Alibaba unveils Hanguang 800 AI inference chip to speed-up ML tasks

alibaba ai inference chip artificial intelligence

Alibaba Group has introduced its first AI inference chip called ‘Hanguang 800’ which performs machine-learning tasks efficiently and quickly.

The neural processing unit is already being used to power features on Alibaba’s e-commerce sites, including product search and personalised recommendations. The Hanguang 800 will be made available to Alibaba Cloud customers at a later stage.

According to Alibaba, its ecommerce website Taobao previously took an hour to...

26 September 2019 | Hardware

British PM Johnson warns of AI’s dangers in UN speech and invites leaders to summit

boris johnson un speech ai artificial intelligence dangers warning summit

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson used his maiden speech at the UN to warn of the dangers of AI and invite world leaders to a UK summit.

Johnson opened his speech going over some of the usual things he says would be expected of a British PM: advancing democratic values, rules of a peaceful world, protecting freedom of navigation at sea, and finding a “two-state” solution to the conflict in the Middle-East.

“Of course, I’m proud to do all these things,” says...

25 September 2019 | Government

Cisco partners with decentralised AI blockchain firm SingularityNET

cisco ai agi artificial intelligence singularitynet blockchain

Cisco has established a partnership with blockchain firm SingularityNET to explore decentralised artificial intelligence.

The partners are specifically looking at artificial general intelligence (AGI) technologies which aim to replicate the complex tasks of which humans are capable.

AGI is considered a step above standard AI because it aims to add human-like reasoning capabilities in uncertain scenarios. Such processing will enable AGIs to do things like solve puzzles...

24 September 2019 | AGI

Microsoft chief Brad Smith warns that killer robots are ‘unstoppable’

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Microsoft chief Brad Smith issued a warning over the weekend that killer robots are ‘unstoppable’ and a new digital Geneva Convention is required.

Most sci-fi fans will think of Terminator when they hear of killer robots. In the classic film series, a rogue military AI called Skynet gained self-awareness after spreading to millions of servers around the world. Concluding that humans would attempt to shut it down, Skynet sought to exterminate all of mankind in the interest of...

23 September 2019 | Ethics

Huawei announces its own AI assistant as it prepares for Google-less life

huawei assistant mate 30 pro google services ai artificial intelligence

Huawei has announced its own AI-powered assistant during a launch event in Munich as it prepares for life without Google’s services.

Due to US trade restrictions, Huawei is losing access to Google’s services. The new Mate 30 smartphones announced in Munich today will launch with the open-source Android, but it will not feature the Play Store, Gmail, YouTube, Google Pay, or the many other services which Western consumers are used to.

Among the features that will be...

19 September 2019 | Huawei

Facebook will teach its AI to spot shootings using videos of UK police firearms training

facebook ai uk police artificial intelligence shootings terrorist videos live stream

Facebook is using videos of British police firearms training to teach an AI to quickly spot shootings broadcast on its platform and limit their exposure.

Live-streaming poses a very modern but serious problem. As evident with the white supremacist attack in Christchurch in March, live-streams of terrorism can quickly go viral and taking down videos manually is often a slow process.

Automation can step-in to help identify and remove content to prevent terrorists from...

18 September 2019 | Law Enforcement

UK police are concerned AI will lead to bias and over-reliance on automation

British police have expressed concern that using AI in their operations may lead to increased bias and an over-reliance on automation.

A study commissioned by UK government advisory body the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation warned that police felt AI may "amplify" prejudices.

50 experts were interviewed by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for the research, including senior police officers.

Racial profiling continues to be a huge problem. More...

17 September 2019 | Face Recognition

Elif Tutuk, Qlik: On securing data literacy and the evolution of AI with BI

This time last year, a fascinating report from venture capital firm Work-Bench assessed the future of enterprise software.

The study argued that the largest technology companies were winning at artificial intelligence (AI) – not surprising, given they can hoover up all the best talent – but more importantly, business intelligence (BI) vendors wanting to ensure their future going forward needed to beef up their skillsets with AI. “Expect all modern BI vendors to release an...

16 September 2019 | Big Data

We need to do better with our data – can citizen scientists make a difference?

Most people in IT know that the role of the data scientist is growing in importance and many will know that the result of this demand means there is a shortage of people with the necessary skills to do the job. Search for the term “data scientist” and LinkedIn will return over 287,000 responses; data scientists are very much in demand and their services do not come cheaply. Six-figure salaries are mainstream.

First, let me try to define my terms, because data science is a...

10 September 2019 | Big Data

Huawei debuts the Kirin 990 as the world’s first SoC with AI and SA 5G

During an opening keynote at IFA Berlin, Huawei CEO Richard Yu debuted the Kirin 990 as the world's first SoC with AI and SA 5G capabilities.

“The Kirin 990 has been fully upgraded in terms of performance and power efficiency, AI computing, and ISP, extending mobile phone experiences to a new level," says Yu.

Huawei's new SoC is the first to pack a dual-core NPU built on the Da Vinci architecture, which comprises of large NPU cores and "tiny" NPU cores. The idea is...

6 September 2019 | Hardware