business needs.

"When we look across our customer bases in legal professionals, tax professionals, corporations or Reuters News, we see a huge amount of opportunity to apply generative AI," Shawn Malhotra, head of engineering at Thomson Reuters, told FOX Business. "The problems that generative AI is good at solving are the same problems our customers are wrestling with today, so theres a ton of opportunity."

"However, we also know that weve got to move quickly, and we only have so much talent in the world who really understands generative AI and how to leverage it in solutions. So we need to move faster with limited resources, so how do we go off and do that? And thats where the platform really comes in," he explained.

To help broaden the pool of workers who can help find innovative AI-driven solutions using the platform, Thomson Reuters generative AI platform aims to make it easy for those who are not software engineers or developers to create those AI building blocks.

THOMSON REUTERS LAUNCHES GENERATIVE AI TOOLS FOR LEGAL RESEARCH

Thomson Reuters' generative AI platform aims to offer a way for non-engineers to build AI skills in a safe environment with little to no code required. (Photo Illustration by Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)

"What weve done over the last several months is weve added new building blocks, ones that help you build generative AI skills," Malhotra explained. "Ones that basically abstract some of the complexities and nuance of generative AI so that any developer, and in some cases even subject-matter experts who arent coders, can start to assemble and experiment with generative AI."

"That does two things; it lets us build applications much faster. It also allows more of our employee base to actually get involved with creating these solutions because sometimes it's the deep domain expert who has the best idea whos going to build the best solution," he added. "So the platform enables them to build what we call an AI skill to figure out whether or not its adding customer value, so you increase the number of people who can participate in the innovation, and you increase the pace at which we can turn that innovation into real customer value."

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?

Thomson Reuters' generative AI push has included an emphasis on solutions for legal and tax professionals as well as corporations. ((Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) / Getty Images)

Malhotra said that users of the platform who are looking to build an AI skill can choose one of Thomson Reuters proprietary content sets along with a language model and then experiment to see if it works as a solution to the problem they were trying to solve.

He added that the Thomson Reuters platforms AI skills-building platform is sandboxed to prevent mistakes like putting proprietary content in an externally accessible environment, while it also has built-in tools for data governance and detecting bias in AI models.

"We let them do all of this in an intuitive, low code, no code environment. They can then see the results of that, and because theyre the subject-matter expert, they can say huh, that really looks like it would be great for a customer, that would solve a lawyers problem, a tax professionals problem, a compliance officers problem."

Thomson Reuters' generative AI skills factory allows non-engineers to experiment with AI tools that can eventually be developed into customer-facing solutions. (iStock / iStock)

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Once the user gets to that stage, they can engage the engineering team to turn those building blocks into a solution that the company can deliver to customers, Malhotra explained.

"Lots of folks are trying to deliver generative AI solutions, and what weve learned as weve now delivered some to market is that the secret sauce behind these solutions is really having great technology that you can build on quickly," he added. "Thats where the Thomson Reuters generative AI platform comes in. But you also need the domain expertise and the content those are truly differentiators in the solutions that are coming to market right now."

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'AI skills factory' created by Thomson Reuters for non-engineers to build expertise - Fox Business

A groundbreaking study by UCLA scientists has for the first time mapped medium and high-entropy alloys in 3D, revealing their unique combination of toughness and flexibility. This advancement could transform the way alloys are engineered and utilized. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

UCLA breaks new ground in alloy research, presenting the first 3D mapping of medium and high-entropy alloys, potentially revolutionizing the field with enhanced toughness and flexibility in these materials.

Alloys, which are materials such as steel that are made by combining two or more metallic elements, are among the underpinnings of contemporary life. They are essential for buildings, transportation, appliances and tools including, very likely, the device you are using to read this story. In applying alloys, engineers have faced an age-old trade-off common in most materials: Alloys that are hard tend to be brittle and break under strain, while those that are flexible under strain tend to dent easily.

Possibilities for sidestepping that trade-off arose about 20 years ago, when researchers first developed medium- and high-entropy alloys, stable materials that combine hardness and flexibility in a way in which conventional alloys do not. (The entropy in the name indicates how disorderly the mixture of the elements in the alloys is.)

Now, a UCLA-led research team has provided an unprecedented view of the structure and characteristics of medium- and high-entropy alloys. Using an advanced imaging technique, the team mapped, for the first time ever, the three-dimensional atomic coordinates of such alloys. In another scientific first for any material, the researchers correlated the mixture of elements with structural defects.

Atomic map of a high-entropy alloy nanoparticle shows different categories of elements in red, blue and green, and twinning boundaries in yellow. Credit: Miao Lab/UCLA

Medium- and high-entropy alloys had been previously imaged at the atomic scale in 2D projections, but this study represents the first time that their 3D atomic order has been directly observed, said corresponding author Jianwei John Miao, a professor of physics in the UCLA College and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. We found a new knob that can be turned to boost alloys toughness and flexibility.

Medium-entropy alloys combine three or four metals in roughly equal amounts; high-entropy alloys combine five or more in the same way. In contrast, conventional alloys are mostly one metal with others intermixed in lower proportions. (Stainless steel, for example, can be three-quarters or more of iron.)

To understand the scientists findings, think of a blacksmith forging a sword. That work is guided by the counterintuitive fact that small structural defects actually make metals and alloys tougher. As the blacksmith repeatedly heats a soft, flexible metal bar until it glows and then quenches it in water, structural defects accrue that help turn the bar into an unyielding sword.

Miao and his colleagues focused on a type of structural defect called a twin boundary, which is understood to be a key factor in medium- and high-entropy alloys unique combination of toughness and flexibility. Twinning happens when strain causes one section of a crystal matrix to bend diagonally while the atoms around it remain in their original configuration, forming mirror images on either side of the boundary.

The researchers used an array of metals to make nanoparticles, so small they can be measured in billionths of a meter. Six medium-entropy alloy nanoparticles combined nickel, palladium, and platinum. Four nanoparticles of a high-entropy alloy combined cobalt, nickel, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, silver, iridium, and platinum.

The process to create these alloys resembles an extreme and extremely fast version of the blacksmiths task. The scientists liquified the metal at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for five-hundredths of a second, then cooled it down in less than one-tenth that time. The idea is to fix the solid alloy in the same varied mixture of elements as a liquid. Along the way, the shock of the process induced twin boundaries in six of the 10 nanoparticles; four of those each had a pair of twins.

Identifying the defects required an imaging technique the researchers developed, called atomic electron tomography. The technique uses electrons because atomic-level details are much smaller than wavelengths of visible light. The resulting data can be mapped in 3D because multiple images are captured as a sample is rotated. Tuning atomic electron tomography to map the complex mixtures of metals was a painstaking endeavor.

Our goal is to find the truth in nature, and our measurements have to be as accurate as possible, said Miao, who is also deputy director of the STROBE National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. We worked slowly, pushing the limit to make each step of the process as perfect as possible, then moved on to the next step.

The scientists mapped each atom in the medium-entropy alloy nanoparticles. Some of the metals in the high-entropy alloy were too similar in size for electron microscopy to differentiate among them. So the map of those nanoparticles grouped the atoms into three categories.

The researchers observed that the more that atoms of different elements (or different categories of elements) are mixed, the more likely the alloys structure will change in a way that contributes to matching toughness with flexibility. The findings could inform the design of medium- and high-entropy alloys with added durability and even unlock potential properties currently unseen in steel and other conventional alloys by engineering the mixture of certain elements.

The problem with studying defective materials is that you have to look at each individual defect separately to really know how it affects the surrounding atoms, said co-author Peter Ercius, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratorys Molecular Foundry. Atomic electron tomography is the only technique with the resolution to do that. Its just amazing that we can see jumbled atomic arrangements at this scale inside such small objects.

Miao and his colleagues are now developing a new imaging method that combines atomic electron microscopy with a technique for identifying a samples makeup based on the photons it emits, in order to distinguish between metals with atoms of similar size. They are also developing ways to examine bulk medium- and high-entropy alloys and to understand fundamental relationships between their structures and properties.

The study was published today, December 20, in the journal Nature.

Reference: Three-dimensional atomic structure and local chemical order of medium- and high-entropy nanoalloys by Saman Moniri, Yao Yang, Jun Ding, Yakun Yuan, Jihan Zhou, Long Yang, Fan Zhu, Yuxuan Liao, Yonggang Yao, Liangbing Hu, Peter Ercius and Jianwei Miao, 20 December 2023, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06785-z

The co-first authors of the study are Saman Moniri, a former UCLA postdoctoral scholar; Yao Yang, who earned a doctorate from UCLA in 2021; and Jun Ding of Xian Jiaotong University in China. Other co-authors are UCLA postdoctoral scholars Yuxuan Liao; former UCLA postdoctoral scholars Yakun Yuan, Jihan Zhou, Long Yang and Fan Zhu; and Yonggang Yao and Liangbing Hu of University of Maryland, College Park.

The study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. The experiment was performed at Berkeley Labs Molecular Foundry, also sponsored by the DOE.

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From Blacksmiths to Beamlines: 3D Atomic Revelations Transform Alloy Engineering - SciTechDaily

A little over a month ago, Johns Hopkins University released the largest-ever research on travel lane width and safety, providing conclusive evidence that 9- and 10-foot lanes do not contribute to greater automobile crashes and, in some cases, reduce collisions. Traffic engineers have long shunned narrower laneswhich benefit walkable cities by providing more room for pedestrians, bicyclists, and landscapingciting safety concerns.

New urbanists have been making the case for narrow streets as a necessary component of walkable neighborhoods for 30 years, and the message has largely gone unheeded by the civil engineering profession. (There have been signs of progress, such as when the Institute of Transportation Engineers worked with CNU on the 2010 Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares, a recommended practice). And yet as a rule, engineers have continued to design overly wide streets in places that could be more walkable.But engineers could not ignore research from such a prestigious and health-focused institutionespecially since the study was widely reported.

Soon after the study hit social media and the airwaves in November, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) surveyed their members on narrow travel lanes and the results are revealing. Poll results were shared on the Pro-Urb listserv by civil engineer Paul Crabtree. See below for the answers and the comments.

Proponents of walkable places may think the results depressing. Less than a third of civil engineers accept that yes, narrow lanes are safer and, therefore, many lower-speed traffic lanes should be made narrower (9-foot or 10-foot wide), either by retrofit or from the planning stage. Most engineers either deny the safety benefits of narrow lanes or they find other reasons to support wide lanes.

And yet, there are more optimistic interpretations. There is no older survey to compare to, but I would estimate the support for narrower lanes was very low in the pastprobably single digitsjudging by the pervasive preference for wide lanes over the last 50 years. That would be good news if we can get narrow lanes on nearly a third of new streets or retrofits.

Granted, we need a wide application of skinny streets to change the nationwide problem of automobile-dominated communities. A new mindset among street designers would improve most Americans' lives and help cities adapt to and mitigate climate change by allowing for more nonautomotive mobility. In that respect, too many engineers think narrow lanes arent the answer to safety issues.

More than a third of engineers picked answer number three, which at least acknowledges the safety potential of narrow travel lanes. They may be safer, the engineers say, but they cause too many other problems. I would flip that around and look at the problems caused by wide travel lanes on streets in cities and towns. Wide lanes restrict space for any other activity besides automotive travel within the right of way. Generous sidewalks? Protected bike lanes? Better landscaping? Forget about it, in most cases, with overwide travel lanes. Moreover, wide lanes encourage higher speeds, which make the social functions of streets difficult. Few will walk, let alone linger and socialize, on a street where cars are moving at a deadly speed. The sense of danger is palpable; the noise unpleasant. No one will sit at cafe tables a few feet away from traffic moving faster than 40 miles per hour. Wide lanes discourage active living, which is why Johns Hopkins did the study. Wide lanes and fast traffic reduce steps, creating health impacts. Routinely designing wide lanes reduces the function of streets, which have historically served as the heart of communities, to moving automobiles. The third answer could have been reworded given the Johns Hopkins research results: We know that wide travel lanesdo notimprove safety,andthey cause too many other problems.

InConfessions of a Recovering Engineer,Charles Marohn wrote that the civil engineering profession values higher speeds on thoroughfares. Recognizing the problems of narrower lanes, but not of wider lanes, is consistent with that value.In other words, the issue is not a rational analysis of safety, but of a desire to design streets so cars can go fasteven through neighborhoods and downtowns.

To be sure, narrow lanes raise issuessuch as the risk to truck and bus mirrors. City buses are only 8.5 feet wide, but with side mirrors they are 10.5 feet wide. Despite that, thedamage reportedto truck and bus mirrors is less than one would imagine, according to a study conducted by the Florida DOT of 9- and 10-foot lanes statewide over five years. It turns out that bus and truck drivers proceed carefully with narrow lanes. That care saves lives, not just mirrors. Yearly mirror damage in the Miami-Dade County system on narrow lane thoroughfares was reported at $35,000.

There are other valid reasons to support wider lanes in particular circumstanceson more heavily traveled streets that serve as bus routes, for example. Higher speed roads through rural or natural areas often benefit from wider lanes.

Although the Johns Hopkins study affirmed narrow travel lanes' safety, the researchers generally promote context-sensitive design. They conducted extensive interviews with state departments of transportation, and were most impressed with theContext Classification Systembeing implemented in Florida, created by new urbanist traffic engineers.

This Florida system allows thoroughfares to be designed according to the rural-to-urban Transect, which justifies different designs for downtowns and walkable neighborhoods as opposed torural highways. Perhaps the most important takeaway from our interview with FDOT was their innovative context classification system that helps traffic engineers to differentiate between an arterial (or other road classes) in a low-speed (such as downtown) versus high-speed context, the Johns Hopkins researchers explained.

In places planned to be walkable, narrow (10-foot) travel lanes are now the default standard in Florida. Wider lanes must be justified for a specific reason. That's a bigdeparture from conventional practice, which typically uses 12-foot lanesfor streets in cities, towns, and suburbs. Twelve-foot lanes are also used on Interstates and facilitate higher speeds.State engineers in Florida are reportedly comfortable with the new system, because it provides a rational way to differentiate context and justify narrow lanes under specific circumstances.

The ASCE survey shows the challenges to reforming street design to accommodate walking, cycling, and mixed-use neighborhoods. Nevertheless, there are silver linings. Sixty-two percent of engineers recognize the potential safety benefits of narrow lanes, including 28 percent that clearly want more of them. Thats progress, but we need more. Providing engineers with a better way to design streets according to context may be the key to allowing more of them to feel comfortable with narrow lanes.

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Engineers resist narrow lanes, but change is coming - Congress for the New Urbanism

Jobs

By Alex Mitchell

Published Dec. 19, 2023, 9:26 p.m. ET

This tech job can generate a lot of income, experts say.

Artificial intelligence prompt engineer the person who formulates questions and instructions to get the most refined answers and images from programs like ChatGPT is a highly in-demand position that pays upwards of $300,000.

They just know how to write, Greg Beltzer, head of technology at RBC Wealth Management, told ZDNET this week. The rapidly growing sector is prompting many professional writers to put their hats into the AI ring, Vice reports.

You need to think like the user to help with that prompt engineering its not just code, Beltzer explained. Its not just development. Its like a business technical skillset thats also creative.

The career advice comes as AI industry leaders warn that white-collar workers could be displaced by the fast-advancing technology.

Coders, computer programmers, journalists, software engineers, data analysts, paralegals and legal assistants are among those who should be concerned, experts say.

A data scientist once dubbed the sexiest job of the 21st century earns a cool $137,000 a year on average in New York, per BuiltInNYC.

A good prompt engineer is more expensive than a data scientist today, Beltzer noted.

Just outrageously difficult trying to find somebody who has experience, he added. Youre not going to find someone who has more than five years of experience. At the most, you might get two or three years, but its hard to find.

That doesnt mean any old couch potato can take the reins for a six-figure position. Experience is still preferred just a different kind.

Were really looking for those folks that are most likely on the business side that has a technical bent, Beltzer reasoned. Personally, I dont want to make a bet until the tooling comes a little farther along.

Business author Bernard Marr says a prompt engineer should have data, project management, organizational, and communication skills.

You need to be able to express what you want the AI to do in a precise and clear way, just like if you were giving instructions or training to a human workforce, Marr wrote on Forbes.com in May.

You will need attention to detail the greater depth you can go into about exactly what type of response or content you are looking for, the more successful you will be at prompt engineering.

Beltzer said that theres a dramatic need to train in AI prompt writing, but that branch of technology can be hard to define to an industry standard.

Is it a science? Is it an art? Are we going to build more tools? Beltzer asked, adding that this sweet gig may too become automated by AI.

The good news is that once tooling is in place, it may be easier to train AI models with prompts conducted systematically and programmatically,' he concluded.

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This hot new tech job pays $300K a year what's an AI prompt engineer? - New York Post

Gary Davis is the mission systems engineer for PACE at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

What is your favorite ocean or atmospheric related book or movie?

I dont know if its classified as a book, but I do like the Edgar Allan Poe story A Descent Into the Maelstrom. My favorite ocean movie? I really liked the movie Master and Commander. Its not really an ocean movie, but a lot of it takes place on sailing ships, and they do have a naturalist in that movie who researches plants, insects, and other creatures.

What is your background?

I went to engineering school at the University of Virginia, got a bachelors degree in aerospace there, and then went to Princeton and got a masters in mechanical and aerospace engineering. Essentially right out of school, I came to Goddard. I started off in the propulsion branch, and I worked on the TRMM mission Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and then the MAP mission Microwave Anisotropy Probe. Thats a mouthful. Then I worked on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, I worked on the MMS mission Magnetospheric Multiscale, another mouthful and then OSIRIS-REx and now PACE.

What is your role in PACE?

For PACE, Im the mission systems engineer, so Im the chief engineer on the project. I have a great team working with me to hopefully make sure it all works.

What are you most looking forward to during launch?

I am most looking forward to the moment when we get the telemetry that the spacecraft is alive and is stable and pointing the solar arrays at the sun. Thats the most critical part for us, is to make sure that the spacecraft has survived the rigors of launch, and that it knows what to do and is pointed in the right direction. So thats a huge first step for us.

And once thats all clear, what are you most looking forward to post-launch?

I want to see that first picture. The instrument folks call it first light, and Im just really excited to see what PACEs instruments can do. Weve been testing them on the ground for all these years, but theyre not looking at anything really, just the laser light that we shine in or the ceiling of the cleanroom. When the Ocean Color Instrument is able to see the ocean and the polarimeters see the aerosols in the atmosphere, it will be amazing to get that first image.

Since OCI will be looking at all these different colors of the ocean, what is your favorite color and why?

Thats an easy one. My favorite color is British Racing Green and the reason why is Im a Formula One fan and my favorite team (though they dont race anymore) is Lotus. Way back in the day, most of their cars were painted British Racing Green, so Ive always loved that color. Its a dark green, and its very fast.

What advice would you give to aspiring engineers who want to someday work on NASA satellites?

The obvious answer that a lot of people give is study this science or study that math or take that engineering class and I kind of go in the opposite direction. For folks who want to work on NASA projects in science or engineering, theyre probably already very strong in science and engineering, so they dont need any more of that. My advice would be to study and be trained as much as possible in human skills, leadership, team-building, and how to work as part of a team. Especially in todays world, with so many virtual ways to communicate, your team might not be co-located with you. The better communication skills you have and the better you can get an entire team to work efficiently with you, that means a lot. For any big project, you need multiple people, and even with great people, nobody can do it by themselves you need a whole team.

Whats a fun fact about yourself, something that a lot of people might not know?

Im a trombone player, amateur. I did buy a euphonium so I can play it once a year in Tubachristmas, which is super fun because we get to play the melody which you dont usually get as a low brass player. So, for one night a year, Im like a quasi-tuba player and its really fun.

Whats one catch-all statement describing the importance of PACE?

PACE is going to teach us answers about the ocean that we havent even been able to ask the questions for yet. Its going to show us stuff that we dont even know that we dont know yet.

Header image caption: Gary with PACE Observatory during PACE Family Day. Image Credit: Dennis Henry

By Erica McNamee, Science Writer at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

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People of PACE: Gary Davis Leads His Team Through Engineering Feats PACE Mission - NASA Blogs