Italy’s Privacy Watchdog Temporarily Bans ChatGPT: Who Will be Next?

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• The Italian National Authority for Data Protection has temporarily banned ChatGPT after a leak exposed the personal data of users of the paid-for version of the service.

• OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot, has 20 days to respond to the privacy watchdog or risks a fine equivalent to 4% of its annual turnover.

The Italian National Authority for Data Protection became the first regulator to start an investigation into OpenAI’s ChatGPT last week. Debate turned to the inevitability of increased regulatory oversight to control the effects of the explosion in the use of generative AI, and the possibility that the measure could be followed by other Western democracies, as the conversation around AI and ethics becomes more urgent.

The Pachyderm in the Room? HPE Leverages Reproducible AI for Enterprises

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has acquired Pachyderm, a software company that uses reproducible AI to help organizations implement machine learning (ML) projects at scale.

• Pachyderm’s software capabilities will add an important differentiator to HPE’s Machine Learning Development Environment through increased reliability and transparency of the data.

Until not so long ago, Pachyderm was just another independent firm in the crowded space of San Francisco, California’s (US) AI startup landscape. However, many industry players had been aware of Pachyderm for a while.

Amazon SageMaker Launches Geospatial Tools for Multiple Use Cases

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• AWS has launched the preview release of new geospatial tools that will help SageMaker to compete in the market of geospatial and AI applications.

• Enterprises can now access and share geospatial data in more user-friendly formats, such as through APIs. This means that developers without a technical background in geospatial data can deploy applications in different industries.

AWS recently launched the preview release of Amazon SageMaker‘s new geospatial capabilities. The announcement is significant because it is the first time that the cloud computing giant adds geospatial tools to its ML platform, although last year saw the release of Amazon Location Service. That solution already helped developers add location functionality to their applications, visualize maps, search points of interest, optimize delivery routes, track assets, and use geofencing to detect entry and exit events in a defined geographical boundary.

The Cold Tech War and the Semiconductor Industry: What Next?

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Geopolitical dynamics are having a growing impact on the semiconductor market

• The EU and the US have passed legislation to improve their competitive position vis-à-vis Asian countries

The pandemic and its aftermath, and more recently the war in Ukraine, has created a world of rising inflation and supply-chain imbalances that is profoundly disrupting the semiconductor industry, giving way to worldwide shortages of chips and advanced microprocessors. The trend towards economic nationalism that predated the pandemic has also contributed to the increasingly geopolitical slant affecting the competitive dynamics in this technology market segment. Moreover, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has become a fundamental driver of the semiconductor industry, and China is fast becoming a leading power in AI applications. New US restrictions on the sale of AI chips to China demonstrate the strategic importance of AI for national economies to reach their digitization potential.

Fujitsu Takes a Shot at Big Cloud with New HPC On-Demand Offering

Summary Bullets:

B. Valle

• Fujitsu is the latest infrastructure vendor to enter the market of high-performance computing as a service (HPCaaS) with the ‘Fujitsu Computing as a Service (CaaS)’ portfolio.
• Competitors in this market include Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Lenovo, IBM, Dell Technologies, Atos, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Alibaba.

Fujitsu announced the launch of the Fujitsu CaaS portfolio in Japan last month, a services platform to enable commercial organizations to access high-end HPC capabilities to run complex artificial intelligence (AI) workloads via the public cloud. ‘Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC,’ the first services offering made available as part of the CaaS portfolio, is based on Fujitsu’s Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000 servers running on ARM A64X chips, the same processors behind the world’s fastest supercomputer, Fugaku. Fujitsu has combined these supercomputing capabilities with software to deploy a wide range of AI and machine learning (ML) applications.

Landscape for AI-Based Vertical Solutions Heats Up as Databricks Unveils Offering for Retail Companies

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Databricks Lakehouse for Retail is an integrated platform to help retailers tackle specific industry challenges, such as demand forecasting and supply chain inventory provision.
• The product helps users gain insights from data, either through traditional analytics or by leveraging Databricks’ AI tools.

Advanced analytics firm Databricks, known for its AutoML capabilities, has launched its first industry-specific product, Databricks Lakehouse for Retail.  It is a savvy move to target the retail sector, which has been shaken to the core during the global pandemic, with supply chain disturbances and a massive shift towards e-commerce accelerating trends that would have taken many years in normal circumstances.  Against this backdrop, retailers are looking to optimize their data to better manage inventory issues and supply chains and to improve their ability to forecast demand and personalize marketing campaigns for customers.

DataRobot Launches Solutions Aimed at Combining Human Intelligence with Machine Automation

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• DataRobot Core incorporates tools for data scientists that the company gained from its acquisition of Zepl in May 2021.
• The product offers specialized capabilities that enable users to toggle between the development of customized machine learning models and the use of AutoML for experimentation.

DataRobot’s mission is to help enterprises implement ‘Augmented AI’ by offering products that enable users to combine human intelligence with machine automation.  The DataRobot AI Cloud platform facilitates customers’ ability to toggle between automation and human intervention, so that they can adjust their AI strategy as needed throughout the duration of a project’s lifecycle.  To support this strategy, the company launched DataRobot Core in December 2021.  The platform enables data scientists to use the tools and languages they prefer, to speed up experimentation and accelerate AI deployments.