Five Things Tech: Startup Mafias, Greentech, Mad Max Driving Test, Quantum Sensors, AI Picks Your Brain
There's so much going on in Tech. Read this now to stay in the know.
What is tech? Or what isn’t it? Right now, tech is starting to be everywhere. Is this overwhelming? Sure. Will this make the world any better? Hopefully.
I’m Nico, I have been involved in tech for over 20 years and I still enjoy it. There’s so much going on, so many developments happen, that have a huge impact on our economy and society.
This week saw several significant technological developments. IT service provider Capgemini launched a 6G research lab in Gurugram, India, focusing on advanced AI, next-generation connectivity, and silicon technologies to tackle 6G challenges. IBM announced a $100 million, ten-year initiative to build a quantum-centric supercomputer powered by 100,000 qubits in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago, with Google contributing an additional $50 million and providing access to its quantum computing hardware. In regulatory developments, Alphabet and the European Commission are set to develop an AI pact, with changes proposed to the EU AI Act to more specifically target generative AI, possibly affecting OpenAI's operations in the EU. Meanwhile, Meta has been fined $1.3 billion for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by transferring data from European Facebook users to the US. In the world of developer conferences, Microsoft Build 2023 saw numerous AI-focused announcements, including the introduction of Copilot to Windows 11, the integration of Bing AI with ChatGPT, and the launch of Azure AI Studio. The Red Hat Summit 2023 also emphasized AI, introducing a generative AI feature named Lightspeed to its IT automation platform Ansible and unveiling new capabilities for its OpenShift AI platform. Finally, Nvidia's shares surged 26%, pushing its market value closer to the $1 trillion mark due to high demand for its AI-use case chips.
To sum up this response from ChatGPT4 about the most relevant tech developments of this week: a lot happend.
Europe and Israel are producing more startup 'mafias' than ever despite tech rout
This is something lawmakers have a hard time understanding: in the tech world, millionaires breed more millionaires if the ecosystem is set up the right way. This means new companies, new jobs, more taxes and more attractive cities, because more money can be made overall. (CNBC)
SaaS won’t save the planet, but a hardware-software duo just might
I’m generally optimistic about the future and while I do think we have to act a lot faster when it comes to the issue of climate change, I see lots of interesting new tech evolving that will help in stopping climate change. (Sifted)
How Will We Know When Self-Driving Cars Are Safe? When They Can Handle the World’s Worst Drivers
The “Mad Max driving test” sounds like a dangerous endeavour. We probably all have drivers from specific cities or counties in mind when we think about bad drivers, but for self-driving cars it needs to be a bit more special to succeed. (The Wall Street Journal)
Quantum sensors will start a revolution — if we deploy them right
While everybody talks about AI right now and people envision Quantum Computing as a big thing in the future, Quantum sensors are quite fascinating and much closer to be rolled out than we thought. Amazing stuff. (Nature)
How AI is learning to read the human mind
I’m still undecided if I find this amazing or scary or both. And just think about the ramifications of this development. Science-fiction becomes the present. Do we really want that? (The Telegraph)
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