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When making financial decisions, it’s important to look at the big picture — say, one taken from a drone, satellite or AI-powered sensor. The emerging field of spatial finance harnesses AI insights from remote sensors and aerial imagery to help banks, insurers, investment firms and businesses analyze risks and opportunities, enable new services and products, measure the environmental impact of their holdings, and assess damage after a crisis. Spatial finance applications include monitoring assets, modeling energy efficiency, tracking emissions and pollution, detecting illegal mining and deforestation, and analyzing the risks of natural disasters. NVIDIA AI software and hardware can help the industry combine their business data with geospatial data to accelerate these applications. By better understanding the environmental and social risks associated with an investment, the financial sector can choose to prioritize those that are more likely to support sustainable development — a framework known as environmental, social and governance (ESG). Focus on sustainable investments is growing: A Bloomberg Intelligence analysis estimated that ESG assets will represent more than a third of total managed assets worldwide by 2025. And a report by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme predicts that the insurance and finance industry will become the top consumer of Earth observation data and services over the next decade — resulting in more than $1 billion in total revenue by 2031. Several members of NVIDIA Inception, a global program that supports cutting-edge startups, are advancing these efforts with GPU-accelerated AI applications that can track water pollution near industrial plants, quantify the financial risk of wildfires, assess damage after storms and more. Powerful Compute for Large-Scale Data GPU-accelerated AI and data science can rapidly extract insights from complex, unstructured data — enabling banks and businesses to set up real-time streaming and analysis of data as it’s captured from satellites, drones, antennas and edge sensors. By monitoring aerial imagery — available for free from public space agencies, or at higher granularity from private companies — analysts can get a clear view of how much water is being used from a reservoir over time, how many trees are being cut down for a construction project or how many homes were damaged by a tornado. This capability can help audit investments by verifying the accuracy of written records such as government-mandated disclosures, environmental impact reports or even insurance claims. For example, investors might track the supply chain of a company that reports it has achieved net zero in its production line, and discover that it actually relies on an overseas plant emitting coal ash visible in satellite images. Or, sensors that analyze heat emissions from buildings could help identify low-emitting businesses for a tax credit. NVIDIA’s edge computing solutions, including the NVIDIA Jetson platform for autonomous machines and other embedded applications, are powering numerous AI initiatives in spatial finance. In addition to using NVIDIA hardware to speed up their applications, developers are adopting software including the NVIDIA DeepStream software development kit for streaming analytics, part of the NVIDIA Metropolis platform for vision AI. They’re also using the NVIDIA Omniverse platform for building and operating metaverse applications for detailed, 3D visualizations of geospatial data. Insuring Property — From Assessing Risks to Accelerating Claims NVIDIA Inception members are developing GPU-accelerated applications that turn geospatial data into insights for insurance companies, reducing the number of expensive onsite visits needed to monitor the status of insured properties. RSS-Hydro, based in Luxembourg, uses GPU computing on premises and in the cloud to train FloodSENS, a machine learning app that maps flood impact from satellite images. The company also uses NVIDIA Omniverse to animate FloodSENS in 3D, helping the team more effectively communicate flood risks and inform resource allocation planning during emergencies. Toronto-based Ecopia AI uses deep learning-based mapping systems to mine geospatial data, helping to produce next-generation digital maps with highly accurate segmentation of buildings, roads, forests and more. These maps power diverse applications across the public and private sectors, including government climate resilience initiatives and insurance risk assessment. Ecopia uses NVIDIA GPUs to develop its AI models. CrowdAI, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, uses deep learning tools to accelerate the insurance claims process by automatically analyzing aerial images and videos to detect assets that were damaged or destroyed in natural disasters. The company uses NVIDIA GPUs for both training and inference. CrowdAI’s deep learning model detected buildings from this aerial image taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in 2018. The AI also categorizes the level of damage – ranging from green representing no damage; to yellow and orange for minor and major damage, respectively; to purple for destroyed buildings. Image credit: CrowdAI, Inc., DigitalGlobe, NOAA, and Nearmap. Predicting Risks and Opportunities for Businesses Inception startups are also using geospatial data to help government groups and banks quantify the risks and opportunities of their investments — such as predicting crop yields, detecting industrial pollution and measuring the land and water use of an asset. Switzerland-based Picterra is supporting sustainable finance with a geospatial MLOps platform that enables banks, insurance companies and financial consultancies to analyze ESG metrics. The company’s AI-driven insights can help the financial industry make investment decisions, model risk and quickly quantify vulnerabilities and opportunities in investment portfolios. The company uses NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs and the NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit to develop its AI models, which process raw data from satellite, drone and aerial imagery. London-based Satellite Vu, a startup applying satellite technology to address global challenges, will be able to monitor the temperature of any building on the planet in near real time using infrared camera data. These infrared images will provide its customers with insights about the economic activity, the energy efficiency of buildings, the urban heat island effect and more. And Sourcenergy, based in Houston, uses geospatial data to power an energy supply chain intelligence platform that can help the financial services industry with market research. Its AI tools, developed using NVIDIA A100 GPUs, enable investors to independently create real-time models of energy companies’ well inventories and project costs, giving them insights even before the companies share data in their quarterly earnings reports. Learn more about NVIDIA’s work in financial services, and read more on geospatial AI in investment management in chapter 10 of this handbook. View the full article

A trio of top scientists is helping lead one of the most ambitious efforts in the history of computing — building a digital twin of Earth. Peter Bauer, Bjorn Stevens and Francisco “Paco” Doblas-Reyes agree that a digital twin of Earth needs to support resolutions down to a kilometer so a growing set of users can explore the risks of climate change and how to adapt to them. They say the work will require accelerated computing, AI and lots of collaboration. Their Herculean efforts, some already using NVIDIA technologies, inspired Earth-2, NVIDIA’s contribution to the common cause. “We will dedicate ourselves and our significant resources to direct NVIDIA’s scale and expertise in computational sciences, to join with the world’s climate science community,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, had said when he announced the Earth-2 initiative in late 2021. Collaborating on an Unprecedented Scale Huang’s commitment signaled support for efforts like Destination Earth (DestinE), a pan-European project to create digital twins of the planet. “No single computer may be enough to do it, so it needs a distributed, international effort,” said Bauer, a veteran with more than 20 years at Europe’s top weather forecasting center who now leads the project that aims to make planet-scale models available by 2030. Last year, he co-authored a Nature article that said the work “requires collaboration on an unprecedented scale.” Bauer calls for broad international cooperation on a new Earth information system. In a March GTC talk, Bauer envisioned a federation that “mobilizes resources from many countries, including private players, and NVIDIA could be one that would be very interesting.” Peter Bauer Such resources would enable the enormous work of developing new numeric and machine-learning models, then running them in massive inference jobs to make predictions that stretch across multiple decades. DestinE has its roots in a 2008 climate conference. It’s the fruit of a number of programs, including many Bauer led in his years with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts — based in Reading, England — which develops some of the most advanced weather forecast models in the world. Consuming a Petabyte a Day The collaboration is broad because the computing requirements are massive. Francisco Doblas-Reyes “We’re talking about producing petabytes of data a day that have to be delivered very quickly,” said Doblas-Reyes, director of the Earth sciences department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, a lead author at Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a group that creates some of the most definitive reports on climate change — and a contributor to the DestinE program. The digital twin effort will turn the traditional approach to weather and climate forecasting “upside down so users can be the drivers of the process,” he said in a March talk at GTC, NVIDIA’s developer conference. The goal is to “put the user at the helm of producing climate information that’s more useful for climate adaptation,” he said. His talk described the new models, workflows and systems needed to capture in detail the chaotic nature of climate systems. Articulating the Vision The vision for a digital twin crystalized in a keynote at the SC20 supercomputing conference from Stevens, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg. He leads work on one of the world’s top weather models for climate applications, as well as an effort to enable simulations at kilometer-level resolution, an order of magnitude finer than today’s best work. “We need a new type of computing capability … for planetary information systems that let us work through the consequences of our actions and policies, so we can build a more sustainable future,” he said. Stevens’ landmark talk at SC20 crystallized the vision of a digital twin of Earth. Stevens described a digital twin that’s accurate and interactive. For example, he imagined people querying it to see how a warming climate could affect flooding in northern Europe or food security in Africa. AI Enables Interactive Simulations AI will play a lead role in giving users that level of interactivity, he said in a talk at GTC last year. “We need AI to get to where we need to be,” he said, giving shout-outs to NVIDIA and colleagues, including Bauer and Doblas-Reyes. “Real steps forward come from people bringing their different perspectives together and rethinking how we work.” Climate simulations pursue ultra-high resolution for greater accuracy. Doblas-Reyes agreed in his GTC talk this year. “In my opinion, AI is a necessary complement for the digital twin — it’s the only way to offer true interactivity to users and help provide a good trajectory of what’s to come in our climate,” he said. On a Journey Together All three scientists gave examples of how NVIDIA technologies have been used in a wide variety of projects addressing climate change. In his GTC talk, Stevens took a characteristically playful turn. He showed a cartoon version of Huang, like Isaac Newton, struck with a falling apple and an insight for how to engage with the scientific effort. “We need you Jensen, and you need us,” Stevens said. Stevens playfully portrayed Huang as Isaac Newton in his GTC talk. The MareNostrum 5 system coming to the Barcelona center provides one example. It’s expected to accelerate some of the DestinE work on NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. Building a digital twin of Earth is “an exciting opportunity to re-think the future of HPC with AI on top,” said Mike Pritchard, a veteran climate scientist who directs climate research at NVIDIA. NVIDIA Omniverse for connecting 3D tools and developing metaverse applications, NVIDIA Modulus for physics-informed machine learning and NVIDIA Triton for AI inference all have roles to play in the broad effort, he said. It’s a long and evolving collaboration, Bauer said in his GTC talk. “I sent my first email to NVIDIA on these issues 14 years ago, and NVIDIA has been with us on this journey ever since.” To learn more, read the concept paper developed for the Berlin Summit for Earth Virtualization Engines, July 3-7, where Huang will deliver a keynote address. View the full article

It worked like magic. Computer vision algorithms running in a data center saw that a disease was about to infect a distant wheat field in India. Sixteen days later, workers in the field found the first evidence of the outbreak. It was the kind of wizardry people like Vinay Indraganti call digital transformation. He’s practiced it for 25 years, the last dozen of them at companies like Ingredion, a Fortune 500 food-ingredient producer. The India project was the first big test of AGRi360 — a product suite for sustainable agriculture powered by NVIDIA Metropolis — from the startup that Indraganti co-founded, Blu Cocoon Digital. Mobile App Taps Cloud Smarts The pilot was both simple and effective. Farm workers took pictures of the plants, time-stamped and geotagged by a mobile app. They sent them to the Microsoft Azure cloud, where Blu Cocoon’s custom models found patterns that enabled their uncanny prediction. Thanks to his background in the industry, Indraganti knows the value of such timely intelligence. It can help farmers and their entire food chain of vendors reap a bumper harvest. “It’s a vast area, that’s why we’ve made ‘AI for food’ our mantra at Blu Cocoon,” he said in an interview from the suburban Chicago office of the company headquartered in Kolkata. A Third Eye on the Field AGRi360 acts “like a third eye in the field,” said Pinaki Bhattacharya, a microbiologist who heads R&D at Blu Cocoon Digital. AGRi360 puts a dashboard of AI-powered tool in farmers’ hands. In the pilot, it gave farmers an early warning to apply a small amount of pesticide to arrest the disease. An agrochemical company got a heads up about conditions in the area, helping it manage its supply chain. In the future, food producers that buy the crops will get key details about their microbiology. That helps in planning exactly how and when to process the crops into products to meet the regulatory requirements where they’ll be sold. “AGRi360 captures all these insights thanks to AI fed by pictures from farmworkers taken while they’re doing their regular jobs,” Bhattacharya said. Evaluating Seeds and Soils The AI models got their start in research using computer vision to quickly assess soil conditions and the quality of seeds. Those skills are now part of the AGRi360 product portfolio along with products that monitor plant health and best practices in farming. Today, AGRi360 is in use in two countries, improving the quantity and quality of crop yields. One customer reports it’s on track to source 100% of its products sustainably by 2025. Another saw revenues for an insecticide rise, thanks to the service. “Our sales of Cartap 50sp grew 70% in six months thanks to AGRi360’s ability to identify emerging crop infections early,” said Vandan Churiwal, a director at Krishi Rayasan, a leading agrochemical supplier based in Kolkata. “As a result, we’re expanding our license with Blu Cocoon to bring AI-powered insights into every area of our business,” he said. Faster Training and Inference Initially, the startup used CPUs to train and run its AI models. Now it exclusively uses NVIDIA GPUs and the Metropolis framework for computer vision. “It used to take us two months to train a single AI model on CPUs,” said Indraganti. “Now, with NVIDIA A10 Tensor Core GPUs, all four models in AGRi360 can be trained in a few hours — that’s a game changer.” The time savings add up quickly because the models need to be retrained for new crops, variants and soil types. GPUs reduced the time to complete inference jobs, too. Predictions that require 15-20 minutes on CPUs get generated in 2-3 seconds on NVIDIA T4 Tensor Core GPUs. The speed also enables Blu Cocoon to test its models on large and growing datasets. From Shipyards to Snack Bars Looking ahead, Blu Cocoon is extending its work in the food supply chain into managing containers in shipyards. It’s already testing computer vision models for a customer in India. “We’ve figured out a way to optimize movement of containers, reducing their time in the yard and minimizing touch points to save time and money,” said Indraganti. The startup is even helping food producers create recipes with AI. It’s already cooked up a gluten-free muffin for one packaged-foods client with plant-based cheeses, shakes and snack bars next on the menu. One customer reports the AI-powered system helped reduce the time to create a new recipe by 80%. “We named the company Blu Cocoon Digital because we look beyond the horizon and across the ocean for ways to nurture our customers’ aspirations with digital technology — and it all runs on the NVIDIA platform and Microsoft Azure,” he said. Read about Monarch Tractor to learn other ways AI is advancing agriculture. View the full article

Patch NotesContent UpdatesAdjusted the maximum capacity of the lessons for exiles to 10 players.To improve on the issue where only a maximum of 5 players could attend a lesson for exiles, we have removed all NPCs placed on the cushions and adjusted their locations so that players could interact with them and sit on them.Added the below rewards to the "Make a Splash" global arena: Victory: Bound Labor Recharger x1Draw/Defeat: Adventurer's Winged Elixir x1You can no longer move the "Siege Tower" located inside Halcyona's Warsmith Castle.The stabilizer will no longer be visible when a Warborn character equips the below costumes: Summer Racer's Swimwear, Spotless Service Uniform, Passionate Red Ribbon OutfitIncreased the visibility of Cross Quake's damage range preview.Increased the visibility of Cross Quake's damage range preview.Fixed the issue where Cross Quake's damage range preview differed from its actual range of damage in certain situations.Adjusted the Health Regen of Absorb Lifeforce.Before AdjustmentRestores 13% of Maximum Health for 8.5 secondsAfter AdjustmentRestores 12% of Maximum Health for 8.5 seconds Bug FixesYou will no longer be able to use the "Rally" emote while driving a ship. Fixed the issue where the neck of the costume looked abnormal in certain situations upon equipping Rabbit is Too Sleepy.Fixed the issue where Siege Risopodas abnormally died during a Siege.Fixed the issue where your quest progress still increased without having completed the supply of Mysthrane Haradium during the Mysthrane Faction Activity quest.Fixed the issue where one of Thwart's debuffs, Move Speed reduction, was not affected by other skills.Fixed the issue where the block list did not immediately refresh when there was only 1 blocked character.Fixed the issue where Soul Strength was not accumulated upon completing the "Transferring Command" and "Searching for Mikael Ynga" quests during Hereafter Rebellion.Fixed the issue where sometimes your Garden Points decreased when dying while using Fairy Protection.Fixed the incorrect Regen information from Absorb Lifeforce's tooltip.Before Tooltip RevisionRestores 13% of Maximum Health for 4.5 secondsAfter Tooltip RevisionRestores 9% of Maximum Health for 4.5 secondsFixed the issue where Cross Quake's damage range preview differed from its actual range of damage in certain situations.Fixed the issue where it was not possible to complete the "Witness of Contract" Daru Transformation quest when near Kebur. Fixed the issue where equipping Rousing Rabbit Pajamas while transformed into a Daru did not apply its effects.View the full article

Scientists at Matice Biosciences are using AI to study the regeneration of tissues in animals known as super-regenerators, such as salamanders and planarians. The goal of the research is to develop new treatments that will help humans heal from injuries without scarring. On the latest episode of NVIDIA’s AI Podcast, host Noah Kravtiz spoke with Jessica Whited, a regenerative biologist at Harvard University and co-founder of Matice Biosciences. Whited was inspired to start the company after her son suffered a severe injury while riding his bike. The AI Podcast · Matice Founder Jessica Whited on Harnassing Regenerative Species for Medical Breakthroughs – Ep. 198 She realized that while her work had been dedicated ultimately to limb regeneration, the short-term byproduct of it was a wealth of information that could be used to harness this regenerative science into topical treatments that can be put in the hands of everyday people, like her son and many others, who would no longer have to live with the physical scars of their trauma. This led her to investigate the connection between regeneration and scarring. Whited and her team are using AI to analyze the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control regeneration and scarring in super-regenerators. They believe that by understanding these mechanisms, they can develop new treatments to help humans heal from injuries without scarring. To learn more about Matice, please visit www.maticebio.com or follow along on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You Might Also Like Jules Anh Tuan Nguyen Explains How AI Lets Amputee Control Prosthetic Hand, Video Games A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota discusses his efforts to allow amputees to control their prosthetic limb — right down to the finger motions — with their minds. Overjet’s Ai Wardah Inam on Bringing AI to Dentistry Overjet, a member of NVIDIA Inception, is moving fast to bring AI to dentists’ offices. Dr. Wardah Inam, CEO of the company, discusses using AI to improve patient care. Immunai CTO and Co-Founder Luis Voloch on Using Deep Learning to Develop New Drugs Luis Voloch, co-founder and chief technology officer of Immunai, talks about tackling the challenges of the immune system with a machine learning and data science mindset. Subscribe to the AI Podcast: Now Available on Amazon Music The AI Podcast is now available through Amazon Music. In addition, get the AI Podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Google Play, Castbox, DoggCatcher, Overcast, PlayerFM, Pocket Casts, Podbay, PodBean, PodCruncher, PodKicker, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher and TuneIn. Make the AI Podcast better. Have a few minutes to spare? Fill out this listener survey. Featured Image Credit: Matice Biosciences View the full article

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.View the full article

We recently ranked the mainline single-player Final Fantasy games, and noted just how much the series changed and experimented with its formula along the way. The series’ propensity for reinvention is why people are so divided on what even defines a Final Fantasy game. Read more... View the full article

Hello eternalrf, Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. eternalrf joined on the 06/28/2023. View Member

Video games engine provider Unity announced earlier today the introduction of two new machine-learning platforms, one of which in particular has developers and artists asking questions of the company that, at time of publishing, have yet to be answered. Read more... View the full article

Roblox, for so very long a platform of games (I’m sorry, experiences) aimed at and played by kids, is trying to expand its offerings now that many of those kids are growing up into young adults. In doing so, though, they’re running into some problems. Read more... View the full article

A Fortnite streamer recently shaved his entire head, eyebrows included, for a big $2,500 donation from a viewer that wound up taking the money back. Read more... View the full article

Diablo IV is a big game. With multiple classes and tons of skill-tree options, a big-'donkey' map with tons of 'frack' to kill, and so, so much loot to equip, sell, upgrade (rinse and repeat, for eternity), there’s a lot to keep in mind, and so much more that the game kinda-sorta doesn’t tell you. Read more... View the full article

Starfield could be the biggest PC game of the year. It also might be heading for a lot of unnecessary annoyances on that platform. Bethesda revealed an exclusive PC partnership with card maker AMD, causing a mini-revolt among PC gamers in the process over concerns the massive open world RPG will face stuttering issues… Read more... View the full article

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg will likely never actually fight each other in a cage match during a UFC event. (I know that’s a weird way to start a paragraph, stick with me…) However, we can all experience the alternate and better timeline where that fight did happen thanks to a newly released free game pitting the… Read more... View the full article

Blizzard just dropped a new update for its loot-grinding RPG Diablo IV. The latest patch notes mark some crucial changes to the game, particularly around buffing all five character classes. Read more... View the full article

Watching an anime that doesn’t have queer characters often leaves viewers imagining what could have been. Sadly, it’s rare for anime to feature gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer characters without relying on harmful stereotypes that turn them into a joke instead of a character with authentic queer… Read more... View the full article

Calling all Animal Crossing and Disney Dreamlight Valley fans, there’s a new cozy build-up-and-decorate-an-island game for you to get excited about and you don’t have to wait long to play it. And if you love Hello Kitty, well, even better. Read more... View the full article

The intense court battle between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Microsoft over the latter’s attempted $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard is still underway. During the latest hearing, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan weighed in yet again, this time pontificating on why Xbox games seem to perform better in the… Read more... View the full article

Doctor Who won’t kick off its newest season with its newest star (Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa) until November of this year, but it looks like the long-running British sci-fi series is finally getting the proper reboot it deserves. Considering the show’s importance in British pop culture and beyond, a strong season is… Read more... View the full article

At Tuesday’s Behind the Sims stream, fans got another look at the hotly-anticipated sequel to popular life simulator The Sims 4, Project Rene, known colloquially as The Sims 5. Read more... View the full article

One of the rarest and most powerful items in Blizzard’s newly released action-RPG, Diablo IV, has dropped for one very lucky player. Read more... View the full article

Among Us, indie studio Innersloth’s online multiplayer social deduction game and unwitting meme bait, is getting its own animated TV show. According to a Variety report, Innersloth is currently working alongside CBS Eye Animation Productions to make it happen. Read more... View the full article

Nintendo seems to be conceptualizing its long-awaited successor to the 2017-released Nintendo Switch, but it isn’t giving much details to what it might be, or when it might actually exist. The Legend of Zelda developer is, however, willing to say that whatever and whenever the new console releases, Nintendo… Read more... View the full article

Microsoft is fighting an injunction by the Federal Trade Commission against closing its $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard, and the ensuing trial has yielded all sorts of fascinating insights about the Xbox maker. From leaked emails of executives talking about “spending Sony out of business” to double… Read more... View the full article

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