It’s Time to Regulate the AV Industry
Apply lessons from the aviation industry and get the government involved in the development and use of autonomous vehicles. Safety is paramount. It is that simple.
Opinion
How Will Nvidia Change — and Change the Chip Industry?
By Peter Clarke
What’s at stake?
Nvidia’s dominance of the AI chip market is forcing massive changes throughout the technology sector. With such disruptive changes come great opportunities, great hazards and the need for the established players to adapt or die. Who will be left standing once Nvidia is done?
The exceptional nature of Nvidia Corp.’s latest quarterly financial results – and the way they have defied the tyranny of large numbers – demonstrates what many have believed for some time; that a fundamental change in technology is sweeping across society.
That change is towards the use of generative-AI, the use of AI-enabled software agents and natural language interfacing.
Read More »How Will Nvidia Change — and Change the Chip Industry?
Turmoil at OpenAI and Cruise Focus AI’s Dilemma
With OpenAI CEO Sam Altman getting ousted by its board on Nov. 17, followed by the appointments of two short-lived interim CEOs and Altman getting reinstated on Nov. 21st, it’s been a tumultuous week for Open AI employees and investors. Reporters on the technology beat have been working overtime. OpenAI’s upheaval has overshadowed other advancements in AI technology that continue to develop at breakneck speed.
While OpenAI staged its melodrama, the resignation of Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt on Nov. 19 largely escaped the media spotlight. Yet to come are media scrutiny on Cruise’s corporate governance and the company’s autonomous vehicle technology. Unfortunately, like most new wrinkles in AI, Cruise has kept its alleged advancements locked in a black box.
For those of us who are outside looking in, the CEOs at two different Silicon Valley companies seem irreconcilably disparate. But at a closer look, they are remarkably similar.
Read More »Turmoil at OpenAI and Cruise Focus AI’s Dilemma
Cruise: ‘Safety Is Our North Star.’ Really?
Kamikaze Kyle crashed Cruise credo. Kyle ignored all the signs and went faster still. Why didn’t he stop? Why didn’t anyone stop him? Why didn’t GM fire him?
AI’s ‘Functional’ Imperative
By David Benjamin
“I remember telling myself: This isn’t going to last. I thought there was too much money floating around. These people may be earnest researchers, but whether they know it or not, they are still in a race to put out products, generate revenue and be first.”
— David Brooks, New York Times
Coincident with the turmoil that ended with Sam Altman’s reinstatement at the top of OpenAI and the drastic restructuring of the artificial intelligence laboratory’s board of directors, I happened to watch Frank Capra’s classic film, Meet John Doe.
Although released in 1941, the movie reflected the trauma of the Great Depression.
Read More »AI’s ‘Functional’ Imperative
Lufthansa, an Upset Passenger, and a Bungled Information System
Lufthansa and the German police are entangled in a botched information and self-reporting system, highlighting the vulnerabilities of a system meant to protect travelers in the aviation industry.
Tenstorrent-Rapidus Handshake, and What It Means
What’s at stake?
Can one plus one – a startup partnering with another startup – take the world’s AI market by storm? That’s the “public image” two semiconductor startups seek to generate in Japan. At stake is a lot of Japanese government money.
Rapidus, a new Japanese startup foundry with big ambitions to design and manufacture “the world’s most advanced logic semiconductors,” Thursday announced an agreement with Tenstorrent Inc., a Canadian AI startup based in Toronto.
Read More »Tenstorrent-Rapidus Handshake, and What It Means
Autonomous Altruism
AV developers are driven by goals that aren’t exactly the same as what the rest of society want. It’s time to acknowledge that difference.
AV Technology Is Not a Bowl of Cherries
What’s at stake:
Cruise’s playbook has helped shatter public confidence in automated vehicles. We now wonder if there is a new playbook in the works – consisting of concrete actions – for every AV company so that they won’t make the same mistakes
Two days after the California DMV ordered it to suspend its San Francisco driverless taxi service, Cruise “proactively” bit the bullet and “paused” robotaxi operation nationally.
Now Cruise is going to “take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust.”
Here’s hoping the company will put its commitment where its mouth is.
Read More »AV Technology Is Not a Bowl of Cherries
Arm Up, RISC-V Down, But The Real Loser Is x86
By Peter Clarke
What’s at stake:
Although application-specific processing and neural-network architectures are becoming more significant with each passing year, established microprocessor architectures and their support of specific software bases remain significant. They have fostered and dominate big consumer markets such as personal computing and mobile phones. The conventional wisdom is that, just as Arm – once agile and without legacy baggage – could come to rival the original processor pioneer architecture x86, the open-source RISC-V is going to do the same to the now less agile and more encumbered Arm architecture.
Last week was one of contrasting fortunes for the microprocessor architectures Arm and RISC-V.
Read More »Arm Up, RISC-V Down, But The Real Loser Is x86