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D-Wave and Davidson Technologies Introduce New Innovations to Advance National Defense Efforts
Collaboration yields new solutions that tackle complex challenges in defense and aerospace sectors
Companies to showcase live demonstration of quantum-hybrid application at Space & Missile Defense Symposium
BURNABY, British Columbia, PALO ALTO, Calif. & HUNTSVILLE, Ala., August 7, 2023 —(BUSINESS WIRE)— D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS), a leader in quantum computing systems, software, and services, and Davidson Technologies, Inc., a technology services company that provides innovative engineering, technical and management solutions for the Department of Defense, aerospace and commercial customers, today announced progress in their collaboration to create solutions that advance national defense efforts. In support of the companies’ joint presence at this week’s Space and Missile Defense Symposium, D-Wave and Davidson Technologies revealed that together they have built two applications, focused on interceptor assignment and optimized radar scheduling.
AI robots can now do manicures and other beauty treatments
Will they replace human cosmetics workers?
A report by CBS News.
The article outlined several AI firms that have entered the industry and shared their point of view on its progress.
A report by CBS News published on Tuesday highlighted how the global market for artificial intelligence (AI) in beauty and cosmetics is currently a multi-billion-dollar business that sees machines undertake tasks once reserved only for humans.
Frustration with salons
Co-founder and CEO of a San francisco-based startup called Clockwork Renuka Apte said that the idea to use robots for cosmetic procedures came about because of her own frustration with salon appointments.
Adopting robots will cause a business’s profits to decline at first
It turns out robots have a ‘U-shaped’ effect on profits.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found that investment in robots can cause a firm’s profits to first decline before rising again, resulting in a so-called ‘U-shaped’ effect on profits.
This is according to a report by TechXplore published on Thursday.
The study was based on industry data from the UK and 24 other European countries between 1995 and 2017. The research found that low levels of adoptions coincided with negative profit margins however higher levels led to successful profits.
The big bottleneck for AI: a shortage of powerful chips
The crushing demand for AI has also revealed the limits of the global supply chain for powerful chips used to develop and field AI models.
The continuing chip crunch has affected businesses large and small, including some of the AI industry’s leading platforms and may not meaningfully improve for at least a year or more, according to industry analysts.
The latest sign of a potentially extended shortage in AI chips came in Microsoft’s annual report recently. The report identifies, for the first time, the availability of graphics processing units (GPUs) as a possible risk factor for investors.
Amazon Just Signaled It’s Serious About Dominating This $600 Billion Industry
For a company the size of Amazon, it takes a lot to move the needle. It’s hard to enter new businesses that have enough upside to make a material difference. Advertising is one of them. With its recent change to break out results for its advertising business, Amazon is signaling it’s all in on staking its claim to as much of the market as it can.
That market is growing, but Amazon’s business is growing much faster. That means it’s taking share away from its competitors. Amazon is already the third-largest advertising platform. I wouldn’t bet against it someday soon becoming the biggest.
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“Every single” Amazon team is working on generative AI, says CEO
Andy Jassy used Thursday’s earnings call to underscore just how much the company is investing in artificial intelligence.
“Every single one” of Amazon’s businesses has “multiple generative AI initiatives going right now,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company’s Q2 2023 earnings call on Thursday. The company offers infrastructure and services via AWS that can help power many generative artificial intelligence applications, which Jassy did discuss on the call, but he also stressed just how important AI is across the company as a whole.
Here’s more from Jassy about those generative AI initiatives:
Amazon wants you to know that it really cares about AI.
Meta’s AudioCraft Can Turn Your Words Into Music
Meta has released AudioCraft, a new open-source generative AI framework that can produce music from simple text prompts. AudioCraft is based on a dynamic framework that enables high-quality, realistic audio and music generation from text-based user inputs. It aims to revolutionize music generation by empowering professional musicians to explore new compositions, indie game developers to enhance their virtual worlds with sound effects, and small business owners to add soundtracks to their Instagram posts, all with ease.
AudioCraft is based on a dynamic framework that enables high-quality, realistic audio and music generation from text-based user inputs. It aims to revolutionize music generation by empowering professional musicians to explore new compositions, indie game developers to enhance their virtual worlds with sound effects, and small business owners to add soundtracks to their Instagram posts, all with ease.
AudioCraft is a collection of three robust models: MusicGen, AudioGen and EnCodec. While MusicGen uses text-based user inputs to generate music, AudioGen performs a similar role for ambient sounds. Both are trained with Meta-owned and specifically licensed music and public sound effects, respectively. A recent release from the company offers an improved version of EnCodec. This decoder allows for high-quality music generation with fewer artifacts, based on the pre-trained AudioGen and all AudioCraft model weights and code.
Fake AI Friends: ‘This Will Result In Learned Narcissism’
MySpace gave us co-founder Tom right off the bat: join the social network and you started with at least one friend, even if he never interacted with you. Now social platforms like Snapchat and Facebook are using generative artificial intelligence to give us smarter and more engaging friends.
When Facebook parent company Meta reported financial results last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he saw the AI friend as an assistant or coach that “can help you interact with businesses.” Facebook’s AI chatbots will reportedly offer a range of personalities and capabilities, presumably in the hope that at least one will appeal to most if not all Facebook users.
According to Financial Times reporting, Zuckerberg is “spending all his energy and time” on this: a massive shift from the metaverse and virtual reality, his previous idée fixe.