Weekly Barometer 25 janvier 2012

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

OCTOBER 2015

ATONRÂ PARTNERS SA 12, Rue Pierre Fatio – 1204 GENEVA – SWITZERLAND - Tel: + 41 22 310 15 01 http://www.atonra.ch

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

THE 3RD AND FINAL STAGE OF TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

Over the years, we have extensively covered the ongoing technological evolution in our

Weekly Barometers. But when meeting with investors, we often face the same questions

and notably: What is Artificial Intelligence really about?

Artificial Intelligence is about computer systems doing what is usually performed by the

human intelligence

That’s why we believe we have entered into in the 3rd and final stage of the technological

evolution in which:

automation allows computer systems to control other machines

and, more importantly, to replicate the five human senses

While AI is not a new concept (1930s), what really makes

it interesting today is the conjunction of different factors:

rising computing power, reliable networking, more R&D

efforts from universities and labs, advancement in new

materials and, last but not least, the continued need from

corporations to improve productivity

However this is a development that is just beginning and before we can have all of the five

senses truly replicated, many years (if not decades) of R&D are still ahead of us

In addition we would be wary of pockets of hype: some innovations are called AI but have

nothing to do with it as they rely on existing technologies and mainly on “data extraction”

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

The different stages of technological evolution can be summarized as follows:

TOOL (prehistoric man) → This was the 1st stage of technological evolution

MACHINE (the British industrial revolution) → Represents the 2nd major stage of tech

evolution

AUTOMATION is the 3rd and final one, with the removal of the human control from the

machine

Evolution (as per the Darwin theory) is nature’s modification through small variations over a

long period of time, but recent technologies modified:

the speed at which changes have been taking place since the 2nd half of the 20th century

the potential to change humans’ biological boundaries

Nothing can stop the pace of innovation (it’s in human nature) and today’s and tomorrow’s

techniques are only giving a boost to the ongoing pace of innovation

A sole item is not responsible for the take-off of AI and Robotics, rather the combination of

several techniques. But two variables are acting as very important catalysts:

Internet → Plays a very important role as an information and collaborative tool

Productivity → This is the real engine (together with competition) for corporations to stay

ahead (and keep alive) vs. the competition

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

WHERE ARE WE HEADING?

In order to better understand and possibly answer this question we must first understand the

human nature itself

According to Prof. Nayef Al-Rodhan, a world recognized neuroscientist who heads the

Geopolitics and Global Futures Program at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy

Human Nature is emotional and amoral

if humans have to deal with hostile environments, moral norms won’t prevail

a minimum of well-being in addition to a common ownership, must be earned

AI tries to master the methods of biology (including the human intelligence), one of the best

examples being the Blue Brain Project in Lausanne, Switzerland, which got $1.3B in funding

the idea is that we could have (not before some decades) a merger of biology and human

technology that would expand human intelligence

While in the Western world this is seen as worrisome

(the Lausanne example shows how mindsets evolve),

Japan has a different view

Japanese believe that everything (and every object)

has a spirit, explaining why the country is one of the

leaders in the Robotics space

and notably the first country to have come out with a

robot (developed by Mr. Hiroshi Ishiguro) that looks and

behaves as an human

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

WHERE ARE WE HEADING AND WHERE DO WE CURRENTLY STAND?

According to Vernor Vinge “We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human

life on Earth”

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

THE MERGER OF TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

This picture is self-explanatory…From “The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

DO WE REALLY NEED TO WORRY ABOUT AI AND ROBOTS?

A serious debate has been taking place in the last two years about the possible impact of AI

and Robots on many fields of the economy and on the role of humanity

Mr. Stephen Hawking warned the world about the possible dangers of AI stating that:

“the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”

Elon Musk (founder of Tesla) called AI as:

“our greatest existential threat” and “summoning the demon”

Mr. Bill Gates also stated that:

“I don’t understand why some people are not concerned with AI”

The irony here is that these people all use or stand to benefit

from AI:

Mr. Hawking uses an AI system that learns how the professor

thinks and then suggests words he might want to use next

Mr. Musk’s Tesla cars already come with a built-in driver assist

system and his company is almost ready to have cars driving without human assistance →

Mr. Musk was also one of the early investors in DeepMind (bought by Google)

and Microsoft is currently developing the Personal Agent project, a system which helps

people with their memory, attention and focus

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

A “SOMEWHAT” DIFFERENT VIEW FROM GOOGLE AND DEEPMIND

Since Google hired Ray Kurzweil in 2012, as director of engineering focused on machine

learning and language processing,

The company has made many interesting acquisitions and notably Jetpac and DeepMind

Jetpac is a system that looks for visual cues to determine contextual information about the

area where a photo was taken, and reviews that visual information to determine what’s

actually happening in a given location

DeepMind (a UK start-up) on the other hand is much more intriguing and vague but tries to

build a system that thinks…

… based on deep learning (or artificial neural networks), in which the function of the brain is

mimicked, and tasks can be solved without prior programming

But what’s even more interesting is that Google agreed to establish

an ethical board to ensure DeepMind’s artificial intelligence technology isn’t abused

and it is believed (not confirmed by Google) that Google already uses a handful of DeepMind

features for its search engine

One interesting feature of the DeepMind acquisition is that the founder (Mr. Demis

Hassabis) has developed much of his interest by developing computer games

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

VIDEO GAMES ARE A MAJOR FIELD OF EXPERIMENTATION FOR AI

On its website, Microsoft Research says the following about AI: “Let us begin with a

provocative question: In which area of human life is AI currently applied the most? The

answer, by a large margin, is Computer Games.“

Indeed, the video game industry can be seen as a pioneer in

the field of AI:

most games have been using AI to generate intelligent

behaviors in non-player characters and opponents

since the industry’s take-off in the 70s and 80s and its most

basic characters

until today’s realistic characters

Today, the relation between AI and video games is as strong

as ever:

while Microsoft talks about “a mutually beneficial combination”.

On the one hand, AI technology can provide solutions to an increasing demand to add

realistic, intelligent behavior to the virtual creatures that populate a game world

on the other hand, as game environments become more complex and realistic, they offer a

range of excellent testbeds for fundamental AI research.”

Google, when experimenting AI, does it with video games. Notably, Google’s DeepMind AI

software played retro Atari games. Out of 49 games, Google's AI outperformed humans in 29

games and the best-known algorithmic methods in 43 cases

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

VIDEO GAMES AND AI: VR COMING NEXT

Virtual reality, the next evolution in gaming, will only strengthen the interactions between AI

and video games

While research into virtual environments and research into AI have largely been carried out

separately, by different groups of people with different objectives, convergence is now

apparent

as game developers now have to produce intelligent digital environments

Interestingly, Facebook lists both AI and VR among its major initiatives and is expected to

make a major push into VR next year when it releases the Oculus headset

Zuckerberg: “we’re working on VR because I think it’s the next major computing and

communication platform after phones”

In conclusion, video games are a major

area of experimentation for AI and what

happens in this industry should be watched

closely

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

WHERE’S THE “HOT MONEY” GOING?

With some high-profile acquisitions made in the past two years by Google and others such

as Apple, Facebook, Baidu etc.

And dramatic improvements in technologies and materials, and the constant need by

corporations to be more efficient and competitive in an ever increasing globalized world

a lot of VC money has started to flow into this sector

ranging from drones to medical and non-medical robots, sensors, computer vision, speech

recognition, energy savings…

According to a Bloomberg study, machine learning and deep learning saw a 20-fold increase

in VC money from 2010 levels (admittedly from very low levels and mainly into startups)

This is particularly important for the future of AI & Robotics, as competition among startups

and bigger companies is to drive future growth which:

is to drive even more innovation (an innovation virtuous cycle is thus in sight) and more

products and services in the market that need to be more effective and valuable

We think that interest is likely to get much stronger in the coming years, as all the economic

sectors are to be impacted including financial, retail, marketing, consumer electronics,

accounting…

With this in mind we believe that we are only at the beginning of the cycle, which is likely to

last for the next few years

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

MONETIZING AI: TRANSFORMING DATA INTO REVENUE STREAMS

Data is growing exponentially, supported by the adoption of cloud, mobile and social

networking and soon IoT, with IDC/EMC claiming that the world’s information is doubling

every 18 months

As such Artificial Intelligence systems or applications associated with AI are set to become

more accurate and more mainstream in the next few years as:

AI systems are fed with data and do learn from data (any kind of data including unstructured

data) → The more the data, the better DeepLerning techniques are to become

Firms are incentivized to get access to new revenue streams and/or better efficiencies by

investing in data mining and data-analysis systems, however such systems:

rely (at the design/programming level) on people with very high skills who are expensive, as

such only accessible to a limited number of companies

and this largely explains why the bulk of data (90%) is still unused

During the last few years, very successful SaaS business models (such as Salesforce in

CRM) took off, as they were able to offer products with a clear utility function and accessible

to the most at a competitive price

We believe that the best business models around tomorrow’s applications based on AI (such

as predictive modelling, decision analysis etc.) are likely to be SaaS-based

allowing corporation to boost their sales and reduce costs

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

MONETIZING AI: MAIN APPLICATIONS IN THE CORPORATE WORLD

While analytics software have been historically used for risk assessment purposes,

notably in the insurance/banking sector by helping to define, measure, and manage risk

(credit scoring…)

The combination of Big Data and algorithms makes them much more powerful today and

enable a new range of opportunities

Decision Analytics notably is rising fast:

these tools help to price product and services, detect and prevent fraud, predict future

losses…

In other word, they power the decision-making process in almost all industries and functions

Specifically, marketing applications are numerous:

decision analytics software tracks and analyzes marketing campaigns, KPIs and customer

behavior to identify untapped marketing opportunities

and can make recommendations on corporate marketing programs and on how to acquire

and retain customers

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

DATA STANDS AT THE CORE OF AI SYSTEMS

Big Data (and large data sets) has been a boon for AI, as the more the data the better AI systems

perform, as some of those systems use statistical and probabilistic models

When we speak to people working in the AI (or cognitive technologies) space, one of the main

recurring problems is data availability

and accessibility

Most of the techniques used in AI try to discover patterns

from large data sets

for example in NLP (natural language processing)

large data sets are needed to have an automatic

system that extracts the main topics from the

document and self generate a correct and

readable text

another example comes from Computer Vision,

where a large database of images is needed as a

way to train the model to recognize persons,

shapes, colours etc. and improve for example

the ability by such systems to classify objects

If data is not available, most of the algorithms developed are useless, as they can not train

themselves in order to suggest better results

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

DO THOSE CONTROLLING DATA STAND TO CONTROL EVERYTHING?

Lately we held discussions with one of the world’s prominent professors in the field of AI

he told us that he had a great patented algorithm which could match people’s wishes in terms

of hotel accommodation with hotels’ own service offerings and availability

When his lab asked for more data from the likes of TripAdvisor, he was told that these

companies were thinking to develop such systems by their own

and that they would not give away nor sell their data

While there’s a ton of data available nowadays, with this example we have shown that in the

future this data might not be accessible to all

And those corporations with huge data sets (such as Google, Facebook, Amazon etc.)

coming from from billions of Internet-connected devices are the ones to stand out and the

likely winners

unless new business models (I give you access to my system which has a utility function in

exchange for data collection) are invented by new startups

Our key questions (we have no answers yet) are the following:

why are people so silly to give away their data (which has a great value) for nothing?

why the concept of a “free” internet is only applicable to a few?

what if the Telecom Operators (those transmitting data and as such sitting on a golden mine)

are to take control of this data? We think this explains why Facebook and Google are to

develop their Telecom infrastructure even more

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

MONETIZING AI IN THE REAL WORLD: ROBOTS AND IoT

While AI is already extremely powerful, it is essentially a geek stuff for now

sophisticated software enabling to extract and analyze data and powering the decision-

making process

If AI wants to show off its abilities at some point and become more mainstream, it will have

to interact with the real world

Robots will obviously be a major application

but AI can also interact with the real world through the RFID (and IoT) technologies, which we

have long been highlighting in past Weekly Barometers

As no one in the market has really the financial power of Google, those willing to enter the AI

and Robotics race are obliged to think market-wise

and to come up with products that generate cash-flows, which could eventually be reinvested

into R&D

There’s a number of start-ups and listed companies currently working in AI for a myriad of

applications (from advertising to security, defense etc.) and this is a field that is likely to

continue to see a lot of inflows in the next few years

due to the potential of the addressable market

in addition to the discoveries it might bring and the problems it might solve

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

RISE OF THE (COLLABORATIVE) ROBOTS

As commented in previous pages, robots and, specifically, collaborative robots

are likely to be of AI’s main applications

We have long been highlighting the promising outlook for the industry, stating that the next-

generation of robots has a compelling ROI proposition

keeping in mind that robots can work 24/7, never call in sick, never go on strike…

Current generations of robots are easier to program and come with features such as vision

and touch technologies

making them a first choice for all the heavy lifting and dangerous tasks and almost all the

precise work

Collaborative robots can work alongside humans without a safety cage, meaning they can

easily be deployed within a factory

And last but not least,

collaborative robots are much less expensive than

traditional robots, suggesting that deploying a fleet

of robots for a large industrial group is quite easy

$30-40k on average vs. $50-250k for traditional

industrial robots + high integration costs

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

NEW PRODUCT CYCLE TO PROPEL THE ROBOTIC INDUSTRY

Importantly, we believe that we are at the early stage of a new product cycle as most legacy

players (ABB, Fanuc, Kuka…) and newcomers (Universal Robots, ReThink Robotics)

are expected to ship new products this year or next

while privately-held ReThink Robotics is now shipping Sawyer at less than $30k (not far from

Universal’s price point)

ABB has announced YuMi, priced at $40k

and Kuka, which currently retails a collaborative robot which we do not view as competitive

(price point above $50k), is expected to launch a “low-cost” version in 2016

These new products and price points come at a time when rising labor costs in emerging

markets and more specifically in China

will probably spark some factories to switch from humans to robots,

something Foxconn has talked about for a pretty long time

Hence, we believe these numerous product introductions and lower price points will

significantly expand the market and suggest that current expectations leave room for upside

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

LOW EXPECTATIONS LEAVE ROOM FOR MAJOR UPSIDE

The International Federation of Robotics expects only mid-teens shipment growth for the

robot market over coming years (with logical price erosion)

That sounds like a very conservative forecast given the +29% shipment growth recorded last

year and the new product cycle

To put this another way, there are roughly 1 billion people performing manual labor around

the world:

assuming robots replace only 5% of these jobs in 10 years, the robot market would reach

50M units or 5M units per year on average, compared to 229,000 in 2014…

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

“SOFTWARE” TO RESHUFFLE THE CARDS IN THE ROBOT INDUSTRY

Contrary to what most people think

we believe the barriers to entry are pretty low in the Robot industry

A robot is basically a combination of

steel, servo-motors, sensors, tools to perform tasks (such as cutting lasers and other

equipment) and software (OS, machine vision…)

Considering that steel, servo-motors, sensors and tools are widely available

new players can easily step in and develop their own robots, as illustrated by the emergence

of companies such as ReThink and Universal Robots in the last few years

Even if we admit that gaining credibility and customers is not an easy task (as in most

businesses), in our view the advent of collaborative robots could dramatically reshuffle the

cards in the robot industry, as software becomes a critical component

as an illustration, ReThink Robotics’ first robot, Baxter fell behind Universal's model on speed

and precision, according to Frank Tobe of industry site The Robot Report and as a

consequence, Baxter shipments were rather disappointing

but Rethink made major software improvements on Baxter during 2014, with the latest

software release doubling the robot’s speed and making it better equipped for higher-

performance tasks

It clearly suggests robots are not a simple hardware business anymore, but a mix of

hardware and software that users can upgrade over the air like an iPhone or a Tesla

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

SUPPLIERS APPEAR AS A SAFER BET THAN ROBOT MANUFACTURERS

In view of the disruptions seen in many industries (mobile phone business, car industry) in

recent years due to the rising importance of software

we wouldn’t be surprised to see robot start-ups such as ReThink Robotics gain significant

share at the expense of incumbents

Notably as these companies have the backing of well-known venture capitalists and tech

entrepreneurs (ReThinks has notably Bezos Explorations among its shareholders) who will

connect them with the right software engineers and skills

Hence, we would be wary of most incumbent players,

notably those that already enjoy high margins (such

as Fanuc, 30-40% margin)

And would favor suppliers, as they will clearly

benefit from the industry shipment growth

whoever wins the robot race, in the following fields:

providers of sensors, vision and range-finding

technologies such as Keyence

providers of motors

providers of cutting lasers and tools for robots

vendors of testing and measurement equipment

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

ULTIMATELY, THE TECH GIANTS COULD PLAY A MAJOR ROLE

In a near future, home and medical robots are likely to be all the rage…

and to be the new battlefield of tech giants if one assumes that this

business will reach the unit shipments and/or margins traditionally

achieved by device makers and Medtech companies

Confirming our view that software could make the difference in the

robot industry

Google has bought a flurry of robotics start-ups in the last

24 months, among which Boston Dynamics, Redwood Robotics,

Meka Robotics or Japan-based Schaft

and has filed a patent for developing “methods and systems for

robot personality development” that will allow to download from

the cloud personality traits for robots

By combining its robotics assets with AI (in which it is expected to

play a major role), Google could have a cutting-edge in next-gen robots

Other tech giants do not remain idle: While Softbank has developed the

Pepper robot and an OS that controls robots in the same way Google’s

software runs smartphones and tablets

Sony has been working on a next generation mechatronic device that

is seen as a tool for future seniors and/or nursing home facilities

Amazon has a clear interest in robots as it needs to automate as much as possible its

warehouses while Apple needs to find significant growth drivers

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

M&A IN SIGHT

Against this backdrop, we believe that the small players are obvious targets either for large

incumbents such as ABB or tech giants

Following the Universal acquisition by Teradyne, a US-listed provider of test equipment for

the semi and electronics industries

ReThink could be next on the M&A list even if some of its backers (notably Goldman Sachs)

will probably prefer an IPO

Kuka could be the other M&A target as its relatively small market cap (EUR2.5bn) that could

easily be swallowed by a large group

A clear preference for suppliers over robot makers

Given the competitive risks we identify in the robot

manufacturing business, we have a preference for

suppliers over robot makers

as the former will clearly benefit from any

industry shipment growth while the latter

could be affected by volume and pricing pressures

And among robot makers, we tend to focus on the

smaller names such as Kuka

that could be taken over and on medical robot

makers, which are less exposed to competitive

threats

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

IoT & RFID: EVERY SINGLE OBJECT TO THE INTERNET AND TO… AI

As commented previously, we believe the RFID and IoT technologies will enable AI to

interact with the real world

RFID enables data transmission between an object and a reader and is seen as one of the

enablers of the IoT revolution

Historically, RFID labels have been used to make the tracking and location

of items much easier and more efficient than barcode technology,

specifically in the retail sector

Interestingly, many new applications are emerging for RFID tags as the

technology improves

Notably, RFID tags can extract and record data from a variety of

items such as:

concrete, with Holcim/Lafarge including tags in its products to track them and,

more importantly, to collect data on the material qualities over time

temperature-sensitive products (pharmaceuticals or biomedical items)

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

IoT & RFID: WHEN, TOMORROW, NO HUMAN DECISION IS NEEDED

In a near future, it is highly likely that the data collected through RFID will be processed by

AI software that will take decisions based on its conclusions

Just a few examples:

based on real-time information of a

store network’s inventories, AI will

decide to increase or reduce factory

production/shipments

in hospitals, the combination of AI and RFID

will enable care tracking and, specifically, more

effective and more timely care provision

in your (smart) home, RFID will detect when

you are running low on your favourite products

(beverages, food, dishwasher detergent…), and AI will detect and order them without your

intervention in quantities that are consistent with your consumption habits

It looks like the Amazon dash button but goes one step further as there is no need of human

intervention

Hence, smart homes will not only be about a set of smart devices, but about an AI ecosystem

that adapts to changes in behavioral patterns, anticipates needs and adjusts home

automation accordingly

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS 26

THE HISTORY OF AI

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

OUR INVESTMENT PRODUCTS AND PROCESS

On July 24 2015, we launched an AMC (actively managed certificate) on Innovative

Technologies

the certificate is focused on innovations that we believe will reshape the global economy in

the next few years, such as robots, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, cyber security,

graphene and many others…

Earlier this month, we launched another AMC totally focused on AI and Robotics

We clearly have a long term approach to these investment themes, which we have actually

been covering for years, and try to pick the winners in each industry or subsector

hence, rebalancings in the AI & Robotics certificate should not happen too often

however, they should be much more frequent in the Innovation certificate as we will have to

make asset allocation decisions between different subsectors

Given the high beta nature of tech investments and specifically of AI software names, our

certificates are pretty well diversified with 25-30 stocks on average

that said, we have a couple of bets in order to generate alpha

and in order to preserve potential alpha generation, we plan to have no more than 35 stocks

as we consider that extreme diversification does not generally help portfolio performance

Globally, the Innovation certificate should be less volatile than the AI & Robotics one as it is

exposed to different tech subsectors with specific dynamics

In a near future, we’d like to launch an AMC… managed by AI

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

OUR INVESTMENT PRODUCTS AND PROCESS

Innovation certificate details

ISIN: XS0884325415

Issuer: Natixis

Management fees: 1.65%

Performance fees: 15%

AI & Robotics certificate details

ISIN: XS1035525325

Issuer: Natixis

Management fees: 1.65%

Performance fees: 15%

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS

DISCLAIMER

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Research issued by the Swiss Bankers Association.

Financial institutions are accordingly obligated to disclose any conflicts of interest. Special emphasis has been placed on the

following points:

- Has not participated in the issue of securities of the analyzed companies in the last three years.

- Has not been part of a syndicate which has participated in the issue of securities of the analyzed companies in the

last 12 months.

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- Does not have executives who are members of the board of the analyzed company.

Compensation of analysts is not directly related to investment banking transactions.

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Although AtonRâ Partners SA believes that the information provided in this document is based on reliable sources, it cannot assume responsibility for the quality, correctness, timeliness or completeness of the information contained in this report.

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While all reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information contained is not untrue or misleading at the time of publication, no representation is made as to its accuracy or completeness and it should not be relied upon as such. Past and simulated performances offer no guarantee as to future performances. Any opinions offered herein reflect our current judgment and may change without notice. AtonRâ Partners cannot be held responsible for the consequences of any decision made with regard to the information contained in this document.

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