IBM

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'TinyML' Wants to Bring Machine Learning to Microcontroller Chips

Andrew Orr ·

TinyML is a joint project between IBM and MIT. It’s a machine learning project capable of running and low-memory and low-power microcontrollers.

[Microcontrollers] have a small CPU, are limited to a few hundred kilobytes of low-power memory (SRAM) and a few megabytes of storage, and don’t have any networking gear. They mostly don’t have a mains electricity source and must run on cell and coin batteries for years. Therefore, fitting deep learning models on MCUs can open the way for many applications.

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IBM’s AI-Powered Chip Can Help Detect Fraud

Andrew Orr ·

IBM revealed its new Telum processor at the Hot Chips semiconductor conference. It claims it can detect fraud in real time.

IBM says this could lead to “a potentially new era of prevention of fraud at scale.” Although credit card fraud is the most direct application, Telum’s onboard A.I. accelerator can handle other workloads as well. Using machine learning, it can conduct risk analysis, detect money laundering, and handle loan processing, among other things.

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IBM Creates World-First 2nm Computer Chip

Andrew Orr ·

IBM has created a 2-nanometer chip using a prototype manufacturing process. It’s likely we won’t see these chips in the market until late 2024, however.

Chip makers routinely talk about their 10nm, 7nm, and 5nm nodes, in their efforts to pack more and more transistors on a piece of silicon. However, the nanometer nomenclature is often just marketing speak […] based on the company’s slides, there actually isn’t a component on the chip at a 2nm size. Instead, the announcement is more about a generational improvement from IBM’s earlier 5nm process, which debuted in 2017.

“The chips must be insulated from human thought, as an errant memory of grandma from 1970 can cause quantum effects in the chip.“

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IBM Releases Homomorphic Encryption Toolkit for iOS, macOS

Andrew Orr ·

IBM has released a toolkit for iOS and macOS to help developers to easily add homomorphic encryption into their programs.

While the technology holds great potential, it does require a significant shift in the security paradigm. Typically, inside the business logic of an application, data remains decrypted, Bergamaschi explained. But with the implementation of FHE, that’s no longer the case — meaning some functions and operations will change.

In other words, “There will be a need to rewrite parts of the business logic,” Bergamaschi said. “But the security that you gain with that, where the data is encrypted all the time, is very high.”

If you haven’t added homomorphic encryption to your technology watch list, be sure to do so. As I wrote in the past, this type of encryption lets a company perform computations on data while still keeping that data encrypted.

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IBM Sells Technology to a Dictatorship...Again

Andrew Orr ·

IBM is no stranger to selling stuff to dictators. First it was the Nazis, now it’s the United Arab Emirates.

But even as [facial recognition] technology comes under more scrutiny in the United States, tech giants such as IBM, and China’s Hikvision and Huawei, are marketing biometric surveillance systems in the UAE, where citizens have fewer options to push back. The UAE has used cellphone hacking software to spy on hundreds of dissidents, journalists, and suspected criminals, and has invested heavily in surveillance technology, according to human rights groups and international media reports.

 

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IBM Secretly Used Flickr Photos for Facial Recognition

Andrew Orr ·

IBM secretly used millions of Flickr photos to test its facial recognition system. IBM claimed it was to help reduce bias in facial recognition.

Despite IBM’s assurances that Flickr users can opt out of the database, NBC News discovered that it’s almost impossible to get photos removed. IBM requires photographers to email links to photos they want removed, but the company has not publicly shared the list of Flickr users and photos included in the dataset, so there is no easy way of finding out whose photos are included.

NBC News got a copy of the data set, and created a tool to help you find out if IBM used your photos without your permission.

Particle Debris

Apple and IBM Partnership: Macs, iOS and Watson Are The Glue

John Martellaro ·

IBM and Apple have been partnering with each other for some time now. The action continues with Macs finding great favor within IBM. Also, education initiatives continue. Finally, IBM’s Watson has to be giving Apple some big ideas. This has the signs of becoming one of the most productive partnerships ever, amongst former rivals, in the tech industry.