Elon Musk says Tesla AI Day pushed to September 30

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June 3, 2022

CEO of Tesla Elon Musk says that the company has pushed its recently announced second Tesla AI Dat to September 30, 2022.

Tesla AI Day pushed to Sept 30, as we may have an Optimus prototype working by then
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 3, 2022

This decision has been made as the company makes efforts to develop its robot named Optimus.

Earlier, Tesla announced hosting the second Tesla AI day on August 19, 2022. Musk tweeted, “Tesla AI Day pushed to September 30, as we may have an Optimus prototype working by then.”

According to officials, the scheduled event would reveal “many cool updates” for the customers. Many upcoming products or projects in the pipeline will be revealed to us during Tesla’s AI Day event.

Tesla’s Optimus robot, also known as Tesla Bot, is an artificial intelligence-powered general-purpose robotic humanoid. Tesla revealed that it was working to develop a unique AI-powered robot during its first Tesla AI Day back in 2019.

The first Tesla AI Day event was broadcasted live on YouTube for the common public to watch. Now, the company plans to showcase the prototype of the much-awaited robot at its upcoming event.

Musk said in January, “Optimus could eventually address global shortages of labor, and in the short term might be able to carry items around a factory.”

Besides Tesla Optimus, enthusiasts also believe that the company would reveal many of its plans and projects during the Tesla AI Day. During the event, Tesla fans also expect updates on the company’s self-driving technology.

Kiya.ai launches India’s first Banking Metaverse named Kiyaverse

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 3, 2022

A digital solution for the financial sector provider Kiya.ai announces the launch of India’s first banking metaverse named Kiyaverse.

The unique platform wants to combine real-world banking with metaverse banking through avatar-based interactions.

Kiya.ai intends to enable clients to transact, access financial information, and obtain various banking products virtually from the comfort of their homes via Kiyaverse, a one-of-a-kind platform.

Kiyaverse will allow banks to expand their Metaverse for clients, partners, and staff in the first phase, including services such as Relationship Manager & Peer Avatars and Robo-advisors. Customers will be able to utilize their customized avatars on digital banking units, mobile devices, computers, VR headsets, and mixed reality settings using Kiyaverse.

“Kiyaverse will interface its open API connectors with Aggregators and Gateways to enable a Super-App and Marketplace on the metaverse,” said the company in a statement.

The official statement further added that Kiyaverse would give near-real-world interaction through the internet of senses with the advent of Haptics equipped Headsets.

According to the company, Kiyaverse intends to use tokens as NFTs and collaborate with CBDC to allow open finance in a Web3.0 context. Moreover, the metaverse platform will integrate its Open API connections with Aggregators and Gateways to enable a metaverse to Super-App and Marketplace.

“Metaverse allows banks to use cutting-edge technology with a human touch which will significantly deepen and personalize customer interaction. Kiyaverse offers meaningful applications in the Metaverse that apply to relevant business use cases in the real world,” CEO and MD of Kiya.ai, Rajesh Mirjankar. He further added that Kiyaverse offers cross-functional multi-experiences using customized avatars in real-world, mixed reality, and virtual reality environments.

Gupshup acquires Omnichannel Customer Service Platform OneDirect

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 3, 2022

Conversational messaging platform providing company Gupshup acquires leading Omnichannel Customer Service Platform for Global Businesses OneDirect. However, no information has been provided by either company regarding the valuation of this acquisition deal.

Gupshup’s service is strengthened by the acquisition, which allows conversational interaction with a robust and adaptable live Agent Assist solution.

The live Agent Assist solution integrates effortlessly with chatbot automation systems to give the most extraordinary customer experience on-demand, 24/7, in the channel and language of the client’s choosing.

Moreover, with customized processes and connections with current CRM and helpdesk systems, the live Agent Assist solution can expand to thousands of agents.

Co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, Beerud Seth, said, “Customer support is being transformed with conversational experiences that deliver instant, personalized experiences using both automated and manual solutions across a range of messaging channels. Businesses are using these solutions at scale to dramatically increase customer delight and reduce support cost.”

He further added that OneDirect is a valuable addition to the Gupshup family, with their demonstrated expertise in assisting major businesses in transforming omnichannel customer service.

Bengaluru-based India’s leading CEM platform OneDirect was founded by Ankur Singla, Avinash Vankadaru, Vishal Pal Chaudhary, and Vishrut Chalsani in 2013. The company’s robust platform specializes in assisting enterprises in overcoming Customer Experience Management issues.

For leading brands in BFSI, Retail, Consumer Electronics, Travel, and Hospitality, OneDirect has processed over 1 billion consumer contacts in ten different languages. Many industry-leading organizations such as Indian Railways, Myntra, KFC, Airtel, Indigo Airlines, etc., use OneDirect’s CEM platform.

“We are excited to join the Gupshup family and look forward to building more efficient and personalized conversational experiences. Gupshup’s advanced AI capabilities combined with Onedirect’s robust customer service and engagement platform will provide businesses the ability to reinvent customer experience,” said Co-founder and CEO of OneDirect, Vishrut Chalsani.

Binance Labs closes $500 million Investment Fund to Boost Blockchain and related technologies

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 3, 2022

Binance Labs raises $500 million Investment Fund

The investment arm of crypto giant Binance, Binance Labs, announces that it has closed $500 million worth of investment funds to boost blockchain, Web3, and other related technologies.

Binance Labs’ investment fund is backed by worldwide institutional investors such as DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital.

According to the company, it intends to allocate the fresh $500 million fund to companies at various phases of development, including incubation, early-stage, and late-stage growth. The funds will considerably help in the development of the new technology and support startups operating in the web3 and blockchain industry.

Founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, sai d, “In a Web3 environment, the connection between values, people, and economies is essential, and if these three elements come together to build an ecosystem, that will accelerate the mass adoption of the blockchain technology and crypto.”

He further added that the newly closed investment fund’s purpose is to identify and assist projects and creators with the potential to establish and lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, Metaverse, social, and other areas.

Binance Labs was founded by Changpeng Zhao and Christy Choi in 2017. Binance Labs specializes in discovering, investing in, and empowering viable blockchain entrepreneurs, startups, and communities, along with giving funding to industry projects that contribute to the growth of the greater blockchain ecosystem.

Binance Labs has invested in and fostered over 100 startups from over 25 countries since 2018. Binance Labs’ fund is the latest in a long line of crypto funds formed by venture capitalists, with Andreessen Horowitz investing $4.5 billion last week to exhibit confidence in the sector despite the current dip.

Vodafone Idea launches AI-powered AdTech platform Vi Ads

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 3, 2022

Telecommunications services providing company Vodafone Idea (Vi) launches its new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered AdTech platform named Vi Ads.

According to the company, Vi Ads, a new platform, will provide advertisers with a cutting-edge, ROI-focused programmatic advertising buying platform.

Vi Ads will allow advertisers to connect with the operator’s over 243 million users via various channels, including Vi-owned digital media including Vi App, Vi Movies & TV App, and traditional channels like SMS and IVR calls.

The platform will provide a self-service interface that gives advertisers complete control over their campaigns, from a campaign set up to tracking campaign performance and driving campaign analytics. Vi partnered with TorcAI to develop its Vi Ads platform.

CEO of TorcAI, Rohit Verma, said, “This partnership, and the development of the Vi Ads platform, will enable Vi to connect their vast stores of customer insights with advertisers, and publishers, to deliver the right message at the perfect time.”

He further added that they are looking forward to a long partnership with Vi and are excited about the potential to create world-class products and technology that will continue to redefine the way data is utilized to better interact with customers in an ever-changing digital landscape.

Talking about the nature of the platform, the company mentioned that Vi Ads would be media agnostic, allowing advertisers to interact with Vi users via external media channels and Vi Ads publisher partners. The service provides advertisers with the advantages of unique audience segments, interest groups, and targeting characteristics drawn from Vi’s deep insights into its consumer base.

“With our programmatic platform – Vi Ads, we will address two of the biggest challenges faced by marketers today – authentic insights and enhanced reach,” said the CMO of Vi, Avneesh Khosla. He also mentioned that Vi Ads is a simple, user-friendly, and highly effective option for marketers to reach out to the proper target group with the most relevant messaging at any given time.

Research reveals Autonomous Vehicles can be Tricked to Drive dangerously

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 3, 2022

Autonomous Vehicles Tricked Drive dangerously

Researchers from the University of California found out that the placement of an ordinary item on the side of the road might deceive autonomous vehicles into coming to a standstill or other dangerous driving behavior.

It is already known that a single miscalculated decision of self-driving cars can cause severe damage to the passengers and also pedestrians.

However, this new revelation indicates the need to further refine the technology to improve its security.

To understand and identify this vulnerability, the researchers at UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences created PlanFuzz, a testing tool that can automatically uncover vulnerabilities in commonly used automated driving systems. They also released a video on YouTube to demonstrate their findings.

Researchers discovered that vehicles were forced to stop on vacant thoroughfares and crossroads due to cardboard boxes and bicycles put by the side of the road.

Qi Alfred Chen, UCI professor of computer science, said, “A box, bicycle, or traffic cone may be all that is necessary to scare a driverless vehicle into coming to a dangerous stop in the middle of the street or on a freeway off-ramp, creating a hazard for other motorists and pedestrians.”

He went on to say that automobiles cannot tell the difference between things on the road by chance and those purposely set there as part of a physical denial-of-service assault.

The research team primarily analyzed security flaws unique to the planning module, a component of the software code that handles autonomous driving systems. According to the researchers, this component is in charge of the vehicle’s decision-making processes, such as when to cruise, change lanes, etc.

TensorFlow 2.9 now has Intel oneDNN AI Optimizations Enabled by Default

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Preetipadma K

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June 2, 2022

TensorFlow has unveiled the newest 2.9 version, just three months after the release of version 2.8. The key highlights of this version are efficiency improvements using oneDNN and the introduction of DTensor, a new model distribution API that allows for seamless data and model parallelism.

OneDNN is an open-source cross-platform performance library of deep learning building blocks aimed toward helping developers of deep learning applications and frameworks like TensorFlow. In Tensorflow 2.5, which was launched in May 2021, the oneDNN library first became accessible as a preview opt-in feature. The oneDNN optimization was switched on by default in the latest TensorFlow 2.9 upgrade after a year of testing and excellent feedback from the community, with four times performance enhancement.

It presently defaults on all Linux x86 packages, as well as on CPUs having neural-network-focused functionality, including AVX512 VNNI, AVX512 BF16, AMX, and others, found on Intel Cascade Lake and newer CPUs.

The promise of oneDNN for organizations and data scientists, according to Intel, is a considerable acceleration of up to three times performance for AI operations using TensorFlow. Intel believes that by using oneDNN, data scientists will be able to enhance model execution time. This performance enhancement is referred to as “software AI acceleration” by Intel and professes to have a meaningful impact in several areas. These areas include applications spanning natural language processing, image and object recognition, autonomous vehicles, fraud detection, medical diagnosis and treatment and others.

On the latest 2nd and 3rd-Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, oneDNN additionally supports the int8 and bfloat16 data types to increase compute-intensive training and inference performance. These improvements can decrease the time it takes to run a model by up to 4 times for int8 and 2 times for bfloat16. It also enables them to gain more performance out of AI accelerators like Intel Deep Learning Boost, adds the company. The oneDNN optimizations are also available in other TensorFlow-based applications, such as TensorFlow Extended, TensorFlow Hub, and TensorFlow Serving.

With over 100 million downloads, TensorFlow is one of the most popular AI application development platforms in the world. TensorFlow with Intel optimizations is available as a standalone component and as part of the Intel® oneAPI AI Analytics Toolkit, and it’s already being used in a variety of industries, including the Google Health project, animation filmmaking at Laika Studios, language translation at Lilt, natural language processing at IBM Watson, and more. Several other prominent open-source deep learning frameworks, including PyTorch and Apache MXNet, as well as machine learning frameworks like Scikit-learn and XGBoost, already benefit from Intel software upgrades via oneDNN and other oneAPI libraries.

Google Bans Deepfake training projects on Colab

By

Dipayan Mitra

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June 2, 2022

Global technology giant Google bans deepfake training projects on its online computing resource platform Colab. BleepingComputer identified this new development from the updated terms of use of the platform.

The terms mentioned restricts any deepfake-related projects on the platform. Colab is an online computing platform that enables researchers to run Python code directly in the browser while utilizing free computing resources such as GPUs.

Colab is great for training machine learning projects such as deepfake models or performing data analysis because of the multi-core nature of GPUs.

This ban might considerably reduce the pool of developers capable of training higher-resolution models, where the input and output images are more comprehensive and more suited to high-resolution outcomes.

Several users received warning alerts who tried to run deepfakes on Colab. The warning message mentioned, “You may be executing code that is disallowed, and this may restrict your ability to use Colab in the future. Please note the prohibited actions specified in our FAQ.”

However, it is to be noted that not all deepfake codes were displaying warning alerts to users.

The ban was implemented earlier this month, according to archive.org historical data, with Google Research secretly adding deepfakes to the list of blacklisted projects. For instance, a Reddit user reported that he was successfully able to run one of the most popular deepfake Colab projects.

A Google spokesperson said to TechCrunch, “Deepfakes were added to our list of activities disallowed from Colab runtimes last month in response to our regular reviews of abusive patterns.”

The spokesperson further added that deterring misuse is a never-ending game, and they cannot provide particular tactics since counterparties can use the information to bypass detection systems.

Sheryl Sandberg quits Meta after serving 14 years

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 2, 2022

Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Meta, has quit the company after serving for nearly 14 years.

After a transition phase this summer, Sandberg will be succeeded by Javier Olivan, the company’s current Chief Growth Officer. This development was announced by Zuckerberg through a Facebook post.

“When I took this job in 2008, I hoped I would be in this role for five years. Fourteen years later, it is time for me to write the next chapter of my life,” wrote Sandberg.

She further added that she is aware that her future will entail a greater emphasis on her foundation and philanthropic activities, which is more important to her than ever, given the essential nature of the current time for women.

She transformed Facebook for good, leveraging her managerial expertise and knowledge of the then-nascent digital advertising business.

When the information was revealed, the stock prices of the company went down by 4% as she held an important position at Meta and had worked closely with the CEO Mark Zuckerberg for more than a decade. However, the good news is that the stock prices soon returned to normal.

Sandberg’s replacement, Javier Olivan, has been with Meta for over 14 years and has overseen teams responsible for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

Olivan said, “I think Meta has reached the point where it makes sense for our product and business groups to be more closely integrated, rather than having all the business and operations functions organized separately from our products.”

However, after leaving the company, Sandberg will continue to serve on Meta’s Board of Directors.

IBM rolls out side order of NLP to McDonald’s AI drive-thru chatbots

By

Dipayan Mitra

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June 2, 2022

Technology giant IBM is all set to roll out its natural language processing (NLP) software to several Mcdonald’s AI drive-thru chatbots.

This new addition will considerably help in improving the technological capabilities of the drive-thus and, therefore, provide a better experience to the customers.

Apart from McDonald’s AI drive-thru, in 2021, IBM added additional NLP tools to its Watson Discovery enterprise AI service.

Rob Thomas, senior veep of Global Markets at IBM, said, “We can do all the drive-thru ordering without requiring human intervention, every once in a while, something will kick to the human.”

Last year in October, IBM announced its plans to acquire fast-food chain McDonald’s McD Tech Lab to develop new technologies to automate drive-thru lanes. After the acquisition, this new announcement is one of the most significant developments at McD Tech Lab.

According to the plan announced earlier, McD Tech Lab planned to develop Automated Order Taking (AOT) technology that would reduce the human involvement in the order processing division and also speed up order delivery time.

McDonald’s started testing automated order processing at several of its drive-thru outlets in Chicago in June 2021. According to the restaurant, it is witnessing roughly 85 percent order accuracy when employing voice-ordering technology. After the acquisition of McD Labs, it aimed to develop artificial intelligence technologies to revolutionize the fast-food industry.

“In my mind, IBM is the ideal partner for McDonald’s given their expertise in building AI-powered customer care solutions and voice recognition,” said CEO of McDonald’s, Chris Kempczinski, regarding the acquisition.