Global technology giant IBM announces that it plans to provide digital skill training to girl students in schools across Nagaland.
The program aims to aid more than 12,000 girl students in the state. IBM has collaborated with the Nagaland school education department to deliver digital training in more than 250 secondary and higher secondary schools across 15 districts of the Indian state.
According to the company, the newly announced program named IBM STEM, which stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, will help girl students acquire the required knowledge and skills in those fields.
Officials mentioned, “The curriculum will supplement the state’s efforts towards quality education. This program will help enable more than 12,000 girls studying between classes VIII to X with access to digital fluency, coding skills training, 21st-century skills, including life and career skills.”
Apart from Nagaland, the IBM STEM program is currently active in multiple states of India, including Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Odisha, Assam, Bihar, and Uttarakhand.
The company says that this initiative is part of a three-year cooperation between IBM and the Nagaland government, with the QUEST Alliance and YouthNetas serving as implementation partners. IBM STEM’s primary motive is to increase the involvement and engagement of women in STEM fields.
Additionally, around 1,400 teachers in the participating schools will be allowed to engage and train children in computational thinking as part of a program.
Managing Director of IBM India, Sandip Patel, said, “With the expansion of our STEM for Girls program in Nagaland, we have increased our footprint to 12 states across India.”
He further added that this is part of IBM’s commitment to providing new skills to 30 million people of all ages around the world by 2030 in order to prepare them for the jobs of the future.
Artificial intelligence sensors and chip providing company Syntiant raises $55 million in its recently held funding round.
Renesas Electronics Corporation, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Mirae Asset Capital, and multiple other investors participated in the funding round of Syntiant.
The company plans to use the fresh funds to improve software capabilities and speed up the implementation of Syntiant’s third-generation Syntiant Core 3TM architecture, which it plans to launch by next year.
According to the company, as its technology continues to make edge artificial intelligence accessible to any battery-powered device, this new round of funding will help it accelerate full production deployments among more than 50 current customer engagements.
CEO of Syntiant, Kurt Busch, said, “We are at a pivotal point of our company’s growth and development, having shipped more than 20 million of our Neural Decision Processors as global market demand for edge AI rises among device manufacturers.”
He further added that they had created a solid customer base that represents the leading suppliers from earphones to autos and nearly everything in between.
United States-based deep learning technology company Syntiant was founded by Jeremy Holleman, Kurt Busch, Pieter Vorenkamp, and Steph Bailey in 2017.
The startup specializes in developing chips that combine deep learning and semiconductor design to create ultra-low-power, high-performance deep neural network processors for battery-powered devices, including smartphones, smart speakers, earbuds, hearing aids, and laptops. To date, Syntiant has raised over $100 million from many prominent investors such as Applied Ventures, M12-Microsoft Venture Funds, and other new investors. “Edge AI is inevitable, and we are seeing current product market trends catch up to our technology, especially among our largest customers, which are expanding their deep learning deployments across new industrial and consumer applications,” added the CEO of Syntiant.
Information technology services and solutions providing company NTT Data announces the launch of its new women-only Hackathon program named Bridge The Gap for developing artificial intelligence (AI) innovations in the healthcare industry.
NTT Data has collaborated with NLB Services to offer this novel program. The newly announced Hackathon program aims to break down barriers and close the gender gap in the information technology industry by recognizing promising women in technology.
According to the companies, this event calls participants, including developers and IT enthusiasts from all around the world, to design breakthrough healthcare solutions.
The finalists and winners will receive the opportunity to interview with leading Indian tech organizations, including NTT DATA.
Vice President of Marketing, Communications, and CSR at NTT Data, Ankur Dasgupta, said, “We are excited to partner with TechGig to launch the NTT DATA AI Hackathon. As artificial intelligence is intertwined with everything around us, the hackathon offers an opportunity for bright young minds to develop meaningful ideas and solutions to solve healthcare issues.”
He further added that they are thrilled to launch the Bridge the Gap program, and this platform will also assist them in attracting top talent into their company.
Additionally, NTT DATA plans to hire over 1,000 women in its workforce as part of a campaign to create awareness about employment options for women in the technology profession.
It is a two-phase program in which the first phase would include a coding challenge in Java and .NET, while the second phase would involve an MCQ challenge conducted by ClearedTalent, in which the selected participants from phase one would appear.
“The upcoming hackathon is all about making diversity a part of the technology domain. It will be a huge step towards bias-free hiring and offering opportunities to those who get overlooked the most,” said CEO of NLB Services, Sachin Alug.
He also mentioned that women coders would not only be able to demonstrate their abilities at the hackathon, but they will also get an opportunity to help close the gender gap. Interested candidates can register for this program till 8th April from the websites.
Last Tuesday, Alphabet’s quantum technology branch, Sandbox AQ, announced its separation into an independent firm. Sandbox AQ, which aims to assist companies in embracing quantum computing in the long run, has also secured undisclosed “nine figures” in investment and recruited multiple clients for its cybersecurity services.
The company, which is based in Palo Alto, California, has already attracted a number of high-profile investors and clients and is working on enterprise software that incorporates quantum technology to a certain extent. It provides a set of APIs called Floq that allow developers to simulate quantum computing workloads using tensor processing units (TPUs). Sandbox AQ, which is helmed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, has completed an oversubscribed financing round with Breyer Capital, Schmidt, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, and other investors.
Sandbox AQ’s AQ stands for AI and quantum, and the project intends to investigate the junction of quantum, physics, and AI to aid in sustainable energy, medicinal research, and cybersecurity. The company intends to develop enterprise software that employs quantum technology to “address important global concerns.” Earlier, the company was catering to sectors like telecommunications, financial services, health care, security, and other industries that demand elegant solutions. Vodafone Business, SoftBank Mobile, and the Mount Sinai Health System are among the clients that have already paid Sandbox for its computational efficiency.
Reuters reports that Sandbox AQ’s initial focus will be on providing software for post-quantum cryptography — a novel data encryption technology that is engineered to defy cyberattacks by quantum computers.
If hackers gain the cryptographic key used to encrypt the data, they can read it. While in theory, hackers can get a cryptographic key by having a computer guess it. However, in reality, acquiring a key via this method necessitates making so many guesses that even a supercomputer would be unable to complete the process.
It is speculated that future large-scale quantum computers might possibly be able to decipher encrypted data. As a result, researchers are working on new encryption methods that can survive quantum computer hacking efforts. These new technologies are part of a new sector called post-quantum cryptography, which Sandbox AQ is focusing on as part of its initial go-to-market program.
The 55-person company was founded in 2016 by Jack Hidary, who was formerly the director of AI and quantum at Sandbox and is a longstanding X Prize board member. Apart from Eric Schmidt, Sandbox has collected an impressive team of advisors, including Blythe Masters, a former JPMorgan Chase executive who was instrumental in the development of credit default swaps, and John Seely Brown, the former Xerox PARC chief scientist. The company’s current long-term objectives are in line with Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2021. According to Gartner, Quantum technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) are two of the main emerging technologies promoting innovation via trust, growth, and change.
Sandbox is also finalizing agreements to market quantum simulation software, which might help speed up medication and material research, according to Hidary. Using AI to evaluate data from quantum-based sensors to improve medical imaging and navigation by following magnetic fields instead of GPS satellites are two projects that might be commercialized in the next three years, he noted.
Hidary stated that improving ethnic, gender, and other diversity was also one of top priorities for the company, and therefore that one method to achieve that target was to hire people from the top institutions.
Hence, Sandbox AQ is collaborating closely with its academic partners at top institutions to support PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. Graduate students from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, Max Planck Institute, Caltech, UC Berkeley, Columbia, ASU, Yale, and other prestigious universities have also received training from the company.
The European Union agreed on digital rules to target in Big Tech online “gatekeepers” such as Facebook’s parent company, Meta and Google. EU officials agreed on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), part of long-awaited digital regulations with significant implications for the global tech market. The act seeks to prevent the most prominent tech firms from dominating digital markets through the possibility of a company breakup or the threat of fines.
The regulation targets companies with a market capitalization of at least €75bn ($82bn) that act as “gatekeepers,” including well-known firms like Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Apple and sites like Booking.com.
Such companies would face tighter restrictions on using people’s data for targeted online ads, a primary revenue source for organizations like Google and Facebook. These new rules emphasize how Europe has become a global pacesetter in efforts to curb the power of BigTech companies through an onslaught of stringent regulations on data privacy, antitrust investigations, and proposed rules for technologies like AI.
“What we have been deciding about yesterday will start a new era in tech regulation,” European Union lawmaker Andreas Schwab said at a press conference on Friday.
Tech companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon have shown disappointment and concern about how parts of the DMA will create unnecessary privacy and security vulnerabilities for our users. Google mentioned how some of the rules could reduce innovation and the choice available to Europeans, while Apple said that some laws could prohibit them from charging for intellectual property.
The DMA act includes several eye-catching benchmarks that could shake up how big tech companies operate in the EU. For example, companies won’t be able to rank their products or services higher than others in online search results or reuse user data collected from different services. Companies cannot use personal data for targeted ads unless the user provides “explicit consent.” The DMA act also mentions hefty fines for violations – up to 10% of a company’s annual income. A fine of up to 20% of its worldwide turnover may be imposed for a repeat offense.
CEO of Tesla Elon Musk says that he plans to sell the company’s artificial intelligence-powered humanoid robots by 2023.
Musk has stated that Tesla’s AI-heavy Optimus robot could hit the market next year. The announcement was made while Tesla’s director for artificial intelligence Andrei Karpath took a four-month sabbatical from the company.
Musk confirmed his aim to demonstrate a working proof of concept for Tesla’s new Optimus robot. “It could be ready by the end of next year, at least for a moderate (scale) series production,” said Musk.
He further added that he expects to reach pretty good results on a prototype basis before the end of December.
Tesla’s top two objectives this year, according to Musk, are finishing Full Self-Driving (FSD) and working on Optimus, not finishing engineering work on multiple cars already promised.
Musk claimed that the humanoid robot he initially revealed in virtual form in August is similar to a Tesla car in various aspects, as the motion is performed through a series of actuators and motors controlled by a central processor and imbued with artificial intelligence.
The significant difference will be that the robot will have a bipedal chassis, unlike the cars.
“Humanoid robots are coming, look at Boston Dynamics. They make better models every year,” Musk said to the German weekly.
Last Week, Tesla also launched its first European Gigafactory located near Berlin, Germany. According to the plans, Tesla’s new Gigafactory will hire more than 12,000 employees, making it the largest employer in the region. Additionally, Musk also rolled out the first batch of Model Y cars to the customers.
NASA has awarded contracts to SpaceX and Northrop Grumman to resupply ISS for 12 further flights. These agreements are designed to keep the ISS stocked through 2026 with two of the agency’s key partners in its ongoing resupply efforts.
The new contracts are worth a potential US$14 billion in total, but the final amounts will depend on the type of missions organized by NASA.
In the last decade, SpaceX, with its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket combo, and Northrop Grumman with its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule, have supplied cargo to the ISS. Sierra Nevada Corporation came on board in 2016 as the third private company to ferry goods to and from the orbiting laboratory.
The new contracts to SpaceX and Northrop Grumman are worth a potential US$14 billion in total, but the final amounts will depend on the type of missions organized by NASA. In the last decade, SpaceX, with its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket combo, and Northrop Grumman with its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule, have supplied cargo to the ISS. Sierra Nevada Corporation came on board in 2016 as the third private company to ferry goods to and from the ISS.
NASA has now placed an order for a further 12 flights, six each from SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, to be placed between now and 2026. After this order, the total number of missions ordered under the CRS-2 program has become 32.
SpaceX is responsible for 15, Northrop Grumman 14, and Sierra Nevada Corporation (now known as Sierra Space) will take care of three of the total missions.
On-demand personal styling and shopping services providing company Taffi announces that it plans to launch its new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered fashion platform.
The company says that it has been working on the product for over one year, and the final platform is currently operating on a testing basis, which is expected to launch soon.
Taffi is a fashion marketplace powered by artificial intelligence that helps stylists manage current clients and acquire new ones online.
According to the privately held luxury items merchant and distributor Chalhoub Group GCC’s Luxury Report, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the luxurious market is expected to reach $11 billion by 2023. This is a drastic increase when compared to the current figures, which is $9.7 billion.
Co-founder of Taffi, Shahad Geoffrey, said, “It’s been a year since we’ve entered the market. Since we launched, we’ve been seeing the demand for it, the market is actually ready for this kind of consumer product.”
She further added that After COVID, everyone is switching to internet purchasing, which has made it easier for them to introduce new products and increased their adaptability.
Saudi Arabia-based on-demand personal styling and shopping services offering startup Taffi was founded by Dio Chen and Shahad Geoffrey back in 2020. The company aims to empower people by delivering individualized styling and buying services based on bespoke expert guidance that celebrates their unique and distinctive styles.
To date, Taffi has raised $2 million from investors including Impact46, Rashed Abdul Rahman AlRashed & Sons, and others over two funding rounds.
Earlier this year, the largest online consignment and thrift shop, Swap, also partnered with technology firm Find.Fashion to offer unprecedented visual searching features using artificial intelligence and emotion recognition technologies.
A team of researchers led by Mikael Afzelius from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) broke a new record of storing a photonic qubit in a crystal for 20 milliseconds. In 2015, Mikael Afzelius and his team succeeded in storing a qubit carried by a photon for 0.5 milliseconds, allowing the photon to transfer its quantum state to the crystal atoms before disappearing.
However, the phenomenon’s duration wasn’t long enough to construct a more extensive network of memories, a condition for the development of long-distance quantum telecommunications. On 15th March 2022, Mikael Afzelius’ team published a paper titled ‘Storage of photonic time-bin qubits for up to 20 ms in a rare-earth-doped crystal‘ on how they significantly increased this duration by storing photonic qubit for 20 milliseconds.
Quantum physics has enabled scientists to describe the behavior of atoms, particles, and certain properties of electromagnetic radiation. It allowed researchers to introduce notions without equivalent in the macroscopic world.
Regardless, there is a significant obstacle to developing long-distance quantum telecommunication systems: the photons are lost beyond a few hundred kilometers, and the signal disappears. Since we can’t copy or amplify the signal, losing the quantum state that guarantees its confidentiality. The challenge is to find a method to repeat the signal without altering it.
However, scientists have to overcome several challenges before developing ultra-secure telecommunications networks like extending the storage time. Mikael Afzelius said that extending storage time would be enough to increase the duration of exposure of the crystal to radio frequencies in theory. But, technical obstacles to implementing storage over a more extended period prevent us from going beyond 100 milliseconds. Although, he is confident that they can resolve technical issues.
Additionally, scientists will also have to find methods of designing memories that can store more than one photonic qubits at a time, thus having ‘entangled’ photons that will guarantee confidentiality. The researcher concluded that the aim is to develop a system that can be marketed within ten years.
Getty Images, a well-known global visual image provider and marketplace headquartered in Seattle, Washington, unveiled what it claims is the image industry’s first enhanced model release form last week. It’s a digital document that acknowledges developments in data privacy and security, as well as the rising necessity of biometric data for AI and Machine Learning application training.
The new form, which was created with input from the Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA), a leading organization that promotes business standards in visual content, will provide clarity and guidance on how data, including visual content, can be tracked and handled appropriately to protect the personal and biometric data collected by content creators. Getty intends to utilize it as part of its Getty Photographs and iStock websites and expects that models who appear in new commercial images on either site would sign it.
Biometric data, according to the World Bank, is the “automatic recognition of persons based on biological or behavioral characteristics.” Biometric data is as unique to every individual. Thus, while creating and deploying biometric systems, privacy and security precautionary measures must be considered. There has been a significant increase in planned biometric data collection in recent months, especially due to the onset of the COVID pandemic. Getty points out that when this data falls into the wrong hands, it can be sold on the black market to aid identity theft and be used to launch personally targeted ransomware, malware, and other cyberattacks.
As proof, Getty Images claims a “spate of lawsuits” involving the use of biometric information without the explicit agreement of persons shown in the images, albeit it doesn’t identify any of them. While the legislation in this field is still changing, Getty Images urges developers to start by gathering data from reputable sources and gaining permission for its intended use.
According to Getty Images, the Enhanced Model Release follows the same basic format as the legacy release form and is still simple to comprehend and execute. The form itself was not released as part of this announcement and appears to be a Getty Images internal document.
Getty Images’ Director of Advocacy and Legal Operations Counsel, Paul Reinitz, says the company wants its waiver and contract to become a standard model for content creators.
According to Reinitz, the enhanced model release provides the simplicity of the legacy release form because it is intuitive, easy to execute, and accepted across multiple agencies, allowing a photographer or videographer to submit a single completed form to multiple agencies.
The caveat is that if your face finds up in Getty’s databases, it’s likely to be scraped to develop controversial monitoring technology, but they won’t know your identity. Rather than making a blanket promise not to sell their picture libraries to biometric data businesses, Getty is conceding that it’s simply too profitable an opportunity to pass up. Instead, they intend to safeguard the models’ personal identity information as much as possible. They’re essentially doing the bare minimum while waiting for governments to enact their own restrictions on the developing technology.
Meanwhile, while regulations governing imagery and visual data are still in their infancy, lawsuits are on the rise as new types of videography technology and its applications emerge. Several cases have been filed in recent years, including the unauthorized recording of people who have a video camera installed.
Reinitz believes regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, as well as other regulations throughout the world, have transformed the way businesses manage personal data. Therefore he urges industry practices must catch up with the changing demands.
