As data moves to the cloud, security has become increasingly important. Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) has been developed in labs and is nearly ready to emerge to enable artificial intelligence and machine learning use cases for that data. Microsoft and Intel have been proponents of homomorphic encryption, which follows the data across systems. In December, IBM released its first FHE services, which include educational materials, prototyping environments for companies that want to experiment and support. Continue reading IBM Debuts Advanced Encryption Service After Years of R&D

Prominent semiconductor designer Arm, which licenses its designs to others, debuted Armv9 architecture, which features its first major architectural advance in a decade and includes a 30 percent improvement in speed. Arm chief executive Simon Segars revealed that Armv9 will be “the base for the next 300 billion Arm-based chips.” Its customers have already shipped 180+ billion chips that impact 70+ percent of the global population. Nvidia is in the process of acquiring Arm, which is based in the United Kingdom, for $40 billion. Continue reading Arm Unveils Armv9, New Design Aimed to Enable AI, IoT, 5G

OpenAI’s GPT-3, the much-noted AI text generator, is now being used in 300+ apps by “tens of thousands” of developers and generating 4.5 billion words per day. Meanwhile, a collective of researchers, EleutherAI is building transformer-based language models with plans to offer an open source, GPT-3-sized model to the public for free. The non-profit OpenAI has an exclusivity deal with Microsoft that gives the tech giant unique access to GPT-3’s underlying code. But OpenAI has made access to its general API available to all comers, who then build services on top of it. Continue reading OpenAI and EleutherAI Foster Open-Source Text Generators

Yves Bergquist, director of ETC@USC’s AI & Neuroscience in Media Project, described how ETC’s task force is working in concert with SMPTE to develop standards for AI and machine learning (ML) in the media and entertainment industry. During the HPA Tech Retreat, Bergquist noted how the two organizations successfully collaborated to develop standards in digital cinema, interoperable media, and cloud production. “We thought it was an opportunity to step up and help the media community better understand the scope of the AI technology,” he said. Continue reading HPA Tech Retreat: ETC, SMPTE Collaborate on AI Standards

Facebook debuted Learning from Videos, a project designed to learn audio, images and text from publicly available Facebook videos to improve its core AI systems. By culling data from hundreds of languages and countries, said Facebook, the project will also help to enable “entirely new experiences.” Learning from Videos, which began in 2020, has also helped to improve recommendations in Instagram Reels. Facebook, Google and others are focused on self-supervised techniques rather than labeled datasets to improve AI. Continue reading Facebook Using Self-Supervised Models to Build AI Systems

Video live-streaming service Twitch, which saw a 40 percent increase in channels in 2020, released its first transparency report featuring details on how it provides security for its 26 million daily users. The Amazon-owned company has always struggled to control harassment and hate speech but even more so during its meteoric growth spurt, especially since live content is harder to control. The new report acknowledges that challenge, noting it’s relied on volunteer moderators and user reports as well as its AutoMod tool, introduced in 2016. Continue reading Twitch Report Details the Challenges of Curbing Toxic Speech

Google’s YouTube is rolling out a version of its video service that will allow parents to supervise the viewing of tweens and teens that have outgrown YouTube Kids but aren’t quite ready for the unrestricted video platform. Currently, children under the age of 13 in the U.S. are legally barred from regular YouTube. The new option lets parents set up a managed account for children and teens that will prevent them from uploading videos or commenting. Parents will also have different content filters to restrict video viewing. Continue reading YouTube to Launch Restricted Version for Tweens and Teens

The World Economic Forum (WEF), in partnership with 100+ organizations, debuted its Global AI Action Alliance with the mission to “harness the transformative potential of artificial intelligence by accelerating the adoption of trusted, transparent and inclusive AI systems globally.” Its steering committee includes IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna and International Trade Union Confederation general secretary Sharan Burrow, with multinational organizations OECD and UNESCO. The Alliance is the recipient of $500,000 from a Patrick J. McGovern Foundation $40 million grant to support AI and data projects. According to PwC, AI could contribute $15+ trillion to the world economy by 2030. Continue reading World Economic Forum Introduces Global AI Action Alliance

Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize winning author and columnist for The New York Times discussed his latest thesis that the world has moved from the Industrial Revolution to a world that is “Fast, Fused and Deep.” During CES 2021, Friedman spoke with Professor Amnon Shashua, president and CEO of Mobileye, the Israeli subsidiary of Intel that develops autonomous and assisted driving AI solutions. Friedman framed the discussion by describing the Industrial Revolution as establishing “Walls” to govern the transfer of trade and human beings, a “Floor” as a social safety net to cushion people, and a “Ceiling” on the pace of change. Continue reading CES: Pulitzer Winner Details Megashifts Impacting Our World

At the opening of the all-digital CES 2021 this week, Consumer Technology Association vice president of research Steve Koenig and director of research Lesley Rohrbaugh described their predictions for innovation and technology trends to expect in the coming year, noting that the CTA provides 30 studies a year on its website. Koenig put 2021 in context as following a tough 2020 of COVID-19 and related economic downturn. “As a global community we confronted a lot of those challenges together and saw a myriad of solutions from tech innovation,” he said. Continue reading CES 2021 Opens with Predictions on Tech Trends for the Year

Equinix executives led the fifth installment of ETC@USC’s Executive Coffee with… series. “AI development and ethics, what are the intended and unintended consequences of the rollout?” was the topic of the October 22 discussion. Kaladhar Voruganti, VP of technology innovation and senior fellow, and Doron Hendel, senior manager of global business development, ecosystem development, partnerships and alliances at Equinix led the discussion. Eleven graduate and undergraduate USC students, mostly computer science and data science majors, participated. Continue reading ETC Executive Coffee: Equinix Ponders Consequences of AI

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to dramatically change the work landscape, Amazon plans to retrain 29 million people globally in cloud-computing skills by 2025. In addition to building on existing programs, Amazon will invest in new ones by teaming with schools, nonprofits and other organizations. Last year, Amazon earmarked $700 million to retrain 100,000 of its own workers. Some of those trained in the new programs may find employment at Amazon or in other companies that use Amazon Web Services. Continue reading Amazon Commits to Train Millions Worldwide in Cloud Skills

Amazon announced the AWS Panorama Appliance, a plug-in that connects to a network and identifies video streams from cameras in the customers’ industrial facilities. It enables AI services for construction, manufacturing, retail and other industries and is aimed at “industrial companies looking for a more holistic, computer vision-centric analytics solution.” It integrates with AWS IoT services including SiteWise. Also new is the AWS Panorama SDK that allows manufacturers to build new cameras for computer vision at the edge. Continue reading Amazon Unveils Computer Vision Products for Industrial Use

Cerebras Systems and its partner, the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), revealed that its CS-1 system, featuring a single massive chip that features an innovative design, is 10,000+ times faster than a graphics processing unit (GPU). The CS-1, built around Cerebas’ Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) and its 400,000 AI cores, was first announced in November 2019. The partnership between the Energy Department and Cerebras includes deployments with the Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Continue reading The Cerebras CS-1 Chip Is 10,000 Times Faster Than a GPU

At the beginning of its SC20 supercomputing conference, Nvidia unveiled its 80GB version of the A100 GPU (graphics processing unit) based on its Ampere graphics architecture and aimed at AI and graphics for supercomputing. The chip is intended to enable faster real-time data analysis for business and government applications. This new version doubles the memory of the predecessor, debuted six months ago. Nvidia executive Paresh Kharya noted that 90 percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years. Continue reading Nvidia Debuts New Version of A100 GPU for Supercomputers