Global technology giant IBM announces the launch of its all-new z16 system aimed for transaction processing at scale and the industry’s first quantum processing system.
According to the company, the launched technology is IBM’s next-generation system featuring an on-chip artificial intelligence accelerator that provides latency-optimized inference.
The IBM z16 will allow customers to analyze real-time transactions at scale for mission-critical workloads, including credit cards, healthcare, financial transactions, and many more.
In addition, the chip is specifically designed to help protect against possible threats that may be used to crack today’s encryption technologies. The chip can process 300 billion inference requests per day with just one millisecond of latency, allowing financial institutions to considerably boost the analysis speed of detecting fraud during transactions.
Senior Vice President of IBM Systems, Ric Lewis, said, “IBM is the gold standard for highly secured transaction processing. Now with IBM z16 innovations, our clients can increase decision velocity with inferencing right where their mission critical data lives.”
He further added that this creates enormous opportunities for clients to change the game in their respective industries, putting them in a better position to deliver better customer experiences and more powerful business outcomes. Organizations can effectively increase their resiliency to present and future cyber threats using IBM z16 quantum-safe cryptography.
IBM claims that its z16 incorporates new artificial intelligence acceleration through an on-chip AI coprocessor to reduce latency and deliver exceptional performance for in-transaction inference.
The IBM z16 combines AI inference via its IBM Telum Processor with highly secure and reliable high-volume transaction processing. Apart from banking, the newly launched processor can also help multiple other industries to carry out tasks such as loan approval, clearing & settlement, federated learning for retail, etc.
In-game asset and virtual world marketplace Fractal raises $35 million in its recently held seed funding round led by Paradigm and Multicoin Capital.
Multiple investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Solana Labs, Animoca, Coinbase Ventures, Play Ventures, Position Ventures, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Crossover, Shrug Capital, and others participated in Fractal’s latest funding round.
The company plans to use the fresh funds to extensively hire new engineers and game developers and grow a GameFi participants’ ecosystem. The platform developed by Fractal was recently launched for the public in December 2021.
Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner at Paradigm, will join Fractal’s board as part of the funding. “We’re in the middle of a generational shift in gaming, powered by crypto, where players expect a greater degree of ownership and control of their digital items,” said Huang.
He also mentioned that Fractal’s competent team understands this shift better than anyone else, and he is delighted to invest in the company’s vision.
United States-based virtual marketplace providing startup Fractal was founded by Justin Kan, Mike Angell, and Robin Chan in 2021. Soon after its establishment, the company developed a virtual world marketplace where users may find, purchase, and sell gaming NFTs.
The company also launched its new product named Fractal Launchpad, enabling gaming creators to sell their initial NFT collections to the general market. Some of the notable games launched through Fractal’s platform include House of Sparta, Tiny Colony, Yaku, and several others.
Game developers can now start applying on Fractal’s website to list their NFTs on the marketplace.
Co-founder of Fractal and Twitch, Justin Kan, said, “NFT marketplaces are still the wild west right now, with many teams failing to deliver on their promises. We are working with the best AAA gaming studios with large communities to bring the coolest game experiences to players. The transition to blockchain assets is a new business model for gaming, and in 10 years will be an even bigger shift in the gaming world than Twitch was.” He further added that the company aims to onboard more than 100 million cryptocurrency users through blockchain games.
The AI technology will use over 2500 CCTV cameras installed across the city to recognize helmet-less bike riders and parking violations. Nearly 125 CCTV cameras can recognize the number plates of vehicles out of the lot. After scanning, the system will then process the complaint and send it to violators, which, if done manually, would consume a lot of time.
Officials said the technology would be connected to the RTO server so it can send e-challans to violators of traffic laws through SMS in real-time.
Additionally, the system will also lessen the risk of police personnel being injured while physically halting criminals. Kolkata Police revealed its plans to use this AI system back in November 2021 and had requested a session with experts to understand the functionalities and capabilities of the AI surveillance system.
A senior police official said, “The vendor set up its system at the traffic control room last week. A few senior officers have now been tasked to prepare daily reports on the efficacy of the system and provide a proper demonstration of the system. This will be a major indicator on how we go about integrating AI in the city’s traffic system.”
Kolkata Police was approached by two companies to deploy their AI surveillance systems. However, Kolkata Police asked the companies to install their software in the control room for them to test.
Alphabet’s self-driving technology developing subsidiary Waymo showcases its new autonomous driving tech in the streets of San Francisco, United States.
The newly demonstrated technology of Waymo now allows the company’s robotaxis to operate autonomously without the need for any human intervention or driver on board. Waymo also released a video showcasing the functioning of the robotaxi.
Though Waymo had been testing its robotaxis since last year in the region, it earlier had to deploy a safety driver in the taxis as a precautionary measure to avoid any mishaps on roads and ensure the safety of the passengers.
Waymo has reported that one of its specially equipped self-driving Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis has driven in San Francisco for the first time without a human driver. Waymo employees and members of the company’s Trusted Tester program can enjoy the one-of-a-kind experience of commuting in a fully autonomous taxi.
CEO of Waymo, Tekedra Mawakana, said, “We’ve learned so much from our San Francisco Trusted Testers over the last six months, not to mention the innumerable lessons from our riders in the years since launching our fully autonomous service in the East Valley of Phoenix.”
He further added that the tests had a direct impact on how they are bringing their service forward as they welcome the first employee riders in San Francisco.
According to the company, its autonomous taxis will be operating within a designated route that stretches from Presidio to Candlestick Point. This location will be expanded further in the future as Waymo did in other testing areas.
Since the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) as a theoretical concept or a movie trope, the technology has progressed leaps and bounds, accommodating every primary industry’s needs. Be it finding the protein structure of genetic disorders, recommending our next binge, or ensuring streamlined claims processing; artificial intelligence has transformed most of the sector. However, while the rapid adoption of its technologies fuel disruption and innovation, there has been immense demand for professionals with AI expertise to push such changes. This resulted in the software sector lagging behind due to the scanty availability of candidates that fit the job descriptions. Imagine the few percentages of people with coding skills designing AI solutions that possess the power to revamp our world with its offerings. This void in the job market led to the growth of no-code AI platforms and tools.
Meanwhile, because coders make up such a tiny fraction of the population, the software they create risks being inherently discriminatory and biased. A diversified staff is necessary to avoid racial and gender prejudice in AI products. Not only that but people with disabilities should be included in the application design process to make it accessible. However, understanding how to code generally necessitates a higher education, and access to this knowledge is thus another obstacle to inclusion. Further, the scarcity of an adequate talent pool creates fierce competition among different industry niches to hire the ‘qualified’ by luring higher pay; thus widening the gap between demand and availability. These bottlenecks are also addressed when no-code platforms offer to fill the vacuum by enabling anybody to create an app. Most of these non-code tools have a visual appeal that allows even non-coders to develop AI-based solutions.
No coding-backed solutions have made it easier for individuals and businesses to experiment with artificial intelligence areas like data science or technologies like machine learning. These tools let organizations deploy AI models quickly and inexpensively, allowing their domain experts to benefit from them. At the same time, it has also reduced development time by a huge margin. Earlier the process of developing proprietary AI solutions involved writing code, cleaning data, classifying, organizing data, training, and debugging the model. This takes a lot longer for people who aren’t familiar with data science.
The new no-code platform can now uncover new insights and help build predictive models faster thanks to a refined user interface and integrated approach. For instance, in data analytics, no-code platforms can employ various data sources to test millions of hypotheses to identify previously unknown market drivers and restraints, and scenario outcomes. Then they can explain the findings in human-readable language or visual format – all without the use of code and in an automated manner. No coding platform, such as the DataRobot app builder, is used to create artificial intelligence and robotics applications. Without requiring any code, the platform allows users to instantly transform any model into an AI or robotics application for end customers.
Because of the rising skill scarcity, no-code platforms are likely to become more popular in the future years, with Gartner estimating that by 2023, 65 percent of app development would be low-code/no-code.
Nenshad Bardoliwalla, chief product officer of DataRobot, recently spoke with TechTalks about the difficulty of serving the demands of machine learning and data science in various industries, as well as how no-code platforms are democratizing artificial intelligence. DataRobot and other no-code AI platform providers, according to Bardoliwalla, are developing tools that allow domain experts and business-savvy people to create and deploy machine learning models without having to write code. Users can submit datasets to DataRobot, complete essential preprocessing procedures, choose and extract features, and develop and compare a variety of machine learning models, all through a user-friendly graphical user interface.
Bardoliwalla points out that until almost a decade ago, an organization’s ability to query data and generate reports was confined to a few employees with the expert coding skills required to maintain databases and data warehouses. However, today’s tools have progressed to the point where non-coders and non-technical persons can conduct the majority of their data querying jobs using simple graphical tools without the need for experienced data analysts. Bardoliwalla assures that no-code AI is not a replacement for the expert data scientist. However, it enhances machine learning productivity across the organizational spectrum, allowing more individuals to fabricate AI-powered models. This alleviates much of the responsibility on data scientists’ shoulders and allows them to refocus their talents on other crucial tasks.
Apart from DataRobot, no-code AI services like Akkio, Obviously.ai, Levity, Clarifai, Amazon SageMaker, Peltarion, and Veritone, are also catering to the industry demand for no-code tools. Some of them also provide no-code tools for computer vision, natural language processing, and other important AI technologies. To recapitulate, leveraging no-code platforms can solve accessibility, usability, speed, affordability, and scalability issues faced by organizations. These platforms enable workers at all levels to interact and contribute from a business standpoint, promising innovation from ‘scratch.’
The United Kingdom (UK)’s government announced that it plans to mint its own non-fungible token (NFT) by this summer.
The UK government has instructed the country’s state-owned company responsible for minting coins, the Royal Mint, to start working on a new NFT.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak reached out to the Royal Mint on behalf of the country’s government on Monday. According to a minister, the NFT initiative is part of a larger government attempt to lead the way in cryptocurrency.
The minister stated a number of initiatives the UK will take to increase regulatory oversight of digital assets. With this development, the UK government intends to make the country a global crypto hub.
City Minister John Glen said, “No one knows for sure yet how Web3 is going to look. But there’s every chance that blockchain is going to be integral to its development.”
The initiatives include establishing a Cryptoasset Engagement Group, bringing stablecoins into compliance with the UK’s existing electronic payment legislation, and many more. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are connected to real currencies such as the pound and dollar. The largest stablecoin globally, named Tether, has a circulating supply of over $80 billion.
“We want to see the businesses of tomorrow — and the jobs they create — here in the UK, and by regulating effectively, we can give them the confidence they need to think and invest long-term,” said Rishi Sunak.
According to officials, the NFTs available on the platform include images of various incidents such as silhouettes of jets, screengrabs of news headlines, a cartoon-style illustration of an explosion, etc.
United States-based facial recognition solution providing company Clearview AI says that it now plans to allow private businesses to use its highly capable artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition technology.
According to The Associated Press, this new development was revealed by the CEO and Co-founder of Clearview AI, Hoan Ton-That, while clarifying a recent federal court filing that suggested the company was up for sale.
Clearview AI is now set 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.
Last month, the company also launched the second version of its technology named Clearview AI 2.0, which has a database of more than 20 billion publicly available facial pictures. Clearview AI claims to have the world’s most accurate facial recognition system, and the company’s recently released second edition has enhanced compliance and management tools.
Clearview’s algorithms would be used to authenticate a person’s face in the new consent-based product. However, it was mentioned that the company’s massive archive of 20 billion images would only be reserved for government agencies and not private players.
Hoan Ton-That said that the tech is most likely to be used in non-controversial operations like ID checks to validate bank transactions or other similar tasks for commercial purposes. Ton-That added, “We let the court know we’re studying this notion,” referring to the company’s prior claims that it exclusively sold its services to law enforcement.
Recently it was also revealed by the company that Ukraine officials are using its technology to uncover Russian assailants, combat misinformation, and identify the dead during the ongoing war with Russia. A United States diplomat mentioned that Ukraine has free access to Clearview AI’s strong face search engine, which might be used to screen people of interest at checkpoints, among other things.
CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, buys 9.2% stake in the microblogging social media platform Twitter, making him the single largest shareholder in the company.
Musk invested nearly $3 billion to acquire Twitter’s 73,486,938 shares, said the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Elon Musk Revocable Trust will hold Elon Musk’s stake in the company. Soon after Musk acquired Twitter’s share, he posted a tweet citing, “Do you want an edit button?”
He asked his 79 million Twitter followers if they thought Twitter “rigorously conforms” to the notion that “free expression is important to a functioning democracy,” and over 70 percent of the 2 million respondents clicked ‘no,’ prompting Musk to propose a new platform.
This episode was followed by a tweet from the CEO of Twitter, Parag Agarwal, claiming that the results of Musk’s poll would have significant implications. “We cannot confirm or deny, but we may edit our statement later,” the company stated when asked if the tweet was a hoax.
The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. https://t.co/UDJIvznALB
Over the last few months, the microblogging social media platform has been witnessing a fall in its share prices. However, Twitter’s share prices shot up by 27% after the news was disclosed to the audience about Musk, adding nearly $8.38 billion to its market capitalization.
Technology giants Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have partnered with NASA to test artificial intelligence (AI) technology on the International Space Station to perform multiple tasks.
According to the companies, the tasks they plan to perform using AI include checking the wear and tear of gloves on astronauts’ gloves.
The traditional method needs NASA astronauts to photograph their spacesuit gloves during and after each spacewalk and send them back to Earth for examination.
Once the images are received, NASA analysts evaluate photographs of the gloves for any damage that could constitute a concern, then report back to the astronauts on the International Space Station.
However, this is a lengthy process, and when astronauts get farther away from Earth, the communication weakens, which might lead to delays in the process.
Therefore to solve this challenge, Microsoft and HPE engineers are working with NASA scientists on a system that uses artificial intelligence and HPE’s Spaceborne Computer-2 to scan and analyze glove images directly on the International Space Station, potentially giving astronauts onboard autonomy with limited support from Earth.
The NASA team started with a selection of new, undamaged gloves along with gloves that had seen wear and tear during spacewalks and training on the ground. Photographs of those gloves were then clicked and scrutinized using Azure Cognitive Services’ Custom Vision.
The generated information was then used to train a Microsoft Azure cloud-based AI system, with the results being compared against actual NASA damage reports and photographs.
HPE’s Spaceborne Computer-2 deployed in the ISS analyzes the images clicked by crew members using the Glove Analyzer model to search for damages in real-time, and in case of damage, a notification is sent to Earth for the engineers to review. Microsoft says that the AI tool can also display a probability score of gloves to give an idea about how much damage the gloves are before astronauts use them.
Data and AI Specialist at Microsoft, Jennifer Ott, said, “Bringing cloud computing power to the ultimate edge through projects like this allows us to think about and prepare for what we can safely do next – as we expect longer-range human spaceflights in the future and as we collectively begin pushing that edge further out.”
Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp and Facebook, announced its plans to further expand the reach of WhatsApp Chatbot in India over the coming few months.
The Meta Business Coach tool was introduced on WhatsApp as a free, innovative, and easy-to-use tool for owners of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in India.
The new development will benefit users as more people will get access to the platform. The Meta Business Coach tool is an automated chatbot that can be used to impart digital skills and tools to SMBs.
Meta claims that the unique chatbot has already been used by more than 150,000 small business owners in the country in less than a period of four months.
Director, Small and Medium Businesses in India, Meta, Archana Vohra said, “Across metros and smaller towns, India lives and connects on WhatsApp. When we thought about expanding our existing business skills, we couldn’t think of a more powerful solution than one on WhatsApp.”
She further added that they expect that the Meta Business Coach will be a partner for business owners on this journey, giving them the training they require via their mobile phones. “As more small businesses rapidly move online in India, we understand how critical timely and easily accessible business skills become for them to unlock growth,” said Vohra.
Currently, the Meta Business Coach chatbot is available in Hindi and English, but the company intends to provide support for multiple regional languages in the future. The learning content on the platform is recommended depending on the user’s requirements and questions, with a menu to explore the curriculum. It comes with intuitive and simple tutorials, infographics, and other similar content to teach users how to effectively run their businesses.
