GitHub has introduced Copilot Workspace, a Copilot-native developer environment for artificial intelligence, in technical preview. Developers are invited to sign up for a waitlist for the service, which allows the use of natural language to plan, build, test and run code. The Microsoft-owned company has introduced various aspects of Copilot over the past few years, adding an autocomplete pair programmer in 2022, and in 2023 Copilot Chat for natural language coding, debugging and testing, “allowing developers to converse with their code in real time.” The “task-centric” Copilot Workspace leverages different agents for a “start-to-finish experience.” Continue reading GitHub Puts Copilot Workspace Developer Platform in Preview
Amazon reported $143.3 billion in Q1 revenue, a 13 percent increase year-over-year, excluding the impact from foreign exchange rates, with net income at just over $10.3 billion, a nearly 229 percent surge that set a first quarter record for the company. Both categories outperformed Wall Street expectations, with strong online sales and a booming cloud business thanks to the increased demands of artificial intelligence deployment by enterprise clients credited as driving the boom. Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassy called it “a good start to the year.” Continue reading Amazon Q1 Profits Surge on Strong Retail and AWS Comeback
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ETCentric StaffApril 22, 2024
Pursuant to his goal of “building the world’s leading AI,” Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that Meta AI is upgrading to Llama 3 concurrent with a rollout of its open-source chatbot across the company’s social platforms, integrating it into the search boxes atop WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. There is also a website, meta.ai, for those who prefer browser access. Reports of Meta upgrading its social AI capabilities began leaking out early last week, albeit on a more limited test scale than what Zuckerberg announced, which, excepting Threads, is cross-platform. Continue reading Meta AI Assistant Is Launching Across Platforms with Llama 3
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ETCentric StaffApril 4, 2024
Amazon Web Services has launched a new cloud computing service called AWS Deadline Cloud that allows customers to set up, deploy, and scale rendering projects in what the company says is mere “minutes,” improving efficiency by facilitating parallel rendering pipelines. “With Deadline Cloud, customers creating computer graphics, visual effects, or innovating their pipelines to incorporate artificial intelligence-generated visuals can build a cloud-based render farm — aggregated compute — that scales from zero to thousands of compute instances for peak demand, without needing to manage their own infrastructure,” according to AWS. Continue reading AWS Deadline Cloud Service Scales Up Instant Render Farms
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ETCentric StaffApril 3, 2024
Amazon has added $2.75 billion to its initial September 2023 investment of $1.25 billion in Anthropic, completing its announced $4 billion stake in the artificial intelligence startup formed in 2021 by former members of OpenAI. As part of the resulting strategic collaboration, Anthropic’s most powerful models, including the Claude 3 series, are available on Amazon Bedrock, a service providing fully managed foundation models. Anthropic is using Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider and Amazon says Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips “to build, train, and deploy its future models.” Continue reading Amazon Increases Its Investment in Anthropic AI to $4 Billion
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ETCentric StaffMarch 6, 2024
Anthropic has released Claude 3, claiming new industry benchmarks that see the family of three new large language models approaching “near-human” cognitive capability in some instances. Accessible via Anthropic’s website, the three new models — Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet and Claude 3 Opus — represent successively increased complexity and parameter count. Sonnet is powering the current Claude.ai chatbot and is free, for now, requiring only an email sign-in. Opus comes with the the $20 monthly subscription for Claude Pro. Both are generally available from the Anthropic website and via API in 159 countries, with Haiku coming soon. Continue reading Anthropic’s Claude 3 AI Is Said to Have ‘Near-Human’ Abilities
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ETCentric StaffFebruary 15, 2024
Nvidia is investing $30 billion in a new business unit focused on custom chips for high-performance computing. The company already controls about 80 percent of the advanced chip market but wants to avoid losing ground as alternatives spring up. Alphabet, AWS, Intel and AMD market high-end processors to third-parties, and Meta is expected to begin deploying its own Artemis AI chips this year. Nvidia has had discussions with Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI about helping them create bespoke chips and is also talking to automakers, cloud service providers (CSPs) and telecom companies, according to reports. Continue reading Nvidia to Launch Unit Devoted to Building Custom HPC Chips
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ETCentric StaffFebruary 9, 2024
Amazon’s net sales for Q4 were $170 billion, a 14 percent increase year-over-year. For the full year 2023, net sales were up by 12 percent to $574.8 billion. “This Q4 was a record-breaking holiday shopping season and closed out a robust 2023 for Amazon,” CEO Andy Jassy said in the recent earnings release. The results included October Prime Day and holiday season shopping. Outstanding Q4 performers included ad sales, up 27 percent to $14 billion, and Amazon Web Services, which brought in $24.2 billion, growing 13 percent.”What we’re most pleased with is the continued invention and customer experience improvements across our businesses,” Jassy added. Continue reading Growth in Ad Sales, AWS Drive Amazon Profit Up 200 Percent
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ETCentric StaffFebruary 8, 2024
The Linux Foundation has launched the Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance, a collaborative approach to research and development aimed at taming the data security threats posed by quantum computing. The PQCA is presenting itself as turn-key source for companies and projects looking for production-ready libraries and service packages that support compliance with the National Security Agency’s new cybersecurity standards for government contractors or would like to provide themselves and their clients with safety precautions equal to “top secret” NSA classification. Founding members include Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Google, IBM and Nvidia. Continue reading Linux Foundation Intros Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance
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Paula ParisiJanuary 26, 2024
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is launching a pilot program to create the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR), a shared U.S. AI research infrastructure. The move fulfills part of President Biden’s October executive order on the responsible development of artificial intelligence. Ten other federal agencies have joined the NSF in launching the program, while tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and Google have already pledged their support, along with more than 20 other private organizations across the industry, academic and non-profit sectors. The idea is to create shared access to information and things like cloud computing resources. Continue reading Big Tech Onboard to Advance President Biden’s NSF AI Pilot
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Paula ParisiDecember 5, 2023
Amazon Web Services has introduced a palm-scanning identity service for enterprise clients that lets people authenticate when entering physical premises. Called Amazon One Enterprise, the new service leverages the Amazon One offering launched in 2020 to allow biometric payments in Amazon’s cashierless Amazon Go stores, bringing the technology to the workplace. At retail, Go shoppers can link payment cards to their palm-print and complete transactions by placing their hand on a scanner. While use of biometric data has raised concerns, Amazon appears to be expanding the technology’s applications. Continue reading AWS Debuts Amazon One Enterprise Palm-Scanning Service
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Paula ParisiDecember 1, 2023
Amazon is debuting its Titan Image Generator in preview for AWS Bedrock customers. The new Titan generative AI model can create new images from a text prompt or existing image, and automatically adds watermarking to protect intellectual property. The move into generative imaging puts Amazon in competition with a growing field that includes large firms like Adobe and Google. Unlike those companies and others, the e-retail giant is at present focusing exclusively on enterprise customers. Amazon Bedrock is a managed service giving developers access to a range of foundation models from companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic, and Amazon itself. Continue reading Amazon Previews Titan Image Generator for Bedrock Clients
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Paula ParisiNovember 30, 2023
Amazon Web Services is introducing Amazon Q, an AI chatbot geared toward enterprise clients who can customize it to increase productivity for their specific business needs. AWS also announced that it has updated its homegrown Graviton4 chips for a 30 percent performance boost. AWS confirmed it will be the first Big Tech firm to deploy the latest version of Nvidia’s Grace Hopper Superchip AI accelerator, and additionally will become a data center host for Nvidia’s DGX Cloud service. The announcements were disclosed at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Continue reading Amazon Unveils Productivity Chatbot, Gets Nvidia Superchip
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Paula ParisiNovember 29, 2023
Amazon’s new Thin Client is a new $195 device that allows enterprise users to connect to virtual desktop environments, such as Amazon WorkSpaces, using the Internet and a box as compact as the Fire TV Cube. In fact, the Thin Client leverages Fire TV Cube hardware, allowing Amazon to tap existing expertise from the e-retail giant’s streaming media player division. However, Thin Client “is not for spending time watching Thursday Night Football, or bingeing ‘Invincible,’” but aims to convenience workers while reducing technology costs and enhancing security for enterprise, the company says. Continue reading Amazon Thin Client Connects Employees to Virtual Desktops
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Paula ParisiOctober 23, 2023
Microsoft has launched Radius, a language-agnostic collaboration app for creating and running cloud-native applications. Radius sprang from the Microsoft Azure Incubations team, whose projects include the development app Dapr, event-driven autoscaling solution KEDA, and the Copacetic security tool. Dapr and KEDA are among the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects. Microsoft submitted Copacetic to CNCF and plans to submit Radius, which standardizes deployment and automates resource provisioning through features like Recipes and Connections. Continue reading Microsoft’s Radius App is Open Source and Cloud Agnostic