Lifeboat Foundation

GUANGZHOU, China — Baidu has raised money for its artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor business at a valuation of $2 billion, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.

It comes as the Chinese search giant looks to diversify its revenue streams.

The funding round was led by CPE, a Chinese asset management and private equity firm, the person said. Venture capital companies IDG and Legend Capital were also involved. A fund under Chinese investment company Oriza Holdings also participated in the round.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Engineers from HyperLight, a leader in the commercialization of thin-film lithium niobate (LN) photonic integrated circuits (PICs), have achieved breakthrough voltage-bandwidth performances in integrated electro-optic modulators. The broadband electro-optic PIC could lead to orders of magnitude energy consumption reduction for next generation optical networking.

“We believe the significantly improved electro-optic modulation performance in our integrated LN platform will lead to a paradigm shift for both analog and digital ultra-high speed RF links” Tweet this

Energy consumption in optical networking for ethernet, data centers and 5G is soaring as a result of the rapidly growing data traffic. This is because of the limited performance of existing electro-optic modulators, the key element in converting data from the electrical to optical domain at high speed for optical networks. Current electro-optic modulators require extremely high radio-frequency (RF) driving voltages (5 V) as the analog bandwidth in ethernet ports approaches 100 GHz for future terabits per sec capacity transceivers. In comparison, a typical CMOS RF modulator driver delivers less than 0.5 V at such frequencies. Compound semiconductor modulator drivers can deliver voltage 1 V at significantly increased cost and energy consumption but still fall short to meet the optimum driving voltage. The limited voltage-bandwidth performance in electro-optic modulators poses a serious challenge for meeting tight power consumption requirements from network builders.

These shifting dynamics in India’s digital marketplace are yet another warning sign of what’s been dubbed the splinternet, foreshadowing a possible world where each country sticks to its own apps and abandons the open and global nature of the internet. For now, however, these homegrown apps may find it difficult to compete at the same level unless the government decides to ban Facebook and Twitter, too.

While Twitter finds itself in a prolonged standoff with the Indian government over the company’s refusal to take down certain accounts, a senior executive of a very similar Indian social network says the sudden attention on his app has been “overwhelming.”

“It feels like … you’ve just been put in the finals of the World Cup suddenly and everyone’s watching you and the team,” Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of Koo, told CNN Business.

Continue reading “India is trying to build its own internet” »

The State of the Edge report is based on analysis of the potential growth of edge infrastructure from the bottom up across multiple sectors modeled by Tolaga Research. The forecast evaluates 43 use cases spanning 11 vertical industries.

The one thing these use cases have in common is a growing need to process and analyze data at the point where it is being created and consumed. Historically, IT organizations have deployed applications that process data in batch mode overnight. As organizations embrace digital business transformation initiatives, it’s becoming more apparent that data needs to be processed and analyzed at the edge in near real time.

Of course, there are multiple classes of edge computing platforms, ranging from smartphones and internet of things (IoT) gateways to complete hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platforms that are being employed to process data at scale at the edge of a telecommunications network.

Digital clones are coming to an office building near you.

Hour One, the company behind photo-realistic digital clones, now has AI avatars capable of taking over receptionist roles in businesses.

The hack exposed feeds showing the insides of offices, hospitals and businesses, including Tesla.

Large language models are already business propositions. Google uses them to improve its search results and language translation; Facebook, Microsoft and Nvidia are among other tech firms that make them. OpenAI keeps GPT-3’s code secret and offers access to it as a commercial service. (OpenAI is legally a non-profit company, but in 2019 it created a for-profit subentity called OpenAI LP and partnered with Microsoft, which invested a reported US$1 billion in the firm.) Developers are now testing GPT-3’s ability to summarize legal documents, suggest answers to customer-service enquiries, propose computer code, run text-based role-playing games or even identify at-risk individuals in a peer-support community by labelling posts as cries for help.

A remarkable AI can write like humans — but with no understanding of what it’s saying.

Free conference covering the upcoming MOON ELEVATOR project: 9–11 March. Bringing together government, military, private industry, academia and others, this three day event is sure to be an eye opener on where we are and where we are going in the coming 5–10 years. Don’t miss out! Get your tickets free today.

- Gravitational Elevators (Lunar Space Elevator Infrastructure)

- Centripetal Elevators (Space Elevators from Earth).

Continue reading “Elevators, Space Edition” »

The hackers started their attack in January but escalated their efforts in recent weeks, security experts say. Business and government agencies were affected.