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The special thing about AFROTECH™ Conference is that even as new people are introduced to it each year, there are also those who have been there since the beginning in 2016. The “OGs” of the conference have not only seen AFROTECH™ grow but have also experienced their own development over the years. Among those who jumped on board since the inaugural conference in San Francisco, CA, is Ruben Harris, CEO of Career Karma and OutRival. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ruben A. Harris (@rubenharris) Harris’ work is centered on education and career placement, helping people and organizations connect with top talent while simplifying workflow and integrating efficient models through technology and AI. The admissions teams at Career Karma use OutRival’s technology to create conversational AI agents to serve millions of people a month who visit the site for career advice. Currently, OutRival owns Career Karma, and Harris is the leader of both entities. Because of his emerging...
HBCU alum Dr. Anthony Harris is leading the future of medicine at Amazon. From An HBCU To Disrupting The Medical Space Dr. Harris, a 2002 graduate of Florida A&M University with Senegal roots, had early intentions of improving the healthcare industry. According to information shared with AFROTECH™, he even filed his first patent, a biomedical device, while in college. Upon receiving his undergraduate degree, he transitioned to a five-year dual degree program at Indiana University, obtaining a doctor of medicine degree and an MBA, his LinkedIn mentions. He also wore the hat of student body president at the university, becoming the first Black individual in this post. Harris’ early career trajectory led him to work in general surgery for 10 months, and then he pivoted into entrepreneurship. 2009 marked the launch of one of his first companies, Adroit Motion, which offered an articulating hand instrument with ergonomic hand control for minimally invasive surgery. That same year,...
Super Micro Computer’s ( SMCI ) stock dropped nearly 30% on Wednesday, Oct. 30, after the AI server maker’s auditor resigned. Ernst & Young (EY) resigned while auditing Super Micro’s fiscal year ending June 30, 2024, according to Yahoo Finance. The move comes after Hindenburg Research released a brief report in August alleging “accounting manipulation” at Super Micro. “We are resigning due to information that has recently come to our attention, which has led us to no longer be able to rely on management’s and the Audit Committee’s representations and to be unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management,” EY stated in its resignation letter. The accounting firm added that it can no longer provide audit services in compliance with “applicable laws or professional obligations.” In August, Hindenburg stated that its three-month investigation uncovered “glaring accounting red flags, evidence of undisclosed related party transactions, sanctions and export...
A teen has passed away following ongoing interaction with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. The New York Times reports that Sewell Setzer III developed an attachment to a chatbot from Character.AI named Dany, inspired by the “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen. The 14-year-old would engage in countless conversations with it, developing an interest that fluctuated between platonic and romantic. He sent dozens of messages and began to disassociate from his real-life passions and responsibilities, per the outlet, losing enjoyment in playing “Fortnite” with his friends and in Formula 1 racing . Instead, he would spend hours in his room conversing with Dany. At school, his grades began to drop, and he started getting into trouble. “I like staying in my room so much because I start to detach from this ‘reality,’ and I also feel more at peace, more connected with Dany and much more in love with her, and just happier,” Sewell wrote in his journal, according to the outlet....
Brandon Nicholson is a part of a nonprofit exposing Black males to technology. The Hidden Genius Project Nicholson, an AFROTECH™ Future 50 honoree, serves as CEO of The Hidden Genius Project, an Oakland, CA-based venture that curates several programs, mentoring Black male youth in technology creation, entrepreneurship, and leadership skills, according to its website. Nicholson reveals that the project was originally planned as a two-year initiative but ultimately grew into something much greater, now spanning nearly a decade. “As volunteers with no budget and no infrastructure and no real idea of what we’re doing and probably no business doing it at all, we set out to establish this first ever cohort in 2012,” he told AFROTECH™. “Five young men, high school age who are gonna commit to it just a short period. But what eventually became like a two-year program unbeknownst to literally everybody involved, it just, [was] building the plane as it was flying.” Today, The Hidden Genius...
Timbaland is expanding his portfolio, stepping into the role of strategic advisor for Suno, a leading AI music creation tool. After months of actively using the platform, the four-time GRAMMY-Award-winning artist will now provide Suno with daily support for product development and strategic creative direction, as stated in a press release. The collaboration starts with an exclusive preview of Timbaland’s latest single, “Love Again.” There’s also a Remix Contest judged by Timbaland, with over $100,000 in prizes awarded to the winning remixes. Digital service providers will release the top two remixes. “When I heard what Suno was doing, I was immediately curious,” said Timbaland, who is well-known for his influence as a music producer, creator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. “After witnessing the potential, I knew I had to be a part of it. By combining forces, we have a unique opportunity to make AI work for the artist community and not the other way around. We’re seizing that...
Jaylen Brown has designed courses that champion STEM education to empower students. As the founder of the 7uice Foundation, he aims to create better educational outcomes for underserved youth of color, with support from institutions, organizations, and social change leaders, its website mentions. Its four pillars include: Entrepreneurship and financial literacy Health and wellness Leadership and activism Sustainability and technology The foundation also offers a Bridge Program in partnership with MIT’s Media Lab with a four-day camp held during the summer for students in eighth through 12th grade. Brown designed a science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) curriculum for the program, which includes space exploration, synthetic biology, and artificial intelligence, as he revealed during a conversation on “The Stephen A. Smith Show.” “I designed a curriculum over at MIT pretty much every summer… I take kids from Dorchester, from Roxbury, from underrepresented...
As a Black woman tech executive at Amazon, Mamar Gelaye is on a mission to diversify the industry. Gelaye, an Ethiopia native, has a decades-long career spanning more than 20 years that dates back to her time as a management consultant at Accenture. Her interest in technology was evident while attending the University of Tennessee, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. She even worked on a hybrid electric vehicle project during this time. Belief In Technology Her faith in the advancements of technology remained strong, and following her time at Accenture, she pursued roles that reflected this. “I just really understood that technology was going to transform a great deal. I just understood that software was gonna control the machine,” she explained. “So when I left management consulting, I went into large industrial companies that were kind of big manufacturing, but manufacturing through automation, through kind of transformational engineering.” In...
Career Karma’s Ruben Harris and Timur Meyster have co-founded an AI-powered platform that aims to improve customer experience teams. Since 2018, Harris and Meyster have been building out customer experience teams through Career Karma, a platform designed for people to break into the tech industry. It has been tasked with answering numerous calls to assist its users on job training and questions related to their career trajectory. Beyond Career Karma, Harris has had several conversations with customer experience leaders to have a deeper understanding of what is needed to create more optimal solutions. This materialized into an artificial intelligence (AI) agent, which had already been deployed at Career Karma. “On nights and weekends or on holidays, people could come to Career Karma and still have some kind of human feeling interaction that guided them into job training programs and what we learned is that other companies and industries are going to also have to do that as well,”...
Fearless Fund has made a new investment, following a court victory. Fearless Fund is more than one month removed from the settlement of a major court battle that centered its Strivers Grant program, which allocated $20,000 in funding to Black-woman-owned businesses. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, a lawsuit had been filed by the American Alliance for Equal Rights group as it claimed the program operated with “explicit racial exclusion.” The case has been settled between the parties, resulting in the grant program’s closure. However, the move was viewed as a victory by Fearless Fund, which only had one grant left to disperse from the program, and the final decision allowed the firm to “strategically” avoid a Supreme Court ruling — something that could have impacted the greater population of Black business owners seeking funding. “This is a WIN and positive outcome for the Fearless Fund and our community,” Fearless Fund stated on AFROTECH™’s Instagram at the time. “We strategically...
Nicky Saunders has tips and tricks to scale your digital presence. Saunders, a content strategist and CEO of Deeper Than The Brand since 2018, understands firsthand what it takes to build online. Called “the voice of content branding,” her platform offers helpful content creation suggestions that can be beneficial to businesses and content creators. Of late, she has heavily geared content around the various ways technology can be a resource, such as using an iPhone to edit live photos or artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT or Opus Clip. The latter allows users to repurpose long videos into shorter clips with one click, per its website. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nicky Saunders | The Voice Of Content Branding 🏁🦁🏁 1 of 1 (@thisisnickys) Thanks to her expertise, Saunders has built an online following of 12,000 subscribers via YouTube while impressing on Instagram with 187,000 followers at the time of this writing. Screenshot taken via Instagram /...
Will.i.am sees great value in the upcoming AFROTECH™ Conference. The breeding ground for tech professionals who are looking to learn and be submerged in a collaborative atmosphere is making its way to Houston, TX, for the first time, and it will be held Nov. 13-16 at the George R. Brown Convention Center. View this post on Instagram A post shared by AFROTECH™ Conference (@afrotech.conference) Among the panels announced, so far, is the Women’s Summit Stage, which will uplift women in their professional journeys. For the first time, the conference will also host the Health & Environmental Equity Summit in addition to the AI Stage. It is the activations being held this year that have the interest of will.i.am as he sees various changemakers across the industry coming to the conference. Haven’t purchased your ticket yet? Click here now. “Getting things off the ground and bringing people together, inspiring people to come, travel, and be a part of something and belong to something,...
As technology continues to evolve, it creates new avenues for industries to grow along with it. While controversy surrounds tech being used in music, such as AI-generated songs, it also creates a positive impact for musicians. Among the panels at the 2023 AFROTECH ™ Conference was “From Beats to Bytes: The Convergence of Music and Tech,” moderated by Marc Byers, the former general manager of Motown Records and founder of Protect The Culture. During the panel discussion, Nigerian producer and singer Pheelz and Ghanaian-born songwriter and artist Lord Afrixana discussed the pros and cons of merging technology and music. Pheelz expressed how tech has made the world “small” but also put artists on a “global stage.” For him, this exposure allowed him to watch his hit record “Finesse” blow up in real time via the power of tech and social media , specifically. “I was just at home in a place called Gbagada in Lagos making the song in my room, and I just posted a video with my friend, and...
DryMerge has raised $2.2 million to make automation easier with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The company was co-founded by Edward Frazer and Samuel Brashears. The pair, who first met in elementary school, made sacrifices to focus their full attention on the company. University of Wisconsin graduate Brashears walked away from a role at Hive AI while Frazer dropped out of Yale University to pursue the venture, a press release mentions. The founders recently participated in the Y Combinator Winter 2024 Batch startup accelerator program. “…I’m a pretty young founder – I dropped out of Yale to build the company and my cofounder Sam had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin,” Frazer wrote on LinkedIn . “I knew very little about how people worked, what problems they had, or how to solve those problems — and importantly, I didn’t care — I figured it’d be enough to build cool technology and watch the users appear out of thin air.” He continued, “It wasn’t until midway...
Former Yale University students are making it easier to spot counterfeit drugs. Per TechCrunch, Adebayo Alonge, Amy Kao and Wei Lui launched healthcare startup RxAll in 2016. The inception of the company was in response to their own experience with counterfeit drugs. For Alonge, it was nearly fatal after he took a medicine that contained a dangerous amount of diazepam, while Kao’s experience left her hospitalized. “I survived a 21-day coma in Nigeria 15 years ago. My co-founder, Amy, was hospitalized in Thailand after taking counterfeit medicine. And Wei lost a family member due to contaminated drugs,” Alonge told TechCrunch. While students they were able to pick each other’s brains during a research and development project and found further information to validate their concerns. “100,000 Africans die from this problem every year. One million people die across the world from this problem,” Alonge mentioned . This led to RxAll’s inaugural product RxScanner, a device powered by...