Lifeboat Foundation

The new chips were designed to be less powerful than the models sold in the US, according to sources.

NVIDIA really, really doesn’t want to lose access to China’s massive AI chip market.

NVIDIA really, really doesn’t want to lose access to China’s massive AI chip market. The company is developing three new AI chips especially for China that don’t run afoul of the latest export restrictions in the US, according to The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Last year, the US government notified the chipmaker that it would restrict the export of computer chips meant for supercomputers and artificial intelligence applications to Russia and China due to concerns that the components could be used for military purposes. That rule prevented NVIDIA from selling certain A100 and H100 chips in the country, so it designed the A800 and H800 chips specifically for the Chinese market.

Continue reading “NVIDIA may soon announce new AI chips for China to get around US export restrictions” »

DBS delivers electric currents to an electrode implanted in the brain.

Neurotechnology – or – while still an emerging industry, has attracted both major capital investments, and extensive media coverage in recent years. As tech relentlessly searches for the next “big tech platform” in the aftermath of the smartphone era [1], we propose that the answer may lie within our own minds. At NTX Services, we definenology as any technological intervention that interacts with the brain or central nervous system either directly or indirectly, and as attempts to integrate human and machine to enhance both, applications of the technology are broad ranging.

Often described as a new field, is actually based on decades of academic research, previously held back from commercialization at scale due to technological limitations, and slow changes in government policies and regulations. Although humans have been researching the brain and its bioelectrical signals since the 1600s [2], the first major breakthrough in was the invention of the electroencephalogram (EEG) by Hans Berger in 1929 [3]. Since this initial invention, several key developments have influenced the evolution of the industry until 2016, when Neuralink was founded [4].

Members of Congress from Western states are pushing for $750 million to turn wastewater into pure water. Here’s how that works.

SAN FRANCISCO – The Space Development Agency awarded SpaceRake, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup, $1.8 million to develop miniature laser communications terminals.

It was the first government contract for SpaceRake, a firm founded in 2021 by Kerri Cahoy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Space Telecommunications, Astronomy and Radiation Laboratory director with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and Jeremy Wertheimer, former Google vice president engineering with a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence.

Under the two-year direct-to-Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research award announced Nov. 1, SpaceRake will develop terminals to enable satellites as small as cubesats to transfer data through laser links with the Transport Layer, a global communications network in low Earth orbit being established by SDA, a U.S. Space Force organization.

President Joe Biden’s executive order plans for standardized digital watermarking rules.

President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence is a first-of-its-kind action from the government to tackle some of the technology’s greatest challenges — like how to identify if an image is real or fake.

Among a myriad of other demands, the order, signed Monday, calls for a new set of government-led standards on watermarking AI-generated content. Like watermarks on photographs or paper money, digital watermarks help users distinguish between a real object and a fake one and determine who owns it.

Continue reading “Watermarks aren’t the silver bullet for AI misinformation” »

A new study looks at decades of gain-of-function pathogen studies and concludes that the controversial research field will be difficult to regulate. It comes as activists and politicians are seeking to ban the practice and as the federal government is considering new restrictions.

The goal of the order, according to the White House, is to improve “AI safety and security.” It also includes a requirement that developers share safety test results for new AI models with the US government if the tests show that the technology could pose a risk to national security. This is a surprising move that invokes the Defense Production Act, typically used during times of national emergency.

The executive order advances the voluntary requirements for AI policy that the White House set back in August, though it lacks specifics on how the rules will be enforced. Executive orders are also vulnerable to being overturned at any time by a future president, and they lack the legitimacy of congressional legislation on AI, which looks unlikely in the short term.

“The Congress is deeply polarized and even dysfunctional to the extent that it is very unlikely to produce any meaningful AI legislation in the near future,” says Anu Bradford, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in digital regulation.

How safe are our routers? Japan & U.S. cybersecurity agencies have flagged a major threat in the form of China’s BlackTech group.

Learn more about the threat:

BlackTech, a notorious state-backed hackers from China, are using router backdoors to quietly to breach government, tech, and media sectors in the U.S.

A breakthrough in treating cervical cancer is reported, with participants in a recent trial achieving a five-year survival rate of 80% – up from the previous average of 70%. The study used a combination of existing, cheap drugs ahead of usual radiotherapy treatment.

Cervical cancer cell illustration. Credit: PRB ARTS

Phase III of the INTERLACE trial, funded by Cancer Research UK and University College London (UCL) Cancer Trials Centre, assessed whether a short course of induction chemotherapy (IC) prior to chemoradiation (CRT) could reduce the rate of relapse and death among patients with cervical cancer. Researchers involved in the study presented the preliminary results at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) congress.