How MACSO are making our world a safer place
Saba Samei’s AI start-up has just launched a capital raise to fund the second generation of her AI sensor fusion technology used in early warning systems to save lives.
Smart, early warning sensors
MACSO was the third New Zealand venture funded by Bridgewest Ventures NZ. Saba and her team have developed an early warning Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform. Leveraging a variety of sensors the platform can process and interpret a wide range of inputs, drawing inference from the data.
"Advancements in sensor IOT technology with edge devices running neural networks have the potential to truly transform how we collect and process data across a wide range of scenarios and businesses. The MACSO platform enables businesses and entire verticals to leverage the benefits of these sensors with AI to achieve better efficiency, more revenue, accelerate innovation and good to humanity and earth, MACSO does this."
- Samar Alrayyes, Advisor to the board of directors/MACSO, Client Executive/Microsoft.
While humans immediately process sensory information and make sense of it, old school sensors can only detect certain conditions. That’s helpful if those conditions directly indicate a problem, e.g., smoke = fire, and there’s someone around to do something about it straight away. But what happens if threat indicators are more nuanced? What if a combination of factors indicate a threat? And what if that threat originates somewhere remote?
Up until now, sensors haven't been able to interpret sensory input. Nor were sensors or data-platforms able to pool different types of data to identify complex threats. But the MACSO AI platform changes all that. It trains sensors to analyse the data they collect, including data from different sources, identify indicators of particular high-risk events, and trigger an alert. The technical term for this process is sensor fusion. By digitising environments with MACSO’s AI and different sensors we’ll be able to predict different kinds of high risk events and save lives.
MACSO’s platform enabled easy data collection for the customer while collecting high quality diverse data efficiently. MACSO team’s knowledge and capability in this area are impressive.”
- Benjamin Zhang, President of Chaoyang Semiconductor
Saving lives and saving money
Saba gives recent real world scenarios where sensor fusion could have saved money and lives. In 2018 China pig farms were hit with African swine flu. Farms lost 43.5 million pigs and their GDP took a 0.7% hit. Today, pig farms can install audio sensors using MACSO sensory fusion technology to detect the distinctive sounds of respiratory illness and alert farmers before sick pigs infect the herd.
Blue ear disease is another respiratory illness impacting pigs. Sensor fusion tech can combine visual and audio sensors to detect both visual and audible indicators of disease. While air quality sensors can detect air conditions around farms that accelerate the spread of disease. The more different inputs an early warning system has, the more accurate the model it creates.
As a third example, sensors can be used to detect bush fires in their early stages. In Australia, the 2019 bush fires killed 35 people and 3 billion animals, destroyed 5,900 buildings, released 715 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air, and cost Australia around 5.5 billion dollars. Imagine if that damage could have been lessened, or even prevented, with smart sensors in remote locations.
MACSO’s commitment to ethical AI
Saba talks about her dream of a network of smart sensors constantly monitoring for threats and alerting us to danger. She’s aware of the ethical implications of this scenario, explaining, “Collecting data ethically is very important to us. We don’t collect any personally identifiable data. It's not that we collect it and don't use it. We don't collect it at all. Then we have ethical guidelines for every data collection scenario we encounter. And we look at use cases to ensure the purpose data’s collected for doesn’t breach our ethical guidelines.”
“We also want to make sure our algorithm isn’t biased. Bias comes from lack of diverse data, so before we do model training we look for gaps in the data. To give an example, we worked with one client on keyword detection. And as a result of our gap analysis, we were able to tell them, you lack data for male contributors, age 14 to 20. That's how specific we can get.”
Saba also feels a responsibility to educate her customers, creating learning content on AI in multiple languages. “MACSO technology can’t save lives if people don’t adopt it. Adoption doesn’t happen if people don't trust tech. And trust doesn't happen if people don't understand.”
Bridgewest backing big dreams
Saba may be a start-up leader, but she didn’t consider being an entrepreneur until she was 26. She says, “All my life I was told, graduate, get a good job, climb the corporate ladder, that's success. But it never sat well with me. As soon as I came across the concept of being an entrepreneur, it opened up a whole different world.”
“In 2016, I started my AI journey. A lot of people didn't take me seriously. A lot of people laughed. I talked with a couple of VCs before Bridgewest. One of them said, ‘You need to get this AI thing out of your system.’ But then I met Bridgewest. They were the first people who didn't laugh at me. They didn't think I was too ambitious. They didn’t think MACSO was impossible.”
“Saba is a visionary and has demonstrated a natural ability to grow a high performing team with a culture for achieving sustained success”
- Behrooz Abdi, Strategic Advisor and Director of MACSO
“If I go through the list of things Bridgewest gave me, money is right at the end. They gave me confidence, courage, capability, and guidance to turn a dream into a reality. My journey with them has been amazing.”
Capital raising, future tech unicorns, and the importance of AI
MACSO’s sensor fusion technology currently incorporates audio sensors. The next stage is to extend their sensory inputs to cover the full range of senses. To fund this, Saba’s just returned from a trip to the US to launch a capital raise to Silicon Valley investors. She’s now opening discussions with investors from New Zealand, Australia, and China.
While meeting with US investors, Saba also attended Singularity University’s Executive Program. One of her biggest takeaways for MACSO was listening to investment specialist Andra Keay saying the tech unicorn of the future wouldn’t be a software or a hardware company, but a company that brings the two together, just as MACSO does with sensor fusion.
“New Zealand has the opportunity to be a pioneer in AI. Think about the problems we can solve. The economic impact that AI can have. The jobs we can create. The education we can offer the next generation. The opportunities are limitless.”
- Saba Samiei, Founder of MACSO
When Saba explains the potential of AI, she asks people to “imagine the skills and knowledge we’ve accumulated as a species in one machine that never dies, that continues to accumulate knowledge, and grows at an exponential rate. Imagine the impact that can have on our world.”
Visit macso.ai to learn more