Lifeboat Foundation

At its I/O developer conference, the search giant needs to rethink its AI strategy if it wants to catch Microsoft. The missing element? Experimentation.

Google has had a rough six months. Since ChatGPT launched last November — followed by the new Bing in February and GPT-4 in March — the company has failed to establish its AI credentials. Its own offering, the “experimental” chatbot Bard, compares poorly to rivals, and insider reports have portrayed a company in panic and disarray. Today, at its annual I/O conference, the company needs to convince the public (and shareholders) that it has a meaningful response. But to do that, it needs a new playbook.

AI outputs are increasingly defining the cultural moment — just not Google’s.

Continue reading “Google needs to stop throwing good money after Bard” »

TerraPower, founded by billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 2008, is opening a new nuclear power plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The plant will be the first of its kind, with the company hoping to revolutionize the nuclear energy industry in the U.S. to help fight climate change and support American energy independence.

“Nuclear energy, if we do it right, will help us solve our climate goals,” Gates told ABC News. “That is, get rid of the greenhouse gas emissions without making the electricity system far more expensive or less reliable.”

Gates met with ABC News’ chief business, economics, and technology correspondent Rebecca Jarvis in Kemmerer to talk about the project.

With all the controversy surrounding AI art, I’m surprised that NVIDIA is so rarely discussed. Unlike other AI art technologies, NVIDIA facilitates drawing landscapes in an interactive fashion. You sketch out rough blobs and then the AI converts your shapes into rocks, grasses, dirt, trees, and other selectable material types. I think that this kind of tool deserves much more attention since it empowers human artists to create with AI as a partner and gives us more creative control over the final result. Sure, NVIDIA itself is somewhat limited, but the principle of it is very compelling and I can easily envision people developing lots of improved versions that can draw more than just landscapes. I think it is surprising that this kind of approach has not caught on, but perhaps there are economic reasons that I’m not aware of which explain the relative lack of interactive AI art tools.

Use AI to Create Backgrounds Quickly, or Speed up your Concept Exploration.

Web3 is a “decentralized web ecosystem” in which users retain their data. Blockchain-based, it would usher in the era of the “token economy”, say experts.

Advancing Nuclear Energy Science And Technology For U.S. Energy, Environmental And Economic Needs — Dr. Katy Huff, Ph.D. — Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy.

Dr. Kathryn Huff, Ph.D. (https://www.energy.gov/ne/person/dr-kathryn-huff) is Assistant Secretary, Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, where she leads their strategic mission to advance nuclear energy science and technology to meet U.S. energy, environmental, and economic needs, both realizing the potential of advanced technology, and leveraging the unique role of the government in spurring innovation.

Continue reading “Dr. Kathryn Huff, Ph.D. — Assistant Secretary, Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy” »

Accelerating Breakthroughs in Critical and Emerging Technologies — Dr. Erwin Gianchandani, Ph.D. — Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)

Dr. Erwin Gianchandani, Ph.D. is Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. National Science Foundation, leading the newly established TIP Directorate (https://new.nsf.gov/tip/leadership).

Continue reading “Dr Erwin Gianchandani — Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. NSF” »

Welcome to Edition 5.36 of the Rocket Report! A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the space media were given a May 4 launch date for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket. Alas, May the 4th, in 2023, wasn’t meant to be. In this week’s report, I explain why.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Electron to serve as a hypersonics test bed. Rocket Lab’s small booster will use essentially the same first and second stages for hypersonic test flights, but it will have a modified kick stage that will allow Electron to deploy payloads with a mass of up to 600 kg into trajectories five times greater than the speed of sound, Ars reports. The Army, Navy, and Air Force are all developing hypersonic missiles to provide a fast-moving, maneuverable capability for striking targets quickly from thousands of kilometers away. Among the research problems the military likely wants to test is managing the extreme heat that hypersonic missiles are exposed to by traveling at high speeds in the atmosphere for most of their flight.

Scott Sellers is the co-founder and CEO of Azul, with 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the technology industry.

For the first time in a decade, controlling cloud costs has surpassed security as the top cloud management challenge facing IT professionals, according to a survey by Flexera. An Andreessen Horowitz study also said that up to $1 trillion in market capitalization is weighed down by overspending in the cloud. Today, challenging economic conditions, rising costs, increasingly stringent performance SLAs and the need for more resources are squeezing organizations that want to remain in the cloud without overspending.

Many organizations still struggle to connect the dots between the value they deliver via the cloud and the costs required to deliver that value. Without a clear understanding of that basic relationship, it is difficult for teams to hold productive conversations about costs. Engineering departments don’t know what to prioritize; cloud architects lack a direction on designing, developing and managing solutions; product managers face difficulties pricing their solutions; and executives wonder where all the money is going.

The protective effects of vaccines have particularly been highlighted during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Countries able to offer the vaccine demonstrate lowered infection rates and have kick-started the recovery of their economies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the need to proactively develop medical countermeasures to novel pathogens, in addition to advancing supply and manufacturing capacities to meet global demands.

Investing in vaccine manufacturing has both economic and societal benefits, in addition to protecting human health and limiting infection spread.