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Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery. Open source promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers have used a variety of other terms. Open source

Technology Strategy in Dynamic Environments: A Computational Analysis of the Automation of Routines, the Organization of AI, and the Evaluation of Technology Risk

In this dissertation, I develop theory and evidence to argue that new technologies are central to how firms organize to create and capture value. I use computational methods such as reinforcement learning and probabilistic topic modeling to investigate three topics: the automation of routines, the organization of artificial intelligence (AI), and the evaluation of technology risk. Overall, I argue that new technologies are not a panacea for the firm but require deliberate strategic planning to manage the potential downsides of myopic automation, AI interdependencies, and the disclosure of technology risks.In the first essay, I argue that while automation can increase productivity by reducing the costs of coordinating individuals, the automation of routines can also incur an indirect opportunity cost due to slow adaptation to environmental change. I develop a reinforcement learning simulation to model the impact of automation on the returns from the division of labor in dynamic environments and to show how automation incurs opportunity costs through lost learning and slow adaptation. Moreover, automation can be suboptimal when it brings about myopic behavior, i.e. high returns from the division of labor in the short term, but negative returns in the long term. Given the simulation results, I argue that firms need dynamic routines to simultaneously balance learning and automation. I open-source the simulation platform as OrgSim-RL on GitHub.In the second essay, I argue that a data-driven culture - what I define as a Data Clan - can help to coordinate complex interdependencies between AI components within a firm. I analyze in-depth semi-structured interview data with a hierarchical stochastic block model (hSBM) and hand-coding to find that managers focus primarily on building a strong culture and establishing high-quality data assets when allocating resources to AI initiatives. Given the results, I inductively develop implications for theory and argue that the emergence of a Data Clan can be a governance mechanism to reduce coordination frictions and build a competitive advantage in the age of AI.In the third essay, I argue that investors require a higher initial return to take on more technology risk disclosure during an IPO. I quantify the magnitude of disclosed risk and the risk disclosure topics based on a latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic model of IPO prospectus text and find a return-for-risk association between text-based technology risk disclosure and underpricing. The study also finds evidence that owning granted patents is associated with a lower return-for-risk association, suggesting that intellectual property allows the disclosure of risk without losing the competitive advantage. I open-source the code for quantifying risk disclosure as RiskyData-LDA on GitHub.In summary, this dissertation develops theory and finds evidence across three essays to argue that leveraging new technologies requires deliberate strategic planning to manage potential downsides of new technologies, such as the opportunity costs of automation, coordination costs, and costs associated with raising capital. The results suggest three mitigating solutions: dynamic routines to balance learning and automation, a Data Clan to improve coordination, and disclosure through patents to reduce underpricing.

EPFL2022

Unsupervised Voice Activity Detection by Modeling Source and System Information using Zero Frequency Filtering

Mathew Magimai Doss, Eklavya Sarkar

Voice activity detection (VAD) is an important pre-processing step for speech technology applications. The task consists of deriving segment boundaries of audio signals which contain voicing information. In recent years, it has been shown that voice source and vocal tract system information can be extracted using zero-frequency filtering (ZFF) without making any explicit model assumptions about the speech signal. This paper investigates the potential of zero-frequency filtering for jointly modeling voice source and vocal tract system information, and proposes two approaches for VAD. The first approach demarcates voiced regions using a composite signal composed of different zero-frequency filtered signals. The second approach feeds the composite signal as input to the rVAD algorithm. These approaches are compared with other supervised and unsupervised VAD methods in the literature, and are evaluated on the Aurora-2 database, across a range of SNRs (20 to -5 dB). Our studies show that the proposed ZFF-based methods perform comparable to state-of-art VAD methods and are more invariant to added degradation and different channel characteristics.

2022

Contact.engineering-Create, analyze and publish digital surface twins from topography measurements across many scales

Abhijeet Gujrati, Till Junge

The optimization of surface finish to improve performance, such as adhesion, friction, wear, fatigue life, or interfacial transport, occurs largely through trial and error, despite significant advancements in the relevant science. There are three central challenges that account for this disconnect: (1) the challenge of integration of many different types of measurement for the same surface to capture the multi-scale nature of roughness; (2) the technical complexity of implementing spectral analysis methods, and of applying mechanical or numerical models to describe surface performance; (3) a lack of consistency between researchers and industries in how surfaces are measured, quantified, and communicated. Here we present a freely-available internet-based application (available at https://contact.engineering) which attempts to overcome all three challenges. First, the application enables the user to upload many different topography measurements taken from a single surface, including using different techniques, and then integrates all of them together to create a digital surface twin. Second, the application calculates many of the commonly used topography metrics, such as rootmean-square parameters, power spectral density (PSD), and autocorrelation function (ACF), as well as implementing analytical and numerical calculations, such as boundary element modeling (BEM) for elastic and plastic deformation. Third, the application serves as a repository for users to securely store surfaces, and if they choose, to share these with collaborators or even publish them (with a digital object identifier) for all to access. The primary goal of this application is to enable researchers and manufacturers to quickly and easily apply cutting-edge tools for the characterization and properties-modeling of real-world surfaces. An additional goal is to advance the use of open-science principles in surface engineering by providing a FAIR database where researchers can choose to publish surface measurements for all to use.

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

Technology Strategy in Dynamic Environments: A Computational Analysis of the Automation of Routines, the Organization of AI, and the Evaluation of Technology Risk

EPFL2022

Contact.engineering-Create, analyze and publish digital surface twins from topography measurements across many scales

Abhijeet Gujrati, Till Junge

IOP Publishing Ltd2022