Korean self-driving technology developing startup Mars Auto announces that it plans to launch its self-driving trucks next year. Mars Auto has successfully tested its first self-driving truck.
The company’s vehicle was equipped with a camera and a computer, allowing it to drive securely for 5 hours and 30 minutes on the highway from Seoul to Busan.
Additionally, the movements of the autonomous truck did not require any human interference. Mars Auto has partnered with Logi Square to test the efficiency of the pilot operation by expanding it to ten semi-large trucks on the Gyeongbu Expressway section from the metropolitan area to Busan.
Logi Square is a transportation company that specializes in corporate cargo and operates a domestic trunk transportation logistics business using truck autonomous driving technology.
According to the companies, this joint venture plans to focus on trunk transportation and middle mile activities to develop a structure that benefits the transportation sector, including borrowers, drivers, logistics businesses, and shippers.
Mars Auto said that the joint venture would be established by the end of this month, with Lodge Square Chief Technology Officer Lee In-Gyu and Mars Auto Vice President Kim Yong-soo serving as co-representatives.
“If manned autonomous driving trunk logistics become full-fledged in the second half of the year in the metropolitan area and Busan, Mas Auto’s goal of ‘reducing freight transportation costs’ will be proven in the market. We want to innovate the market,” said Kim Yong.
South Korea-based autonomous driving tech development company Mars Auto was founded by Gyuri Im and Ilsu Park in 2017. The company is working towards developing self-driving trucks that completely automate warehouse-to-warehouse truck operations. To date, Mars Auto has raise3d more than $11 million from investors like Y Combinator and Kakao Ventures over multiple funding rounds.
Bosch Global Software Technologies (BGSW), formerly known as Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI), announced its AIShield program as an autonomous global startup.
According to the company, AIShield will be focusing on the AI security sector as a part of BGSW’s effort to enter this market. Bosch AIShield is a patent-backed, ready-to-deploy solution with over 20 patents in the AI security domain.
AIShield is available as a Software as a Service (SaaS) product along with consulting-led AI security services for embedded, cloud, and on-premises deployments. Businesses can use AIShield to evaluate the vulnerabilities of their deployed AI solutions effectively.
Head of Technology and Innovation at Bosch Global Software Technologies (BGSW), Vadiraj Krishnamurthy, said, “The adoption of Artificial Intelligence has increased over the years to the point that it is now a mainstream technology across industry verticals. Bosch is committed to making AI trustworthy and building digital trust in AI.”
He further added that AIShield is a crucial product offering that protects artificial intelligence systems from potential adversary threats.
According to Bosch, AIShield has received multiple market validations from industry experts in the previous four months, including AI-first enterprises, platform partners, and security standards and regulatory agencies.
This new development gives the AIShield startup full autonomy in the burgeoning AI security sector. AIShield will now be able to acquire new customers, attract new tech talent in AI and security, engage with the global startup ecosystem, etc.
Using in-depth analysis and threat detection, Bosch AIShield performs vulnerability analysis of AI systems and generates customized endpoint defense against external threats. Therefore, the SaaS platform significantly reduces security difficulties and manages associated risks for AI systems.
“Bosch AIShield reflects our ‘Invented for life’ ethos and our commitment towards Digital Trust by securing AI Systems. AIShield venture is a step towards building an ecosystem of trustworthy AI worldwide and accelerating AI adoption for enterprises and consumers alike,” said CEO, President, and Managing Director, Bosch Global Software Technologies, Dattatri Salagame. He also mentioned that they intend to make AI security accessible to the public.
A hacker stole NFTs worth millions of dollars last week after accessing the official Instagram account of Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and posting a phishing link that moved tokens out of users’ crypto wallets. According to reports, the BAYC NFTs hack resulted in the theft of NFTs valued between $1 million and $14 million, depending on the source. Using the phishing link, the hacker tricked many followers into linking their crypto wallets to the hacker’s “smart contract” — a method for carrying out a crypto transaction. The attacker was able to take the assets housed in the wallets, gaining control of four Bored Apes including the Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, and Bored Ape Kennel Club projects, and a slew of other NFTs like 6 Mutant Apes, and 3 BAKC worth a total of $3 million.
This morning, the official BAYC Instagram account was hacked. The hacker posted a fraudulent link to a copycat of the BAYC website with a fake Airdrop, where users were prompted to sign a ‘safeTransferFrom’ transaction. This transferred their assets to the scammer's wallet.
The profile page linked to the hacker’s wallet address is no longer accessible on OpenSea due to the violation of platform OpenSea’s terms of service that forbid fraudulently obtaining items or taking them without consent. However, since NFT is decentralized, the content of the hacker’s wallet can be accessed on other sites. The wallet had 134 NFTs, according to the NFT platform Rarible.
Based on the most recent sale price, each of the stolen BAYC NFTs is valued well into the six figures. The cheapest Ape, #7203, last sold for 47.9 ETH, four months ago. Ape #6778 was most recently sold for 88.88 ETH, while Ape #6178 was finally sold for 90 ETH. The most valuable Ape, Bored Ape #6623, was sold three months ago for 123 ETH, bringing the total worth of the four stolen BAYC NFT Apes to a little over $1 million.
The phishing email was disguised as an airdrop link for the company’s new metaverse project, Otherside (a future Bored Ape-themed online world), which is set to launch later last week. The primary goal of a crypto airdrop is to raise awareness for new initiatives or services. The goal is to transfer tokens or NFTs to thousands of crypto addresses in the hopes that more people would get interested in the project and promote it. Users must link their crypto wallet (here MetaMask) where their NFTs are stored in order to receive an airdrop. Unfortunately, the fake link took the digital assets from the consumers’ wallets and transferred them to the hacker’s wallet.
The hack was disclosed on Twitter by BAYC just before 10AM ET on Monday last week. According to BAYC co-founder, the Gargamel hack occurred even when two-factor authentication was enabled on the account.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a 10,000-strong NFT collection of digital artworks launched by Yuga Labs in April 2021. These digital artworks feature images of ‘bored apes’ with a variety of fashionable accessories. Each bored ape is minted with different accessory combinations at random in such a way that each artwork is unique and only one of each exists. These apes were once purchasable for $250 per NFT, but their price (min $300,000) has risen with the NFT boom in 2021.
Meanwhile, scams involving BAYC NFTs are on the rise. Last month, a bored ape holder known as ‘s27’ lost $567k worth of bubble gum ape and matching mutants after trading NFTs via an exchange known as “Swap.kiwi.” This platform enables direct NFT exchanges between collectors with cheap transaction fees. The fraudster had made fresh NFTs that looked exactly like BAYC photos, except they had a green tick over them, which mimicked the platform’s “verified” mark.
Yuga Labs, in other news, has raised $285 million in cryptocurrency by selling tokens that represent land in a virtual world game it claims to be developing. Yuga Labs sold NFTs named “Otherdeeds” in an online sale on April 30, claiming that they could be swapped for plots of virtual property in “Otherside.” The “Otherdeeds” can only be purchased with ApeCoin, the project’s associated cryptocurrency that launched in March.
BAYC is also busy with other ambitious projects to establish itself as a bigger brand. A trilogy of BAYC films named “The Degen Trilogy is on the way, according to cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. The first will arrive in June, coinciding with Coinbase’s long-awaited NFT marketplace launch.
A “degen” is a phrase used in the crypto community to characterize someone who buys coins or NFTs without performing any substantial investigation into what they’re actually buying. The first part will be unveiled during NFT NYC, a nonfungible tokens event held in New York every year between June 20 and June 23.
The New York Times reported that technology giant Google had fired yet another artificial intelligence researcher from the Brain unit who wanted to challenge the findings of a research paper published by Google in 2020.
The research paper was related to the benefits of artificial intelligence-assisted chip design. The employee who got fired by Google, Satrajit Chatterjee, was terminated soon after he, along with his team, questioned the findings of Google’s research paper.
According to the New York Times, Chatterjee contested some of the paper’s claims in an internal email in which he also questioned whether the technology had been thoroughly tested.
Google rejected a paper written by Chatterjee and his team in response to the original paper, and the researchers then attempted to escalate the issue to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
However, Google came in front and defended its actions. Zoubin Ghahramani, a vice president at Google Research, said, “We thoroughly vetted the original Nature paper and stand by the peer-reviewed results.”
He further added that they also thoroughly investigated the technical claims of a subsequent submission, which did not meet their publication standards.
Earlier this year, two of Google’s ethical AI team members also left the company and joined Timnit Gebru’s new nonprofit research institute. Alex Hana, one of those Google employees, said that she was dejected because of the toxic work culture at Google and also pointed out the underrepresentation of black women in the company.
The gravity of the episode was demonstrated when Google’s parent company Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, was forced to take the matter into his own hands and launch an investigation.
EdTech unicorn startup upGrad acquires data science institute INSOFE in a $33 million share swap deal. INSOFE’s management and investors will take a fraction of a percent stake in upGrad, valued at $2 billion, as part of the deal.
This acquisition will allow upGrad to offer more and better courses in AI, ML, and data analytics to learners across the globe.
Indian EdTech startup upGrad was founded by Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli, Ravijot Chugh, and Ronnie Screwvala in 2015.
upGrad is one of the most popular learning platforms that offer online courses in subjects like digital marketing, product management, entrepreneurship, data analytics, data-driven management, and digital technology management.
Some of the other notable acquisitions of upGrad include companies such as Work Better Training, KnowledgeHut, The Gate Academy, Talentedge, Global Study Partners, etc. upGrad has a global learner base of over 2 million people from over 100 countries, around 300 university partners, and strong enterprise business with more than 1000 companies as clients.
Co-founder and MD of upGrad, Mayank Kumar, said, “INSOFE adds a strong R&D component in AI and ML to upGrad’s large education service basket and helps upGrad create very exciting novel services for corporates and students globally.”
He further added that INSOFE is the gold standard of excellence in these specialized areas, and their combined powers provide tremendous value to upGrad.
Hyderabad-based educational institute INSOFE was founded by Dakshinamurthy V Kolluru, Ganapathy Kumar, and Sridhar Pappu in 2010. INSOFE is one of the most sought-after destinations for an undergraduate to doctoral education in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science globally.
Apart from India, INSOFE also has facilities in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada.
“INSOFE’s depth in AI and ML coupled with upGrad’s partner and student base makes a powerful combination to assume a leadership position in AI education and research worldwide,” said Co-founder and CEO of INSOFE, Dr. Murthy.
He also mentioned that they are enthusiastic about collaborating and using their excellence centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore, which will compete with anyone in the world in some of the most sought-after areas of specialization.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announces that it is building a new artificial intelligence (AI) model that can process speech and text like human brains.
This research initiative is a step for Meta to better understand how humans process speech and text in their brains.
Meta is collaborating with neuroimaging center Neurospin (CEA) and Inria to carry out this research.
According to the company, it is comparing how AI language models and the brain respond to the same spoken or written sentences to guide the creation of AI that can process voice and text as efficiently as humans.
“Over the past two years, we’ve applied deep learning techniques to public neuroimaging data sets to analyze how the brain processes words and sentences,” mentioned Meta in a blog.
The article also said that although AI has come a long way in recent years, it is still far from understanding languages as efficiently as humans. To date, the researchers have found that the language models that best anticipate the next word from context are those that most closely mimic brain activity.
Meta’s team models numerous brain scans recorded from public data sets using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), along with magnetoencephalography (MEG), a scanner that takes millisecond-by-millisecond pictures of brain activity.
The company says that the tasks mentioned above are essential to meet the data requirements for deep learning. Meta evaluated several language models with the brain responses of 345 volunteers who listened to complex narratives while being captured with fMRI in partnership with Inria.
Moreover, the researchers also discovered evidence of long-range predictions in the brain, an ability that continues to challenge language models.
“For example, consider the phrase, “Once upon a …” Most language models today would typically predict the next word, “time,” but they’re still limited in their ability to anticipate complex ideas, plots, and narratives like people do,” mentioned Meta.
Artificial intelligence startup Synthesis AI raises $17 million in its recently held series A funding round led by 468 Capital. Other investors like Sorenson Ventures, Strawberry Creek Ventures, Bee Partners, PJC, iRobot Boom Capital, and Kubera Venture Capital also participated in the company’s series A funding round.
Synthesis AI said it plans to use the raised capital to expand its team and increase its product portfolio to help its clients develop advanced computer vision models faster than ever.
In addition to expanding its team, the company also intends to expand its research into the convergence of CGI and AI, focusing on neural rendering, mixed training, and sophisticated human behavior modeling.
Florian Leibert, partner at 468 Capital, said, “Synthesis AI is uniquely positioned to win in the emerging synthetic data space. The breadth and depth of Synthesis AI’s platform, the quality of the team, and the extensive list of Fortune 50 customers firmly establish Synthesis AI as a category leader.”
Leibert further added that they are pleased to assist Synthesis AI as it pursues its goal of fundamentally changing how AI models are created.
This new development comes after the launch of Synthesis AI’s first dedicated community for developing and exploiting synthetic data in AI/ML and computer vision called OpenSynthetics. The one-of-a-kind platform allows developers to exchange tools and strategies for creating and using synthetic data.
United States-based synthetic data technology startup Synthesis AI was founded by Yashar Behzadi in 2019. To date, Synthesis AI has raised more than $24 million from multiple investors over the past.
“Synthetic data is at an inflection point of adoption, and our goal is to develop the technology further and drive a paradigm change in how computer vision systems are built,” said Behzadi.
He also mentioned that the industry would soon be able to fully build and train computer vision models in virtual worlds, allowing for more advanced and ethical AI.
Rushi Bhatt, a renowned artificial intelligence expert, will now lead the Compass India Development Center located in Bengaluru, Karnataka, and serve as the company’s Senior Director and Head of AI.
Bhatt, along with Joseph Sirosh, CTO of Compass, recently inaugurated Bengaluru’s technology innovation and development center. This will be the company’s second international development center outside of the United States, following Compass IDC in Hyderabad.
According to the company, its newly established IDC in Bengaluru will implement state-of-art AI and machine learning advancements. Compass plans to extensively hire new talents to expand its team in areas like AI, ML, and cloud.
The company claims that it will use technologies including AI, ML, mobile apps, cloud, data intelligence, and data analytics to focus on increasing R&D and innovation throughout its technology stack.
Bhatt said, “The Compass Bengaluru IDC is an important milestone in taking forward Compass’s vision of investing in Data, AI, and ML.” He further added that the IDC intends to use its technical talent pool to lead the next wave of cutting-edge innovation in developing agile, digital solutions that provide a consistent experience for all stakeholders in the real estate ecosystem.
The IDC’s existing team has aided in developing solutions in a wide range of industries, including CRM, Marketing, Client Servicing, 3D Virtual Tours, etc.
United States-based real estate technology company Compass was founded by Mike Weiss, Ori Allon, Robert Reffkin, and Ugo Di Girolamo in 2012. The company is most recognized for offering an online marketplace for purchasing, renting, and selling real estate.
“Since our inception here in India, the technology talent that we have acquired has played an integral role in helping Compass establish itself as the biggest Real Estate Brokerage in the US. These engineers are not only helping us grow as a company, but they are also impacting the lives of thousands of Agents in the US,” said Joseph Sirosh.
He also mentioned that AI, ML, Cloud, Mobile Development, and other technologies are poised to revolutionize every element of the Real Estate Ecosystem, and he is confident that India’s IT expertise will play a critical role in this revolution.
Wang Wei Min, a research scientist from Singapore, wins a $100 thousand prize in a challenge to develop artificial intelligence (AI) models that can detect deepfakes.
Min single-handedly defeated 469 other participants in the competition to win this reward. Amnesty International Singapore, the office of the National Research Foundation’s Artificial Intelligence Program, organized the Trusted Media Challenge.
It was a five-month-long competition that required participating teams to build AI models for detecting deepfakes or digitally modified videos.
Wang, a National University of Singapore graduate, developed an algorithm that accurately distinguished between original syllables and those having digitally altered faces or sounds, with an accuracy of 98.53 percent.
Moreover, Wang was also offered a $300,000 start-up grant to commercialize his developed technology. Deepfakes are fake media in which a person’s appearance is replaced with someone else’s in an existing photograph or video using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
This technology has gained immense popularity over the years, and Wang says, “Deepfakes, good or bad, is an emerging technology that you simply cannot ignore.” Deep learning is used to make deepfakes, and it involves training generative neural network designs like autoencoders.
However, apart from being used to create entertainment content, the technology has also been used multiple times for spreading misinformation across the globe.
Wand said, “Technology is not just part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. However, technology cannot be the only solution to misinformation. It must be accompanied by a broader set of measures across society.”
According to Wang, he decided to participate in the competition as the current challenges facing the media match with his research interests, and he is passionate about using AI to solve real-world problems.
Automobile manufacturing giant Tata Motor unveils its new electric vehicle (EV) concept named AVINYA.
The new concept EV is built on the company’s third-generation design and embodies Tata’s vision of a fully electric vehicle. Tata has also released a video to showcase its new concept car.
The name Avinys comes from a Sanskrit word that signifies innovation that aligns with the specs of this high-tech concept electric vehicle.
AVINYA delivers unprecedented mobility that allows for more space and comfort. Tata’s generation 3 architecture features a more flexible design, improved connectivity, superior driver assistance technologies, and improved performance and efficiency.
The AVINYA Concept has a distinctive DRL that runs across the front of the car, along with butterfly doors and voice-activated technologies.
Moreover, the vehicle is built with eco-friendly material and also comes with a screen-less concept to minimize the chances of driver distraction.
According to the company, the new concept EV is a vehicle that combines the best features of a premium hatchback with an SUV’s luxury and versatility and the space and functionality of an MPV.
Chairman of Tata Sons and Tata Motors, Chandrasekaran, said, “While making the AVINYA Concept a reality, the central idea was to offer a mobility solution like no other – a state of the art software on wheels that is well designed, sustainable, and reduces the planet’s carbon footprint.”
He further added that Green Mobility is at the heart of TPEM, and the AVINYA Concept is an excellent embodiment of the company’s values — a design that will not only speed up but also lead to the adoption of electric vehicles.
Following a $1 billion cash infusion six months ago, this is Tata’s second EV debut this month. This development signifies the company’s deep interest and commitment to bringing innovations to the EV industry.
Managing Director of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, Shailesh Chandra, said, “The AVINYA Concept is the fruition of our first idea built on our Pure EV GEN 3 architecture, enabling us to produce a range of globally competitive EVs.”
He also mentioned that their objective for pure EVs is to provide wellness and rejuvenation while traveling, supported by cutting-edge technologies, intending to increase the overall quality of life.
