Scalable artificial intelligence solutions developing firm Sway AI announces the launch of its new no-code artificial intelligence platform.
The newly announced AI platform will help boost the adoption rate of artificial intelligence in enterprises across the globe. Sway AI’s no-code platform would allow companies to quickly build and deploy artificial intelligence solutions without prior AI experience or investment.
It is a highly efficient and easy-to-use platform as users do not need to have previous knowledge of coding to develop and deploy AI solutions.
Data scientists and AI professionals can interact with stakeholders and design prototypes faster using Sway AI’s newly launched platform.
CEO and Co-founder of Sway AI, Amir Atai, said, “By using Sway AI – enterprises can expect the best AI capabilities available without going through complex evaluation exercises and committing to inflexible technology choices. With Sway AI, an enterprise can reduce development and deployment costs by up to 10x and deployment time from months to hours.”
He further added that businesses were faced with the difficult challenge of deciding which AI tools, technologies, and models to use from an expanding and complex marketplace.
Sway AI’s platform comes as a turning point as it simplifies this ever-changing AI environment by providing best-in-class AI tooling. According to Sway AI, Enterprise AI is a trillion-dollar business, however, 85% of the artificial intelligence projects fail.
On the contrary, Sway AI developed this highly scalable AI platform that allows organizations to enjoy the benefits of artificial intelligence solutions without putting in much effort. Sway AI’s no-code platform comes with collaboration features that help organizations improve business alignment, reduce risk, and drive increased ROIs.
Chief Product Officer and Co-founder of Sway AI, Jitendra Arora, said, “Sway AI offers best-in-class open-source capabilities as a future-proof platform. This minimizes investment and adoption risks, especially as the growth of AI tools accelerate.”
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, tweeted an open invitation for Meta AI researchers to join OpenAI because of Meta AI’s aversion to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He says that the certainty of a ‘No’ from Meta’s chief AI scientist regarding AGI explains the last five years of Meta’s AI lab.
AI research at Meta focuses on self-supervised learning for building intelligent models that can acquire new skills and perform multiple tasks without labeled data. On the other hand, OpenAI focuses on artificial general intelligence (AGI) to develop highly autonomic systems that benefit humanity and outperform humans.
An AGI is a system capable of understanding the world and has the same capacity to learn for carrying out a wide range of tasks like humans do. In theory, AGI can carry out any task similar to humans by combining human-like flexible reasoning and thinking with computational advantages.
OpenAI has been working on developing AI systems like the GPT-3 that can do anything humans can through deep learning algorithms that use neural networks to understand what it is seeing or hearing. The goal is to create AGI that can speak, listen, write, read, and learn independently. OpenAI has been in the headlines for developing the smart GPT-3 model. However, Turing award winner and Chief AI Scientist at Meta, Yann LeCun, trashed OpenAI’s GPT-3 model and its capabilities in a Facebook post.
According to LeCun, “… trying to build intelligent machines by scaling up language models is like building high-altitude airplanes to go to the moon.” He believes that one can beat altitude records with GPT-3, but going to the moon will require an altogether different approach. Yann LeCun also responded to Sam Altman’s tweet, discrediting OpenAI’s AGI approach similarly by stating, “…But if one’s goal is to get to orbit, one must work on things like cryogenic tanks, turbopumps, etc. Not as flashy.”
Unlike OpenAI, the objective of Meta’s AI Lab is to match human intelligence rather than develop artificial human intelligence. Jerome Pesenti, vice president of AI at Meta, has publicly stated that the concept of AGI is not exciting and does not mean much. He also says that deep learning and current AI have limitations and are far from achieving human intelligence. Meta AI lab believes that designing non-reproducible systems is lost investment and does not bring much value in the field.
Today, Meta has become synonymous with self-supervision and believes that this is the right path to achieving human-level intelligence in the long run. Meta AI recently introduced data2vec, the first high-performance self-supervised algorithm capable of learning the same way in multiple modalities without labeled data like vision, speech, and text. Since Meta AI focuses on self-supervised learning rather than AGI, this model can predict its representation without the input data labeled as text, speech, or audio.
Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist of the OpenAI, tweeted on 10th Feb that “it may be that today’s large neural networks are slightly conscious.” This is the first time Sutskever has claimed that consciousness in machines has already arrived, even if he was speaking facetiously. OpenAI has become one of the leading artificial intelligence research labs in the world and has consistently produced headline-grabbing research for designing large AI models. In his tweet, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said that Meta’s approach to achieving human-level intelligence isn’t exactly the right way. However, because Meta AI is passionate about designing reproducible AI systems through self-supervised learning, which is different from OpenAI’s approach, does not mean that their method is wrong
Every day we come across headlines that highlight how government bodies and privacy experts air their concerns about the misuse of deepfakes. For instance, in public, Barack Obama never called Donald Trump a complete dipshit, but a YouTube video alleges otherwise. Actor Tom Cruise never had a solo dance-off, yet last year, many TikTok users saw a video on the platform where a deepfake version of Tom Cruise was doing dance-offs and performing magic tricks. These are benign examples of how deepfakes are taking over the world with its misleading and manipulative side. To make things worse, a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA also sheds light on how humans are finding generated images to be more realistic than the actual ones.
Dr. Sophie Nightingale of Lancaster University and Professor Hany Farid of the University of California, Berkeley, performed experiments in which participants were asked to tell the difference between state-of-the-art StyleGAN2 generated faces and real faces, as well as the level of trust the faces evoked. The findings showed that synthetically generated faces are highly realistic and practically indistinguishable from real faces and that they are perceived as more trustworthy than the latter.
For their experiment, the researchers’ team recruited 315 untrained and 219 trained participants on a crowdsourcing website to study whether they could distinguish a selection of 400 fake photos from 400 photographs of real people. Each set has 100 participants from four different ethnic groups: white, black, East Asian, and South Asian. They also recruited another 223 volunteers to judge the level of trustworthiness of a group of the same faces on a scale of 1 (very untrustworthy) to 7 (very trustworthy).
In the first experiment, 315 people were able to classify 128 faces from a total of 800 as either real or fake. Their accuracy percentage was 48 percent, which was close to a 50 percent chance performance. In a subsequent experiment, 219 new volunteers were instructed and provided feedback on how to identify faces. They classified 128 faces from the same collection of 800 faces as in the previous trial, but the accuracy rate only increased to 59 percent despite their training.
The researchers next set out to see if people’s perceptions of trustworthiness might aid in the detection of fake images. Therefore, the third set of participants was asked to rate the trustworthiness of the 128 faces taken from the first experiment. It was observed that the average rating for synthetic faces was 7.7 percent more trustworthy than the average rating for actual faces, a statistically significant difference. On the brighter side, apart from a modest tendency for respondents to assess Black faces as more trustworthy than South Asian faces, there was little difference between ethnic groupings.
The researchers were surprised by their observations. According to Nightingale, “We initially thought that the synthetic faces would be less trustworthy than the real faces.” Nightingale emphasizes the need for stricter ethical rules and a stronger legal framework in place as there will always be those who want to exploit deepfake images for malicious purposes, which is concerning.
Deepfakes, which is the portmanteau of words “deep learning” and “fake,” initially appeared on the Internet in late 2017, powered by generative adversarial networks (GANs), an exciting new deep learning technology. In layman’s words, in GAN, two deep learning algorithms are pitted against each other. The first algorithm, called generator is fed with random data to generate a synthetic image. This synthetic image is then mixed with noise (authentic photos of people) when fed to the second algorithm called discriminator, which compares them to the training data.
A GAN pits two artificial intelligence algorithms against each other. The first algorithm, known as the generator, is fed random noise and turns it into an image. This synthetic image is then added to a stream of real images – say, of celebrities– that are fed into the second algorithm, known as the discriminator. If it can discern the difference, the generator is made to repeat the process. After numerous iterations, the generator starts producing utterly realistic faces of completely nonexistent persons.
Earlier neural networks were only capable of detecting an image or object in videos, but with the introduction of GANs, now they can generate their own content. Further, while impressive, initially, deepfake technology was still not nearly up to pace with actual video footage and could be easily detected by examining attentively. However, as technology advances at a breakneck speed, deepfakes have slowly become indistinguishable to the human eye from actual photographs.
Not only deepfakes are a blessing to purveyors of fake news, but it is also a national security threat and medium to produce content without consent (deepfake pornography). Though misinformation existed before, the advent of deepfake accelerates the volume by whopping numbers. The above-cited example about Barack Obama is just the tip of the iceberg of how deepfake can brainwash people by mere footage of doctored clips. In less than a decade, deepfakes advanced its reputation from internet sensation to notorious breeders of identity and security threats. For example, in Gabon, a deepfake video sparked an attempted military coup in the East African country.
Acknowledging the ramifications, several nations have started taking measures to stop misinformation by deepfakes and regulate their generation by companies. Recently, the Cyberspace Administration of China has proposed a draft that promises to regulate technologies that generate or manipulate text, images, audio, or video using deep learning. The US state of Texas has prohibited deepfake videos designed to sway political elections. Although these are just the preliminary actions against artificially generated fake media, it is high time that governing bodies also come up with plans to tackle new forms of deepfake content, especially ones where humans fail to distinguish real from fake.
The United Kingdom government announced its plans to invest £23 million to boost the skills of its citizens and increase the diversity of jobs in the artificial intelligence sector.
More AI and data conversion courses will be created as a part of this new initiative, allowing young people from underrepresented groups such as women, black people, and individuals with disabilities to participate in the UK’s world-leading artificial intelligence industry.
The government will introduce multiple scholarship programs to encourage students to take admission in courses and programs related to artificial intelligence.
Science Minister of the UK, George Freeman, said, “The UK is one of the world’s most advanced AI economies, with AI already playing a key role in everything from climate science and medical diagnostics to factory robotics and smart cities.”
He further added that it is critical that they continue to provide our workforce with the necessary skills in this critical technology, as well as make the industry accessible to brilliant people from all walks of life.
The United Kingdom has a third of Europe’sEurope’s total AI companies and ranks third in the world for private venture capital investment in artificial intelligence firms. This new government investment would considerably help in further increasing these numbers.
By matching-funding AI scholarships for conversion courses, the government has been encouraging employers to create a future pipeline of AI expertise. Experts believe it is necessary that the next generation of AI researchers must be representative of the world around us.
Chris Philip, DCMS Minister for Tech and Digital Economy, said, “The UK is already a world leader in AI. Today we’re investing millions to ensure people from all parts of society can access the opportunities and benefits AI is creating in this country.”
He also mentioned that they plan to double the number of AI scholarships previously available to build a diverse and inclusive workforce in the country.
World’s leading microchip manufacturing company, Intel, announces its plan to acquire analog integrated circuits developing firm Tower Semiconductor in a whopping $5.4 billion acquisition deal.
According to a definitive agreement signed by the companies, Intel will buy Tower Semiconductor for $53 per share in cash.
This new development will considerably help Intel to accelerate its manufacturing capacity and increase its product portfolio to meet the market demand in the time of a global chip shortage.
Intel will use Tower Semiconductor’s expertise to further strengthen its newly established Foundry Service subsidiary, which aims to provide chip manufacturing facilities to third-party organizations.
CEO of Intel, Pat Gelsinger, said, “Tower’s specialty technology portfolio, geographic reach, deep customer relationships, and services-first operations will help scale Intel’s foundry services and advance our goal of becoming a major provider of foundry capacity globally.”
He further added that Intel would be able to offer a compelling range of cutting-edge nodes as well as specialized technologies on established nodes as an outcome of this deal. Additionally, the acquisition of Tower Semiconductors will open up new opportunities for current and potential customers in an era of unprecedented semiconductor demand.
Israel-based semiconductor company Tower Semiconductor was founded in 1993. The company specializes in multiple technologies, including radiofrequency (RF), power, silicon germanium (SiGe), electronic design automation, industrial sensors, and many more.
CEO of Tower Semiconductor, Russell Ellwanger, said, “With a rich history, Tower has built an incredible range of specialty analog foundry solutions based upon deep customer partnerships, with worldwide manufacturing capabilities. I could not be prouder of the company and of our talented and dedicated employees.”
He also mentioned that through a broad suite of technology solutions and nodes and a considerably enlarged global manufacturing base, they would drive new and vital growth prospects and give even more value to our customers in collaboration with Intel.
Semiconductor manufacturing giant Intel’s autonomous driving subsidiary Mobileye announces its plans to launch self-driving taxis in the United States by 2024.
The shuttles, which are aimed for first- and last-mile use cases in metropolitan areas, are expected to enter production in the US soon. Mobileye has partnered with Benteler EV Systems and autonomous mobility solutions developer Beep to launch the on-demand driverless taxis.
According to the company, the self-driving taxis would be completely autonomous SAE Level 4 electric vehicles for use on public roads. The taxis will meet every requirement of the automotive industry and necessary safety standards, making them highly reliable.
Vice President of Mobility-as-a-Service at Mobileye, Johann Jungwirth, said, “The full benefits of autonomy can only be reached with scale. Working with Beep and Benteler, Mobileye aims to mass-produce first- and last-mile self-driving mobility solutions that will enable the convenient, accessible and safe movement of people across North America.”
Mobileye’s industry-leading self-driving system, Mobileye Drive, will underlie Benteler EV Systems’ purpose-built autonomous mover, which will be supported by Beep’s technology and services. Israel-based autonomous driving solutions developing company Mobileye was founded by Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram in 1999.
The company is an industry leader in autonomous driving solutions, with over 100 million of its leading computer vision solutions for the established driving-assistance sector shipped.
Officials estimate a few hundred vehicles to be on American roads in the first year of their deployment. Moreover, they aim to increase the number to between 10,000 and 15,000 internationally in the near future.
“Multi Passenger micro-transit needs are ever-increasing in our cities and towns globally and must be addressed in order to reduce road congestion, protect the environment and provide safe, reliable mobility for all to access,” said Advisory Board Member at Beep, Hinrich Woebcken.
He also mentioned that this development would revolutionize the mobility market by offering a low-cost, automotive-grade, electric, self-driving vehicle.
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) introduced three new sustainability solutions on Microsoft’s Azure IoT platform on February 10th, in an effort to assist businesses to acquire insight into energy usage and waste reduction. The new suite consists of TCS Clever Energy, Intelligent Power Plant (IP2), and TCS Envirozone, together which will enable organizations to achieve their net zero-emission goals.
TCS Clever Energy, built on Microsoft Azure IoT PaaS services, integrates sensors, meters, and assets across the organization to address key functions such as heating and cooling, process energy optimization, demand response, intelligent tariff management, and emission management, and sustainability compliances. This award-winning platform uses IoT, AI, machine learning, and cloud to help enterprises understand complex energy performance parameters, empowering leaders to make educated decisions without compromising business demands. In commercial and office buildings, retail stores, warehouses, and factories, the Clever Energy platform helps reduce energy and utility usage, as well as carbon emissions, while lowering energy expenses.
TCS Clever Energy is already being implemented by a major North American pharmacy retailer to cut emissions by 26% across hundreds of locations, according to the company. TCS Clever Energy is helping a Middle Eastern retailer reduce CO2 emissions by 25,000 tonnes across 1,300 outlets. At present, many TCS clients rely on this solution to achieve their sustainability goals, expanding swiftly to many assets and buildings using Azure Cloud platform services.
IP2, the second sustainability solution, incorporates AI, IoT, and digital twin technologies to help important power plants improve reliability, decrease emissions, and lower operating costs by 2-3%. Finally, TCS Envirozone monitors SDG activities to assist organizations in pursuing carbon-neutral strategies by reducing risks associated with supplier sourcing, operations, and upstream sustainability for a sustainable supply chain.
As per Lakecia Gunter, Vice President and General Manager, IoT Global Channel Sales, Microsoft, “TCS’ extensive portfolio of sustainability solutions, built with Microsoft technology, provides a comprehensive approach for businesses to embrace sustainability and deliver on their commitments.” Lakecia adds, “Through digital twins, predictive models, and other innovative IoT deployments, we’re helping organizations record, report, and reduce their end-to-end environmental footprint.”
TCS’ Microsoft Business Unit helps customers expedite their multi-horizon cloud transformation journeys all throughout the world. TCS has successfully executed over 1,000 Azure engagements for over 225 worldwide customers. Its 50,000+ employees provide industry-specific solutions, all driven by the Microsoft Cloud. TCS’ extensive sustainability-aligned data offering package, which includes DataomTM for Sustainability, DaezmoTM sustainability analytics, and the TCS ESG integration solution, serves as the foundation for the range of sustainability products.
Telecommunication service providing company Jio announces that it plans to offer satellite-based internet services in the country. Jio has partnered with Luxembourg-based telecommunications company SES to offer satellite broadband service.
Jio has signed a multi-year capacity purchase deal with the joint venture, based on specified milestones, and also gateways and equipment purchases, with a total contract value of around $100 million.
Jio Space Technology Limited, a joint venture, will lead the development of broadband services by combining geostationary (GEO) and medium earth orbit (MEO) satellite constellations.
The joint venture would create substantial gateway infrastructure in India as part of its investment strategy to supply services throughout the country. According to the companies, Jio Platforms will own 51% and SES 49% in the newly announced Joint venture firm.
Jio mentioned that the internet service would be able to provide multi-gigabit links and capacity to organizations. The highlighting feature of the broadband service is that it would support up to 100 Gbps speed.
Director of Jio Platforms, Akash Ambani, said, “With additional coverage and capacity offered by satellite communications services, Jio will be able to connect the remotest towns and villages, enterprises, government establishments, and consumers to the new Digital India.”
He further added that while continuing to build their fiber-based connection and FTTH businesses and invest in 5G. This new joint venture with SES will help to drive multigigabit broadband expansion.
SES will be able to take advantage of Jio’s leading position, and sales reach in India as a part of this partnership. “This joint venture with JPL is a great example of how SES can complement even the most extensive terrestrial networks to deliver high-quality connectivity and positively affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people,” said CEO of SES, Steve Collar.
He also mentioned that they are excited about this cooperative venture as it would allow them to contribute to the promotion of digital inclusiveness in India.
Telecommunication service provider Jio reveals its plan to invest $200 million in artificial intelligence-powered lock-screen platform Glance. The investment will be made by Jio during the series D funding round of Glance.
The deal is conditional on customary closing conditions and regulatory clearances being met. The newly announced investment would considerably help Glance accelerate its launch in multiple big international markets outside Asia, including the US, Brazil, Mexico, and Russia.
Glance plans to use the capital raised to develop the world’s largest live content and commerce ecosystem on the lock screen in addition to expanding into foreign markets.
Director of Jio Platforms, Akash Ambani, said, “With the help of this investment, Glance expects to launch in several key markets globally as well as extend the experience to millions of Jio users, further reinforcing our commitment to provide the most advanced and next-level tech and digital ecosystem for consumers in India and beyond.”
He also mentioned that Glance has evolved at a breakneck speed over the last two years, providing customers with a completely unique solution by unlocking the power of the lock screen for the internet, live video, creator-driven entertainment commerce, and gaming.
Artificial intelligence company Glance, a subsidiary of InMobi Group, was founded by Naveen Tewari in 2019. The firm specializes in providing personalized content from across the internet to smartphones and other connected devices’ lock screens.
To date, the company has raised nearly $390 million from various investors like Google, Jio, and Mithril Capital Management over multiple funding rounds.
Founder and CEO of InMobi Group, Naveen Tewari, said, “Jio’s investment into Glance brings a deep synergy of vision and philosophy. Jio is a truly disruptive company. It made the internet accessible for millions of users, making India one of the largest internet markets in the world.”
He further added that Jio’s investment in Glance and the inclusion of Glance on the lock screen of JioPhone Next devices would result in a fundamental shift in how Jio’s users interact with the internet.
The Texas attorney general plans to sue Meta, formerly known as Facebook, for its facial recognition practices.
This development comes after the attorney general claimed that the company has been collecting biometrics data of users illegally in Texas without the consent of the users for commercial use.
The litigation accuses Meta’s social media platform, Facebook, of gathering personal information from photos and videos uploaded by users without their consent and also sharing the information with others.
Moreover, according to the claim, meta has also failed to destroy the collected data within a reasonable time.
Attorney General Ken Paxton said, “Facebook will no longer take advantage of people and their children with the intent to turn a profit at the expense of one’s safety and well-being.”
He further added that this is simply another example of Big Tech’s deceptive business methods, which must be put to an end, and he would keep fighting for the privacy and security of Texans.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the lawsuit demands a tremendous amount of money as compensation for Meta’s unlawful actions. The complaint was filed on the first day of early voting in a Texas primary election, where Paxton is facing multiple rivals after his top subordinates reported him to the FBI for alleged corruption.
Additionally, Meta is also being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission and various other state attorney generals for allegedly suppressing competition to retain its dominance in social networking.
However, Meta’s spokesperson denied the allegations and said, “These claims are without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously.” Last year, a similar episode occurred in Illinois where Facebook had to pay $650 million to settle the dispute for using facial tagging without users’ permission.
