Intel launches new AI Processor Gaudi2 to compete with NVIDIA

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May 11, 2022

Global semiconductor designing and manufacturing giant Intel launches its new Gaudi2 processor to compete with NVIDIA, which currently dominates the AI computing market.

The launched chipset is primarily focused on deep learning applications and offers two times the performance of its predecessor. Intel recently announced this development during its Intel Vision 2022 event.

Gaudi2 is Habana Labs’ second-generation processor, an Israeli AI chip company Intel purchased for $2 billion in late 2019. During the event, officials claimed that Gaudi2’s training throughput performance for the ResNet-50 computer vision model and the BERT natural language processing model is twice that of the Nvidia A100-80GB GPU.

According to Eitan Medina, chief operating officer at Habana Labs, compared to the A100 GPU, which is implemented at the same process node and has a similar die size, Gaudi2 provides superior leadership training performance evidenced by apples-to-apples comparisons on key workloads.

The next-generation chipset for AI computing is made using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s 7-nanometer transistor technology. Along with Gaudi2, Intel also launched another chip named Habana Gerco. These new chips, according to Intel, fill a gap in the market by offering customers high-performance, high-efficiency deep learning computing options for both training workloads and inference deployments in the data center while decreasing the AI barrier to entry for businesses of all sizes.

Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center and AI Group at Intel, Sandra Rivera, said, “The launch of Habana’s new deep learning processors is a prime example of Intel executing on its AI strategy to give customers a wide array of solution choices – from cloud to edge – addressing the growing number and complex nature of AI workloads.”

Rivera further added that Gaudi2 could help Intel clients train increasingly large and complex deep learning applications quickly and efficiently, and they are looking forward to Greco’s inference efficiency.

TENYX raises $15 million in Seed Funding Round

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 11, 2022

Next-generation voice-based intelligent systems developing company TENYX raises $15 million in a recently held seed funding round. Several investors, such as AME Cloud Ventures, Cota Capital, Morado Ventures, Pathbreaker Ventures, Point72 Ventures, and StageOne Ventures, participated in the company’s funding round.

As the startup is pre-income, the officials did not provide much detail regarding its technology and where they want to invest the raised capital. However, it was revealed that the company is working towards developing an ability to learn continually from new information for its voice-based systems.

Dan Gwak from Point72 Ventures said, “By developing novel, continuously learning AI capabilities, we think TENYX has the potential to revolutionize the enterprise customer service market, allowing a wide range of businesses to dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which they help their customers.”

Voice-based system developing startup TENYX was founded by Itamar Arel, a former computer science professor at the University of Tennessee, and Ron Chrisley, the head of the cognitive science program at Sussex University in 2021.

Co-founder and CEO of TENYX, Itamar Arel, said, “Conversational AI adoption has been hampered by deployment complexity, challenges to scaling efficiently, and lack of consumer trust. Existing automation solutions for voice-based customer service remain brittle and lacking in their ability to understand and engage with customers.”

He further added that due to the COVID-19 epidemic, call centers are experiencing workforce shortages, which presents an opportunity for the implementation of conversational AI technology. Customers are also expecting better and more consistent customer experiences, which may be met with sophisticated voice-based AI solutions.

TENYX is backed by the team that created Apprente, which developed voice-activated units to automate ordering at drive-through restaurants. In 2019, Mcdonald’s acknowledged Apprente’s technology and acquired the company, and rebranded it to McD Tech Labs.

However, recently IBM acquired McTech Labs to develop artificial intelligence technologies for revolutionizing the fast-food industry.

Thomson Reuters launches AI-powered Legal Tracker Advanced

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 11, 2022

Thomson Reuters AI Legal Tracker Advanced

Multinational media conglomerate Thomson Reuters launches its new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Legal Tracker Advanced solution.

This launch will help the organization strengthen its spend management, drive operational efficiencies, and improve workflow processes.

Thomson Reuters’ Legal Tracker Advanced uses artificial intelligence analytics and industry insights to Legal Tracker’s already robust data, reports, and visualizations.

According to the company, this is a step towards its aim of investing in legal tech and innovations. Legal Tracker’s network of over 66,000 law firms, comprehensive pricing data, and innovative analytics enable the legal department of organizations to reliably fulfill their legal service delivery goals.

The launch of Legal Tracker Advanced will further expand and strengthen the solution’s capabilities. Legal Tracker Advanced also comes with dashboard analytics that streamlines the rate management process through automation and advanced logic parameters.

Moreover, Legal Tracker Advanced is also backed by modern data storage and hosting that enables enterprise-grade speed and security, thanks to an engineering collaboration with Microsoft.

President of the Corporates business segment at Thomson Reuters, Sunil Pandita, said, “The office of the general counsel, like many professional services departments, is challenged with doing a lot more with a lot less while struggling to attract and retain the next generation of talent who want more engaging, less administrative tasks.”

Sunil further added that Legal Tracker Advanced is a more powerful way for legal departments to empower their teams to control costs and drastically increase efficiency. This is achieved using data-backed information and recommendations on outside counsel spending, freeing up time for the department to focus on high-impact.

The solution was developed in collaboration with The Counsel Management Group, which licensed their patented pricing tools and tested consulting methods.

“Legal Tracker is a cornerstone of the LegalTech vision for Thomson Reuters of creating an open, connected, and smart platform to empower legal professionals and their teams. Leveraging AI, machine learning, one universal language for matter mapping, and cutting-edge partners, we have created something really special,” said Chief Product Officer at LegalTech at Thomson Reuters, Kriti Sharma.

Clearview AI agrees to limit sales of its Database

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 11, 2022

United States-based facial recognition solution provider Clearview AI agrees to limit the sales of its database as a step towards maintaining the privacy of citizens.

Clearview AI had to make this decision to resolve a lawsuit that accused the company of collecting images of individuals with their permission from public social media platforms.

The case mentioned that the company had violated Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which is the most vital data privacy law in the country.

Moreover, Clearview AI has also agreed to stop sharing its database with government agencies in Illinois for the coming five years. Facebook also had to pay $650 million in 2020 for violating the same law.

Last month, Clearview AI said that it plans to allow private businesses to use its highly capable artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition technology. According to the plan, Clearview AI wanted to compete with global giants like Microsoft and Amazon to provide technology that can be used to verify people’s identities using AI-powered facial recognition.

However, with this development, the scenario seems to change for the company. However, Clearview AI has not admitted its fault or liability in the settlement.

According to Floyd Abrams, one of Clearview AI’s lawyers, the agreement did not require significant changes to the company’s business model or its current bar activity. A sigh of relief for the company is that it can still keep on working with multiple law enforcement agencies in the United States, both federal and state.

Recently, Italy’s privacy watchdog also fined Clearview AI €20 million for collecting users’ information from public databases and storing them. The authority ordered Clearview AI to delete the data it had collected on Italian citizens and barred the company from acquiring or processing data in the country.

NVIDIA fined $5.5 million for allegedly hiding the number of gaming GPUs sold to crypto miners

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 11, 2022

NVIDIA has been fined $5.5 million for allegedly not disclosing the total number of gaming GPUs sold to crypto miners.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States has reached an agreement with NVIDIA in which the company has to pay a $5.5 million fine for failing to report mining transactions in certain SEC filings in 2017.

However, NVIDIA has not yet agreed to its misconduct in the statement but has said that it does undertake to stop any unlawful failures to disclose information.

Crypto Assets and Cyber unit Head of SEC, Kristina Littman, said, “NVIDIA’s disclosure failures deprived investors of critical information to evaluate the company’s business in a key market.”

Littman also mentioned that all issuers, particularly those pursuing opportunities with emerging technologies, must make timely, comprehensive, and accurate disclosures.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, NVIDIA observed a massive increase in crypto mining-related sales in 2017. Interestingly it was the same time when rewards for mining Ethereum increased considerably.

As GPU is a must for mining cryptos, NVIDIA witnessed a skyrocketing demand for GPU, which led to its shortage. Moreover, NVIDIA then had to launch a separate line of GPUs for miners to tackle the GPU shortage in the gaming community.

“NVIDIA’s analysts and investors were interested in understanding the extent to which the company’s Gaming revenue was impacted by crypto mining and routinely asked senior management about the extent to which increases in gaming revenue during this time frame were driven by crypto mining,” said SEC.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft joins forces for Passwordless Standard

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

Apple, Google, and Microsoft team up to accelerate the availability of passwordless sign-ins. The companies announced intentions to increase support for a common passwordless sign-in standard designed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium in a cooperative effort to make the web more safe and usable for everyone.

In the long run, the partnership will make it much simpler for websites and applications to provide end-to-end authentication through passwordless methods like fingerprints, face recognition, and pins. The FIDO Alliance published a white paper explaining this concept in March.

FIDO’s passkey technology also allows users to authenticate with one of their other existing devices by sending a Bluetooth unlock request to that device, making the authentication process hassle-free.

With this new development, passwords will soon be obsolete for users of Android and iOS mobile operating systems, Edge, Safari, and Chrome browsers, and Windows and macOS.

According to the announcement, users will be able to utilize FIDO authentication on their device to sign in to an application or website on another device nearby, regardless of the OS platform or browser they are using.

Executive Director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance, Andrew Shikiar, said, “Ubiquity and usability are critical to seeing multi-factor authentication adopted at scale, and we applaud Apple, Google, and Microsoft for helping make this objective a reality by committing to support this user-friendly innovation in their platforms and products.”

He further added that along with the continued and expanding use of security keys, this new capability is expected to usher in a new wave of low-friction FIDO implementations, allowing service providers a full spectrum of alternatives for installing modern, phishing-resistant authentication.

“We look forward to making FIDO-based technology available across Chrome, ChromeOS, Android, and other platforms, and encourage app and website developers to adopt it, so people around the world can safely move away from the risk and hassle of passwords,” said Senior Director of Product Management at Google, Mark Risher.

Blocktickets to enter Indian Market, appoints Jaspreet Bindra to its Board

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

NFT and blockchain ticketing platform Blocktickets is all set to launch itself in the Indian market. With this development, Blocktickets plans to expand its presence in India as the country increases the adoption of blockchain-based technologies.

The company has appointed Jaspreet Bindra, who is the managing director and founder of Tech Whisperer Limited, to its board. Bindra was previously the group chief digital officer at Mahindra Group and a regional director at Microsoft India.

“India is a growing market for NFT, and I believe that Blocktickets, with its early mover advantage, strong founder product fit, MOAT of cinemas, and Indian content, will become the name synonymous with NFT based tickets in the country and across the globe,” said Bindra.

Web3 ticketing platform Blocktickets was founded by Abhinav Garg and Nishant Chandra. Blocktickets turn boring tickets that would otherwise be rejected into a pleasurable experience. According to the company, it is the world’s first decentralized and transparent NFT ticketing marketplace, allowing users to create, browse, buy, and sell NFT tickets.

Blocktickets sold over 2000 NFT tickets in less than half an hour for the World’s First Holi Event on Metaverse on March 17th and is already collaborating with India’s largest event organizers and film industry.

It is making the ever-evolving event sector more entertaining for all stakeholders through smart contracts, tokens, and NFTs. Several sectors, including sports, cinema, concerts, expos, airlines, hotels, and marketing and sponsorships, can leverage Blocktickets technology.

“Metaverse and Defi have opened up new ventures and have expanded the scope further. NFTs are essential to this whole universe, and that’s why we feel it can be used to transform the ticketing industry entirely. There’s so much that we can do by selling tickets as NFTs.” said the founders of Blocktickers. They further mentioned that Blocktickets is built on that vision, and we are confident in the Indian market’s support.

China plans to build AI-powered 3D Printed Hydroelectric Dam in Tibet

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

China is now working on a new project to build an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered 3D printed hydroelectric dam in Tibet.

According to reports, the dam will be constructed in just a period of two years on the Tibetan plateau. The dam will be built entirely by AI-powered robots that will act as a big 3D printer to produce the 180-meter construction layer-by-layer.

This new development makes China’s new hydroelectric plant the first-ever AI-aided 3D printed dam in the world. The dam named Yangqu hydropower plant will reportedly provide electricity to Henan province.

Though not much information has surfaced regarding the implementation of this project, the scientists claim that the technology had matured enough for mass “large, filled infrastructure” applications.

Yangkou Hydropower Station will be erected at the height of 180 meters above the Yellow River, with a capacity of generating five billion kilowatt-hours of power and providing electricity to 50 million people when completed in 2024.

AI-enabled robots will be deployed at the construction site independently along with the human workforce over the course of 2 years to build the dam.

China is heavily reliant on hydropower, which is the country’s second-largest source of energy after coal. This new dam is a step towards the country’s aim of reducing the dependence on coal for power.

3D printing has gained immense popularity over the last few years, with researchers building bizarre objects using the technology. For instance, Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture developed a 3D-printed concrete library in Shanghai’s Wisdom Bay Innovation Park last year. A 3D printed retractable bridge was also launched in the city that is capable of launching in less than a minute.

GitHub Launches new Education Features for 2M Student Developers

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

GitHub new Education Features Student Developers

GitHub has announced an expansion of Global Campus to provide a single dashboard for teachers to connect with one another, create and grade assignments, and more.

GitHub Global Campus is used extensively by schools and universities in India, including the University of Mumbai, Shivaji College (University of Delhi), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), and Chandigarh University.

This expansion continues GitHub Education’s mission to offer nearly 2M+ students real-world experience and allow researchers and educators to work more effectively inside and outside of the classroom.

By joining Global Campus, teachers using GitHub Classroom get access to GitHub’s groundbreaking, browser-based IDE, Codespaces at no cost. Codespaces allows users to use a Visual Studio Code-backed editor, terminal, and debugger along with GitHub version control in the browser or on a desktop.

Integrating Codespaces into your GitHub Classroom experience can provide a scalable solution for quickly getting CS students started using virtually any device, including Chromebooks and iPads.

The new features make it easier for students to begin their development careers and for teachers to manage their classrooms, including:

Global Campus for Teachers. Teachers can now access a single dashboard to connect with one another, create and grade assignments, and more.
Free Codespaces for Classrooms. Codespaces provides a fully-featured development environment that can be hosted on any device.

The Global Campus teacher status with GitHub gives 1,250 hours of Codespaces at no cost, which is enough for a class of 50 students completing five assignments per month on a 2-core machine with one Codespace stored per student.

This easy access to Codespaces is the first step towards improving early access and ultimately bringing more software developers online. Much like the calculator accelerated and augmented what could be taught in a classroom, access to developer tools will open up myriad opportunities for students to solve increasingly complex challenges.

Teachers can join Global Campus by completing a short application for teacher benefits. Once accepted, applicants will be officially welcomed as a Global Campus teacher. GitHub says that its Global Campus will continue to grow and become a place for teachers to access the best resources and industry tools to incorporate in their classroom.

Apple’s Director of Machine Learning Quits Over Company’s Return to Work Policy

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

Apple’s Director of Machine Learning Quits

Smartphone manufacturing giant Apple’s director of machine learning, Ian Goodfellow, quits his job as the company passes a return to work policy for its employees.

Goodfellow had been with Apple for nearly three years, having joined the company’s Special Projects Group in April 2019 after leaving Google.

The incident of him leaving the company is a big deal for Apple as it currently operates multiple features like FaceID and others that involve artificial intelligence and machine learning.

According to a Tweet from Zoë Schiffer, Goodfellow mentioned, “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team.”

Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, is leaving the company due to its return to work policy. In a note to staff, he said “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team.” He was likely the company’s most cited ML expert.
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) May 7, 2022

Moreover, Goodfellow is also referred to as the father of general adversarial networks (GAN), which can be used to create deepfake videos.

As a response to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple had earlier adopted a work-from-home model for its employees to be safe.

However, as steadily the world is getting back to normal, Apple changed its policy last September and asked its employees to return to the office. Last month, Apple employees returned to their offices under a hybrid home/office work policy, capping off a two-year-long working from home.

Employees are now required to be present at the office for three days a week, according to Apple’s new hybrid work structure. Though Apple has offered the choice to some of its teams to work remotely, unfortunately, Goodfellow was not the lucky one to receive that benefit.

A sigh of relief for Apple is that no other news of high-profile employees quitting the organization has emerged as of now.