Ethereum Software Upgrade Could Reduce Transaction Fees

Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, has completed a software upgrade that aims to make its network cheaper. Called Dencun, the update lowers the cost of so-called layer-2 networks — which include chains like Base, Polygon and Arbitrum — to about a cent for transactions that previously cost $1, while exchanges that used to cost a few cents are reduced to fractions of a cent. Accomplished through a new system of storing data, the upgrade is being welcomed as a harbinger of a development renaissance brimming with new applications and free services. Continue reading Ethereum Software Upgrade Could Reduce Transaction Fees

House Passes Bill That Could Remove TikTok from App Stores

The House of Representatives voted 352 to 65 today to pass a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban of popular video-sharing app TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance and currently used by 170 million Americans. The bill, introduced out of concern for national security, would prohibit TikTok from app stores in the U.S. unless it is spun off from ByteDance. It is not clear how the Senate will respond to the proposed legislation, which advanced unanimously by the House Energy and Commerce Committee (50-0), and President Biden indicated he would sign. Meanwhile, China’s foreign ministry has called the measure an “act of bullying.” Continue reading House Passes Bill That Could Remove TikTok from App Stores

Google Introduces Open-Source Marketing Measurement Tool

Google has rolled out an open-source marketing mix model (MMM) called Meridian that aims to help in formulating cross-channel media strategies in the current environment of fragmented media consumption and privacy changes. As marketers contend with Google’s plan to sunset the use of third-party cookies by the end of this year, MMMs — classic tools of yesteryear — “are experiencing a renaissance,” says the search giant. MMMs are statistical analyses companies use to help measure the impact of cross-channel marketing sales. Google says it has “observed more customers turning to MMMs, especially performance and full-funnel marketers.” Continue reading Google Introduces Open-Source Marketing Measurement Tool

New Chinese Optical Disc Promises Petabyte-Plus of Storage

Researchers at China’s University of Shanghai for Science and Technology have invented an ultrahigh density optical disc format they claim can store up to 1.6 petabits — more than 1,500 terabytes, or 125,000 gigabytes — of data. While the new discs are said to look like typical Blu-rays, the data is written to one hundred layers in a 3D stacking architecture by a 54-nanometer laser that is about one-tenth the size of visible light waves. The same laser is used to read the data back. The tech is said to present “a promising solution for cost effective, long-term archival data storage.” Continue reading New Chinese Optical Disc Promises Petabyte-Plus of Storage

Qloo Raises $25M for Ad-Targeting Using AI Taste Predictions

New York-based Qloo has raised $25 million to fund an artificial intelligence-powered analytics engine. Drawing on consumer behavioral data from around the globe, Qloo uses proprietary algorithms to filter through more than half a billion attributes, including brands, music, film, TV, podcasts, dining, travel and more. Qloo’s AI models “are capable of identifying trillions of connections between these entities,” the company says, listing Netflix, Michelin and Samsung among those already using the service to find connections between customers who frequent Starbucks and the kind of movies they like. Continue reading Qloo Raises $25M for Ad-Targeting Using AI Taste Predictions

FedEx Launching a New Turn-Key B2B E-Commerce Solution

FedEx is launching a single platform e-commerce solution called fdx that offers end-to-end e-commerce solutions for any size business. “FedEx is transforming into a digitally-led business powered by our extensive physical transportation network, leveraging our scale and insights from moving 15 million packages per day,” FedEx President and CEO Raj Subramaniam said, announcing the unit from the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in Manhattan. “Through fdx, we will enhance our longstanding relationships with merchants of all sizes to help them optimize and grow their businesses through digital intelligence.” Continue reading FedEx Launching a New Turn-Key B2B E-Commerce Solution

CES: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter on AI Regulation

In a CES conversation with Consumer Technology Association Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs Rachel Nemeth, FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter discussed the Commission’s work on AI-enabled impersonation fraud, privacy, and right of repair. Taking the stage just after FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, Slaughter said she wanted to co-sign his plea for “full visibility of the work we do.” “We have responsibility to all Americans to make sure they are represented in the substance of the work we do,” she said. “The same is true for industries that want to reach all Americans.” Continue reading CES: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter on AI Regulation

SageMaker HyperPod: Amazon Accelerates AI Model Training

Amazon has launched five new capabilities to its SageMaker service, including Sagemaker HyperPod, which accelerates large language and foundation model training and tuning. Sagemaker HyperPod is said to shorten the training time by up to 40 percent using its purpose-built infrastructure designed for distributed training at scale. By optimizing acceleration, SageMaker Inference reduces foundation model deployment costs by 50 percent and latency by 20 percent on average, Amazon claims. “SageMaker HyperPod removes the undifferentiated heavy lifting involved in building and optimizing machine learning infrastructure,” said Amazon. Continue reading SageMaker HyperPod: Amazon Accelerates AI Model Training

Bill Gates Imagines Agents as the Human-Computer Interface

Bill Gates has published his thinking about the future of computing, and fascinatingly, it’s the same as his prediction from decades ago: agents. No mere bots — and certainly not anthropomorphized paperclips — agents (to Gates) will abstract almost all HCI to a natural language conversation with systems that have our permission to take meaningful actions. Gates makes a highly specific prediction: within five years, the very idea of an app itself will seem as outdated as a rotary phone dial does next to an iPhone. A conversational UI will sit on top of a language model that has access to as much of our private data as we wish to give it. Continue reading Bill Gates Imagines Agents as the Human-Computer Interface

Startup Flip AI Creates Custom LLM to Address Observability

Startup Flip AI has built a custom LLM to run its observability platform. Observability is the act of monitoring corporate IT systems, ferreting out issues or identifying potential problems before they occur. It’s a 24/7 process, and can slow down sites or apps, sometimes causing crashes. Not to be confused with the PDF reader app, Flip AI has trained an LLM specifically to monitor new and emerging challenges. Concurrently, Flip AI has announced $6.5 million in seed funding led by Factory with participation from Morgan Stanley Next Level Fund and GTM Capital. Continue reading Startup Flip AI Creates Custom LLM to Address Observability

Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI Wins Appeal of UK Fine

New York-based facial recognition software company Clearview AI has had a $9.1 million fine and order to delete UK citizen data reversed by Britain’s General Regulatory Tribunal. The case against Clearview was brought by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which scored a victory round in May 2022, claiming Clearview violated privacy laws under the General Data Protection Regulation because it did not inform or gain consent of UK citizens before collecting their data. Clearview appealed, and the tribunal found that the selfie-scraping AI firm was not subject to the ICO’s jurisdiction due to a loophole for firms servicing foreign law enforcement. Continue reading Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI Wins Appeal of UK Fine

Newsom Makes California ‘Delete Act’ Data Protections Law

Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 362, also known as the Delete Act, into law on Tuesday, giving California consumers the ability to demand all data brokers delete their personal information with a single request. The Delete Act expands privacy controls for state residents, giving the California Privacy Protection Agency more power to regulate data brokers, who will face strict penalties for failing to comply. The new law, authored by state Senator Josh Becker, makes California the first U.S. state to create a convenient deletion mechanism for consumers who don’t want their personal information held or sold by data brokers. Continue reading Newsom Makes California ‘Delete Act’ Data Protections Law

Yasa-1: Startup Reka Launches New AI Multimodal Assistant

Startup Reka AI is releasing in preview its first artificial intelligence assistant, Yasa-1. The multimodal AI is described as “a language assistant with visual and auditory sensors.” The year-old company says it “trained Yasa-1 from scratch,” including pretraining foundation models “from ground zero,” then aligning them and optimizing to its training and server infrastructures. “Yasa-1 is not just a text assistant, it also understands images, short videos and audio (yes, sounds too),” said Reka AI co-founder and Chief Scientist Yi Tay. Yasa-1 is available via Reka’s APIs and as docker containers for on-site or virtual private cloud deployment. Continue reading Yasa-1: Startup Reka Launches New AI Multimodal Assistant

Meta Develops Computer Vision AI That Learns Like Humans

Meta Platforms continues to make progress on a mission to develop artificial intelligence that can teach itself to learn how the world works. Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun has taken a special interest in developing the new model, called Image Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture, or I-JEPA, which learns by building an internal representation of the outside world and analyzing image abstracts instead of comparing pixels. The approach allows AI techto learn more like humans do, with their ability to figure out complex tasks and adapt to new situations. Continue reading Meta Develops Computer Vision AI That Learns Like Humans

Meta Is Fined $1.3 Billion for Facebook’s EU Privacy Violation

Meta Platforms has been hit with a record $1.3 billion fine for violating European Union rules that prohibit transferring the data of EU citizens to other countries. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, the agency of record in the region in which Meta was sued, said that the tech giant continues to operate outside of compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) after a 2020 ruling by the bloc’s highest court found that Facebook user data was being shipped to America without adequate protection from U.S. spy agencies. Continue reading Meta Is Fined $1.3 Billion for Facebook’s EU Privacy Violation