Naz, 22, had never ventured faraway from her range in Orangi Town in Karachi, one among the five largest slums of the planet , but was feeling dissatisfied together with her current teaching job.

So she signed up for a tech programme called TechKaro, an initiative by Circle — a social enterprise that aims to enhance women’s economic rights in Pakistan — and is now working full-time for a software company.

Naz said the course was challenging in some ways but she soon found that the ladies on the training were even as good because the men at tech skills like coding, web development and digital marketing, and also at presenting themselves at interviews. “From developing our CVs, to giving us recommendations on dressing for work, to conducting ourselves during an interview and the way to battle some sticky questions. We were groomed for everything,” said Naz.

Women structure about 25 per cent of Pakistan’s labour force, one among rock bottom within the region, consistent with the planet Bank.

It has set a target to extend this to 45pc, calling for more childcare and a crackdown on harassment to encourage more women bent work and boost economic process .

In Pakistan, women represent only 14pc of the IT workforce, consistent with a 2012 study by P@SHA, the Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS).
Gap within the market

Sadaffe Abid, chief executive of Circle, found out TechKaro with the assistance of a couple of private foundations in 2018 seeing this gender gap, and took on 50 trainees within the first year, of which 62pc were women and 75 in 2019, including 66pc women.

Abid, who previously worked for a micro-finance institution, said she was delighted that ladies like Naz were proving that ladies could achieve the tech world.

“I am a firm believer that one among the foremost powerful uses of technology is to bring it to young women, especially from under-served communities, to unlock their talents, resourcefulness and creativity,” said Abid.

“People told me I won’t find women, or women will drop call at high numbers, or after completing the course, women won’t find employment because the industry won’t be hospitable hiring this unique diverse group with no degree in computing .

But i might say 50pc of the graduates, a majority of whom are women, have found add software companies,” said Abid, who also brought She Loves Tech to Pakistan, one among the world’s largest women and startup competitions globally.

TechKaro is one among the newest programmes within the country aimed toward helping women crack the traditionally male domain. CodeGirls Pakistan, a Karachi-based camp , trains girls from middle and low-income families in coding and business skills.

In 2017, a six-week camp, SheSkills, taught women everything from web development and digital design to social media marketing.

After attending the TechKaro course, Naz found work earlier this year at an IT company earning double the salary she was getting as an educator but which meant leaving her neighbourhood, using conveyance , and dealing side-by-side with men.

“I had never ventured out on my very own and that i was dead scared the primary time I had to try to to it, but now it’s just fine,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview by telephone from Orangi Town.

“The remainder of Karachi isn’t quite the large bad wolf I’d imagined it to be,” said Naz, who navigated an app-based transit startup to scale back her time period by two hours each day .

“It gave me tons of confidence once I asked my employers if they might have a drag with my wearing the niqab (a veil that fully covers the face) and that they said they were only curious about my work performance.”
Work from home

Naz said women trying to interrupt into new careers in Pakistan could face resistance not just within the workplace but reception .

The youngest of seven, she said she had the complete support of her mother, who doesn’t work, and her younger brother.

“But we had to cover this from my older brother, who is married and lives separately, as he was unhappy even with my working as an educator ,” she said.

She described the course of three-hour sessions held 3 times every week for eight months as gruelling but worthwhile.

She paid Rs500 a month for the course that involved 75 men and ladies and another Rs2,400 on bus fares to attend workshops after mornings of teaching, and sometimes spent three to four hours on homework in the dark .

“I had thought men would be better at this, but once I was within the thick of things, I realised that wasn’t the case. Anyone can learn, if they put their mind thereto ,” she said.

A month since the lockdown was announced thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, Naz is functioning remotely.

“We use Zoom and Google Hangout for meetings and our tasks are placed on Trello,” she said, comfortable with the technology.

With no time period or transport costs, she is enjoying performing from home.

“For those women whose families don’t allow them to exit of their homes, this type of labor would be ideal. All you would like may be a computer and therefore the internet,” she said.

Abid said TechKaro has continued its work during the coronavirus lockdown by going “fully digital” so women can still learn tech skills from home.

“We have received applications from all across Pakistan,” she said. “Our aim is to scale this up to thousands of young women for in their success is Pakistan’s prosperity.”tech

Many of these have gone to hospitals, where the XR-1 provides information to patients and helps guide visitors to the proper department.

The artificial intelligence (AI) incorporated into the machines means they will operate their own. They are also connected to the newest 5G mobile networks, which suggests they will react very quickly.

“The fast speeds and wide reach of 5G networks make them ideal for XR-1, which interacts by talking, gesturing, dancing and physically guiding people,” says CloudMinds president Karl Zhao.

According to Wuhan Wuchang military hospital dean Wan Jun, they need been helpful. “CloudMinds robots’ contactless operation and reliability supported the sector hospital through a difficult time,” he says.

A few dozen robots isn’t getting to make an enormous dent within the coronavirus outbreak, but it might be a symbol of what is coming.

Artificial intelligence has made big progress in tasks like processing speech, which is making digital helpers more and more useful.

Dr Anita Montes, an obstetrician-gynaecologist based in North Carolina, says voice-enabled app Suki saves her “hours and hours a day” writing notes.
Image copyright Anita Montes
Image caption Dr Montes uses a digital assistant to require notes

“Proper charting is significant to good patient care,” she says.

She thinks the service could be helpful for doctors who are handling Covid-19 patients as a result: “They might be spending 12 hours seeing patients, then hours more charting them, so any tools which will cut the time it takes are really helpful.”

Until now, most people’s experience of digital assistants has been limited to recreationally focused services like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri.

“Business usage is growing, but the digital assistant market is usually residential at the instant ,” says Blake Kozak, an analyst at global technology researcher Omdia.

But quarantined helpers are turning to AI tools for help.

“We are currently fixing more meetings than we ever have before,” says Dennis Mortensen, chief executive and co-founder of x.ai, an AI meeting scheduling tool that emails participants with potential times.

“The situation is making people address software solutions, and that i doubt they’re going to return once things return to normal.”

That’s excellent news for Microsoft, which recently began removing consumer-facing features like controlling music from its assistant Cortana’s skill set, and concentrating on personal productivity applications like reading emails aloud and scheduling meetings.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Microsoft wants Cortana to be a private productivity tool

“There may be a need for an assistant which will transcend answering questions or setting alarms,” Microsoft said during a statement.

“Our ultimate goal for Cortana is to make an assistant which will assist you revisit time through your day so you’ll specialise in the items that matter most.”

However, for anyone keen to use a digital assistant to lighten their load, Mr Mortensen advises choosing a variety of tools that every do one thing well.

“I don’t expect anybody digital assistant to be ready to do everything, but I do think we’ll see start to ascertain AI agents being employed to try to to very well-defined tasks within subsequent five years,” he says.

“You might need 10 or 11 to try to to all the small jobs you would like doing, but if we will get all of them to speak to every other, they might do truly great things.”

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The robots helping to fight coronavirus

The staff at New York-based AI specialist IPsoft hope that’s the case.

It develops software packages designed to fulfil roles traditionally performed by people, like an IT service desk engineer.

Via its new online marketplace, prospective employers can interview the company’s assistant Amelia to make a decision if they ought to combat a digital employee instead of an individual .

Costing $1,800 (£1,460) a month, their IT troubleshooter can reset passwords, unlock accounts and affect up to 1,000 inquiries a month.

So should humans be worried about these up-and-coming digital rivals?

Not consistent with Chloe Jessamy of admin support and digital marketing company Supportal Business Services in London.
Image copyright Chloe Jessamy, Supportal Business Services
Image caption Chloe Jessamy isn’t concerned about the challenge from digital assistants

Her company supplies services, including PAs and web design, performed by humans, not computers.

“I am not in the least worried about digital assistants,” she says.

“My clients want hands-on support and communication, which needs a person’s touch. There’s only such a lot automation you’ll use.”

Dr Will Venters, professor of data systems at the London School of Economics, supports this view.

“Bots need careful management,” he says

"They won’t question their work, they hold no ethical compass, they can’t easily explain how they received a choice and that they cannot understand the biases they could be applying.

“Further, they work so quickly that the issues they cause can rapidly scale out of control.”

So having a digital helper might cause you to more productive, but it’s worth remembering that they’re not perfect.

After years in which it seemed the local surgery was stuck in the digital dark ages, many have leapfrogged into the future in a matter of weeks, offering online and video consultations to patients.

Much of the change has been led by a tiny start-up whose whole approach has been deliberately low tech. Two years ago, AccuRx started offering a service that allows GP practices to communicate with their patients by text message - an “embarrassingly simple messaging solution” as founder Jacob Haddad puts it.

“No AI, no blockchain,” he laughs.

Despite many practices still struggling to move out of the fax machine era, it proved popular. By early March, about half of all the GPs in England, and some in Wales, were using the service to tell patients their test results were fine or they could pick up a prescription.

Then, as it became clear that Covid-19 was going to have a big impact, AccuRx started offering new services that would make it easier for surgeries to deal with patients remotely.

“We’ve just been all hands on deck, getting features out,” says Mr Haddad.

“Video consultations, a facility to send documents to patients and get responses, remote monitoring of patients.”

Again, the approach has been pretty low-tech, designed to work with whatever devices doctors and patients may have.

The consultations usually start with a simple phone call, then if the GP decides they want to see something - perhaps a rash - the patient is sent a text with a link to activate a video call.

• I was given a demonstration. When I clicked on the link, I was given a choice either to install an app or to use the phone’s browser.

• I chose the browser option, and although the video quality was not brilliant, it did the job.

From a standing start at the beginning of March, AccuRx’s video consultations have taken off, and are now running at 35,000 a day.

With all sorts of practices suddenly eager to find new ways of working, more than 90% of GPs across England have signed up.

Surely, then, it must be coining it? No, because right now its services are free, although the company is hoping that in the longer term the NHS and other health services around the world will pay for its products.

Like many an ambitious young tech start-up, the firm is “pre-revenue”. It’s backed by about £9m of venture capital money from investors, who hope the “build it and they will come” philosophy will lead to big returns. It is growing fast but still has just 31 employees.

An even younger smaller operation is also showing how the doctor-patient relationship can be transformed in the smartphone era.

Just six weeks ago, an entrepreneurial GP, Dr Alexander Finlayson, launched NYE Health.

He describes it as a way to make the clinician’s own device - whether that’s their phone, tablet or desktop web browser - “NHS-compliant”.
Image copyright NYE Health

It means that doctors - whether in hospital or GP surgeries - can have video and audio conversations with patients or with other health workers in a secure way.

Dr Finlayson, who has worked on global health projects in Somalia and elsewhere, says NYE had been under way as a theoretical project for a while.

When confronted with the coronavirus crisis, he and a team of designers, engineers, and clinicians put the product together over an intense three-day brainstorming session.

It was released on 13 March and has already done tens of thousands of consultations, with users everywhere from intensive therapy units to dermatology departments and GP surgeries.

Just like AccuRx, NYE is pre-revenue and has not really thought much yet about a business model.

But it has already attracted interest from potential overseas customers and is being advised by Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone. Only 18 people are working on the project, but it sounds as though they could soon need to recruit many more.

The trailblazer for video consultations in the UK was Babylon, which offers the GP at Hand service.

This provides an alternative to the GP surgery and has proved popular with time-poor young professionals in London, who can book a video consultation at short notice rather than wait weeks to see the doctor.

Babylon, which also makes great play of its work applying artificial intelligence to healthcare, raised $550m (£439m) last year from backers including the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, at a valuation of $2bn.

You might think that this was a business expanding rapidly during the current health crisis. Instead it is taking advantage of the government’s job retention scheme to furlough 5% of its 2,000-strong workforce.

In a letter to staff, chief executive Ali Parsa said ideas his company had pioneered, such as the provision of healthcare on a mobile phone, had now become commonplace.

“There are many others who are doing the same thing and the current crisis has forced mass adoption and commoditisation of these technologies,” he wrote.

A spokesman told me that Babylon no longer considered itself a telemedicine company, and was shifting its focus to AI.

It seems the disrupter has been disrupted, and minnows like AccuRx and NYE may play a bigger role in transforming healthcare delivery in the UK than the mighty Babylon.

[right]کمپنی نے منگل کو اعلان کیا کہ فیس بک اپنی چہرے کی شناخت کی خصوصیات کو بند کرنے میں آسان تر بنا رہا ہے اور اب وہ خود بخود نئے صارفین کو فیس ٹیگنگ کا انتخاب نہیں کرے گا۔

فیس بک اپنے صارفین کے اپ لوڈ کردہ فوٹو میں چہروں کی شناخت کے لئے چہرے کی پہچان کا استعمال کرتا ہے۔ اس سے کمپنی کو “ٹیگ تجاویز” نامی ایک خصوصیت میں ، آپ کے دوستوں کی فہرست کی بنیاد پر خود بخود ٹیگ تجویز کرنے کی اجازت ملی۔

2017 میں ، کمپنی نے “چہرے کی شناخت” کی وسیع تر ترتیب کے ساتھ “ٹیگ تجاویز” کو تبدیل کرنا شروع کیا۔ اس ٹیگ کی تجاویز کو کنٹرول کیا گیا ، نیز فیس بک کے صارفین کو متنبہ کرنے کی صلاحیت اگر ان کی تصاویر پلیٹ فارم پر کسی اور کے ذریعہ استعمال ہو رہی ہیں۔ لیکن فیس بک کے سبھی صارفین کے لئے “چہرے کی پہچان” کی ترتیب دستیاب نہیں تھی ، اور فیڈرل ٹریڈ کمیشن نے ٹیگ کی تجاویز کو “دھوکہ دہی” قرار دیا کیوں کہ اسے بطور ڈیفالٹ قابل بنایا گیا تھا۔ رازداری کے دیگر حامیوں نے اس خصوصیت کو تنقید کا نشانہ بنایا کیونکہ “ٹیگ کی تجاویز” نام سے یہ واضح نہیں ہوسکا کہ فیس بک اپنے صارفین کے بارے میں بائیو میٹرک ڈیٹا اسٹور کررہا ہے۔
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[right]اب یہ بدل رہا ہے۔ جو بھی شخص پہلے سے ہی “چہرے کی پہچان” ترتیب نہیں رکھتا ہے اسے اپ ڈیٹ کے ساتھ ساتھ اس کی خصوصیت اور اس کو غیر فعال کرنے کی صلاحیت کی وضاحت کرنے والا نوٹیفکیشن بھی مل جائے گا۔ “ٹیگ تجاویز” کی خصوصیت مزید نہیں ہوگی ، اور فیس بک خود بخود نئے صارفین کو اس فیچر میں شامل نہیں کرے گا ، حالانکہ جو بھی پہلے اس کو فعال کرتا تھا اس کا انتخاب جاری رکھے گا جب تک کہ وہ اپنی ترتیبات کو اپ ڈیٹ نہیں کرتے۔

آپ اپنی فیس بک کی رازداری کی ترتیبات کے تحت “چہرے کی شناخت” کو منتخب کرکے یا اس لنک کے ذریعے اپنی ترتیبات کو چیک کرسکتے ہیں۔

اس کے چہرے کو پہچاننے والی ٹیک پر سوشل نیٹ ورک کو اس وقت اربوں ڈالر کے مقدمے کا سامنا ہے۔ مقدمہ 2015 کا ہے ، لیکن آہستہ آہستہ اس کی پیشرفت ہوتی رہی ہے - اور ابھی تک فیس بک کے حق میں نہیں ہے۔ کمپنی نے حال ہی میں ایک اپیل کھو دی جس میں اس نے مقدمہ خارج کرنے کی کوشش کی تھی۔

ایف ٹی سی نے اس بارے میں بھی نئے قواعد نافذ کردیئے ہیں کہ کس طرح کیمبرج اینالیٹیکا اسکینڈل کے معاملے میں فیس بک کمپنی کے ساتھ معاہدے کے ایک حصے کے طور پر چہرے کی پہچان کو استعمال کرسکتی ہے۔ ایف ٹی سی نے کہا کہ سوشل نیٹ ورک کو “اس کے چہرے کو پہچاننے والی ٹکنالوجی کے استعمال کے بارے میں واضح اور واضح نوٹس دینا چاہئے۔”[/right]