Artificial intelligence (AI) is on everyone’s lips. A significant stimulus was when the US company OpenAI published the ChatGPT in November 2022.[1] GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer and is a text-based dialogue system as a user interface based on machine learning. Millions of internet users registered to gain access to this new oracle in just a few days.
Continue readingWe know laboratories as service providers to other sectors in the same economy. Testing laboratories check compliance, e.g., whether foodstuffs meet the requirements of hygiene standards or do not contain excessive loads of heavy metals. Clinical laboratories test people and animals for certain diseases. Calibration laboratories ensure that business partners can rely on each other’s measurement results.
Continue readingIt’s time for a new economy
Our current economic model has already exceeded the Earth’s ecological limits and is endangering the stability of the ecosystem and the livelihoods of humankind.
QI Data Series
What are the differences between countries using international standards?
For decades, the United States, Western Europe and Japan have led international standard development. Representatives of these countries chaired most international standards committees and led standard making through agenda-setting and the know-how of national companies and scientific institutions. Representatives from other countries also participated in standards committees but chaired only a few technical committees. Standards takers are those countries that adopt standards but do not participate in developing those standards.
Continue readingQuality infrastructure has its origins in the industrial revolution of the 19th century, first in England, then throughout Western Europe and the USA, and later spread to Japan and other parts of Europe and Asia during the transition from agrarian to industrial societies. For a long time, QI was mainly a matter of checking whether physical products met defined technical specifications. Testing served both the safety of products and their usability in value-added processes based on the division of labour. Thus, the measurement of physical units was at the centre of the entire quality system.
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Quality Infrastructure for Development 