Featured

Prophesee’s Big Three: Sony, Qualcomm and Smartphones

Featured, News & Analysis

What’s at stake:
The successful rollout of breakthrough technologies is often the raison d’être of startups. Yet, the more unfamiliar the technology, the tougher for a fledgling startup to get the world on board. So it has gone for Prophesee. Prophesee, nonetheless, is on the cusp of turning its event-based image sensor into mainstream image-capture features for smartphone cameras. The startup owes this progress to its two big partners. Sony put Prophesee through the wringer, forcing it to meet its stringent milestone schedule for event-based CMOS image sensor development. A new alliance with Qualcomm provides its Snapdragon platform to run Prophesee’s fusion software.

By teaming with Sony, the world’s largest CMOS image sensor company, and Qualcomm, which commands a 50-percent share of the mobile SoC market, Prophesee, a Paris-based startup, is finally finding a massive volume market for its unique event-based cameras in smartphones.

Is That an AI in My Chip Design?

Featured, News & Analysis

By Ron Wilson

What’s at Stake:
Advances in AI could change the way chips are designed, potentially slashing design time, engineering staffing, and risk. Or they could be a huge, expensive distraction. Either way, AI is attracting attention and investment in the chip-design community.

Ever since the explosive debut of ChatGPT, a cascade of punditry — with varying degrees of information and understanding — has told us that this changes everything about creative human activities. Given the enormous investment and risk going into chip design in the semiconductor industry, we need to ask just how advances in AI will affect electronic design automation (EDA) — the engine that makes chip design possible.

Created with DALL·E, an AI system by OpenAI

Gauging ‘Reasonable Risk’ in ChatGPT

Conversation, Featured

By Junko Yoshida

Since Open AI opened the door for anyone to play with ChatGPT last November, it seems as though the whole world can’t stop talking about it.

At the Ojo-Yoshida Report, Peter Clarke wrote a ChatGPT primer and declared it—despite its current idiosyncrasies — “an AI ‘babe in arms,’ destined to become far more capable and sophisticated.”

In contrast, Girish Mhatre, who penned “ChatGPT Will Eat Our Brains” for the Ojo-Yoshida Report, isn’t so sanguine. “The genie,” he cautioned, “is out of the bottle. Nothing will be the same again.” He suggests that OpenAI’s only responsible option is “to pull back, to restrict ChatGPT access to a trusted cadre of ‘tire kickers’ charged with probing every aspect of the product from a user point of view, for a year.”

Like everyone else, we’re probing both the intended and unintended consequences of generative AI.

Amidst this controversy, we recently had Missy Cummings as our podcast guest. Cummings is director of George Mason University’s Center for Robotics, Autonomous Systems and Translational AI. She was one of the Navy’s first female “top gun” fighter pilots, flying an F/A-18 Hornet from 1988-1999.

Below is our conversation with Cummings on ChatGPT and generative AI, excerpted from our podcast.

ChatGPT & AI: Stop Panicking and Look at the Potentials

Featured, Opinion

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence variants will be massively disruptive but that is no reason to react with the kind of apprehension that could stunt their use and deprive society of the benefits. Moreover, AI is here to stay, and its financial potentials are enormous.

The recent controversy over the fast adoption of ChatGPT and generative AI borders on hysteria. Having just broken into widespread use, the apprehension about how artificial intelligence will impact all aspects of economic and social lives is understandable. However, just like in the early days of the internet, we have not even begun to plumb the depths of how the technology will be applied in years to come.

Open Letter to Pete Buttigieg

Featured, Truth & Consequences

By Colin Barnden

What’s at stake:
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg says human drivers aren’t just problematic, “they are murderous.” So why are European roads much safer?

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who reports directly to President Biden.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is part of USDOT and describes its mission as “Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes” related to transportation safety in the U.S.

As Secretary of Transportation, it is Buttigieg that is ultimately responsible for transport safety and for addressing the rising death toll on U.S. roads. We wrote him a letter.

ChatGPT is Turbocharging Fraudsters

Featured, Truth & Consequences

By George Leopold

Amid the hype, the various downsides of the ChatGPT artificial intelligence engine are emerging as bad actors once again seize upon a technology innovation for nefarious purposes.

Most notable, according to cybersecurity analysts, is using OpenAI’s algorithmic wonder to increase the lethality of malware code and Internet scams, or phishing exploits. For instance, reports have surfaced—presumably compiled and written by humans—that cybercriminals are bypassing guard rails installed by OpenAI on its chatty bot to upgrade malicious content and advance phishing exploits well beyond emails from Nigerian princes seeking business partners.

ChatGPT Will Eat Our Brains

Featured, Opinion

By Girish Mhatre

In the latest of the zombie apocalypse sagas – HBO’s “The Last of Us” – a deadly, highly infectious fungal pathogen causes most of the world’s human population to morph into hordes of walking dead.

It’s art anticipating life.

The pathogen running rampant today is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a natural language processing system of the class known as Large Language Models (LLMs). Think of it as a chatbot that’s light years ahead of the kind you might encounter on a web site.

Pay Attention, the Chatbots Are Talking

Featured, Opinion

By Peter Clarke

What’s at stake:
We are at the dawning of an era of creative, generative AI that could turn out to be even more life changing than the internet. These bots, or their descendants, will be able to contribute significantly to a whole layer of professional work, from stockbroking to film- and music-making, journalism, software coding and possibly even chip design.

As Foundry Use Surges, IDM Renaissance Becomes Critical

Featured, Opinion

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:
The growing reliance of semiconductor vendors on foundries is problematic as the limited number of contractors will eventually not be able to satisfy the market’s IC needs. IDMs can help plug the gap but doing so successfully would require a complete overhaul of the current capital equipment funding system.

Foundries are the new alpha males of the semiconductor manufacturing world. The recent spate of supply deals between foundries and OEMs – at least one of which bypasses semiconductor suppliers – attest to the complete dominance of chip production by foundries and the quandary the industry is sliding into.

Can GM & GlobalFoundries Fix Auto Supply Chain Chaos?

Featured, News & Analysis

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Can the automotive industry, hard hit by the global chip shortage, restore order to its chaotic and divided supply chain? General Motors and GlobalFoundries have devised a model they say can provide better visibility for demand and supply. Questions arise: Is the real motive for the new model just to cut out the middlemen? Will chip suppliers have a say? If so, at what cost?

General Motors Co. and GlobalFoundries (GF) have cut a deal. GF, the world’s fourth largest-earning foundry, is establishing a “dedicated capacity exclusively for GM’s chip supply,” while GM makes GF its preferred foundry. The deal compels GM’s semiconductor suppliers to manufacture chips exclusively at GF’s U.S. facility.