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White House tells intelligence agencies: Use more AI
In a first, US President Joseph R. Biden Jr. issued a national security memorandum today telling federal intelligence agencies they need to pilot and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) in an effort to boost the nation’s security.
The memo is directed at the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy and specifically tells the agencies to use AI to track and counter adversaries’ development and use of the technology.
The edict also directs the agencies to ensure AI adoption “reflects democratic values and protects human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and privacy.” The plan is to coordinate efforts with US allies “to ensure the technology is developed and used in ways that adhere to international law while protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Joel Meyer, president of public products at AI services provider Domino Data Lab, said the memo is obviously aimed at preventing US adversaries from achieving “overmatch” by making the integration and application of AI in US military and national security capabilities an urgent priority.
“This memo takes an important step in both accelerating innovation and adoption and in ensuring that use is responsible and governed by putting in place guardrails for how US government agencies can, and just as importantly cannot, use AI,” Meyer said.
For example, Meyer said, the US Navy’s Project AMMO uses AI to support underwater target threat detection and to provide underwater drone operators with feedback data to increase operator confidence. “The [memo] builds a foundation of trust that allows programs like this one to scale by both accelerating innovation and adoption and ensuring that use is responsible and governed,” Meyer said.
The US agencies will also be responsible for increasing the security for, and diversity of, advanced computer chips to power compute-hungry AI models. The CHIPS Act is attempting to increase funding for new fabs and R&D facilities. To date, much of the money has been allocated, but not dispersed to chip makers.
“Our competitors want to upend US AI leadership and have employed economic and technological espionage in efforts to steal US technology,” the memo states. “This [order] makes collection on our competitors’ operations against our AI sector a top-tier intelligence priority, and directs relevant US Government entities to provide AI developers with the timely cybersecurity and counterintelligence information necessary to keep their inventions secure.”
The memo directs actions to improve the security and diversity of chip supply chains, and to ensure that, as the US supports the development of the next generation of government supercomputers and other emerging technology, the nation does so with AI in mind.
The government’s AI efforts will be overseen by the existing AI Safety Institute, which is housed within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD. The White House said it’s the one body staffed by technical experts who understand the quickly evolving technology.
The order also lays out strengthened and streamlined mechanisms for the AI Safety Institute to partner with national security agencies, including the intelligence community, the Defense Department, and the Department of Energy.
Source:: Computer World
Microsoft: Updating Windows 11 will now be faster and easier
Microsoft recently rolled out Windows 11 version 24H2 and, though there are some bugs in the update, the company is outlining on its Windows IT Pro blog that the management of updates has been significantly improved.
Among other changes the company highlighted, users should find that installing updates is now up to 46% faster; the time required to restart the computer is up to 40% less; and CPU usage should be up to 25% less than in the past.
Microsoft also rolled out various optimizations to Windows 11 that mean the updates do not take up as much storage space as before.
Source:: Computer World
A Complete Unknown: Timothée Chalamet talks the importance of Bob Dylan and live music
By Dan Girolamo
In a new in a featurette for A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet emphasizes the importance of performing live as Bob Dylan for the movie.
Source:: Digital Trends
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Qualcomm’s license battle with Arm puts many AI-enabled Copilot+ PCs in peril
As its long-running dispute with Arm turned into a war of words this week, the stakes for chip giant Qualcomm and its technology partners, including Microsoft, couldn’t be higher.
Along with MediaTek and Apple, Qualcomm is one of the biggest suppliers of chips for use in smartphones and tablets. As PCs, smartphones, and automobiles acquire more AI capabilities, the increasingly powerful Snapdragon Elite platform is supposed to be Qualcomm’s big move into those arenas.
Now the dispute with Arm, which has been rumbling on since 2022 over Qualcomm’s right to develop the ARM-based Oryon CPU core in its chips, threatens to derail the whole project. To clarify, ARM is the architecture, Arm is the company.
According to Bloomberg, and independently verified by PC World, Arm recently issued a 60-day notice of cancellation of Qualcomm’s Oryon license.
Disputes over intellectual property (IP) and licensing are common in tech, but the report garnered an unusually spiky response from a Qualcomm spokesperson, which suggests the confrontation might be more serious.
“This is more of the same from Arm — more unfounded threats designed to strongarm a longtime partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs, and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license.”
According to the spokesperson, the timing of Arm’s move was connected to an impending court date in December.
“Arm’s desperate ploy appears to be an attempt to disrupt the legal process, and its claim for termination is completely baseless. We are confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed. Arm’s anticompetitive conduct will not be tolerated.”
Of course, it probably didn’t help Qualcomm’s mood that the news emerged smack in the middle of the company’s major Snapdragon Summit 2024, held in Maui this week.
Why does Oryon matter?
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Elite platform comprises four system-on-a-chip (SoC) microprocessors aimed at different market segments: X Elite for Windows PCs, the 8 Elite for smartphones and tablets, the Elite Cockpit for automotive systems, and the Elite Ride for automated driving.
All use ARM-based cores in different configurations: the Oryon CPU as a general microprocessor, the Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) to accelerate AI capabilities, and the Adreno graphics processing unit (GPU) for graphics.
It is the first of those, the Oryon CPU core originally acquired when Qualcomm bought Nuvia in 2021, that is at the heart of the dispute between the two companies. Arm claims that the agreement it had with Nuvia to develop Oryon did not transfer to Qualcomm, and that any agreements it had with Qualcomm were separate. Buying Nuvia didn’t alter this fact.
Could this affect business PCs?
The dispute is complicated by the involvement of Microsoft, which heads a list of PC makers using Qualcomm’s X Elite platform to push AI-enabled PCs.
That should be good news. After a long dip, the PC market has looked up in the last year, increasing 3.4% year-over-year in Q2 2024, according to figures from Canalys, the third quarter in a row to register growth.
Previous attempts to get Windows running on ARM floundered, but this time Qualcomm has made good with X Elite. Having decided that AI-enabled PCs are a new paradigm, Microsoft will want the dispute to be resolved as soon as possible.
The same goes for Qualcomm’s other PC partners, including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, all of which have developed models using the same platform. In addition to Microsoft’s Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, models based on X Elite include Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7x 14, HP’s OmniBook X, Acer’s Swift 14 AI, and various laptops in Dell’s XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron ranges.
All feature Copilot+, each promotes the claimed performance boost and hugely improved battery life of the X Elite, and most are at the more expensive business end of the price charts.
PCs with Intel and AMD processors also qualify as Copilot+ certified, so any failure to resolve the dispute, or defeat for Qualcomm, won’t disrupt AI capabilities from appearing in Windows laptops, but the Oryon core is also used in high-end smartphones and tablets due for release in the coming weeks.
The market assumption is that the companies will resolve the dispute before it reaches court, not least because of the uncertainty its continuation would create for both. That’s how numerous other licensing and IP disputes in tech end up being quietly forgotten.
That didn’t stop the pair’s share prices from taking a dive as news of the squabble’s latest development became public, a sign that some think this dispute is bound to hurt at least one of the companies.
Source:: Computer World
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Ericsson’s return-to-office policy is causing trouble
During the pandemic, working from home was the order of the day at Ericsson. But as employees started to return, it was decided two years ago to have a 50 percent attendance in the office — a policy that was never really followed up, according to Jessica Nygren, vice chairman of the Swedish Association of Graduate Engineers’ local branch at Ericsson.
Now the company wants to see more people in the office, and at the end of the summer it announced a new policy: 60 percent attendance.
The company’s press officer Ralf Bagner described it as “a minor adjustment in the guidelines to increase clarity.”
“Today, Ericsson has a hybrid guideline based on the fact that we believe in the human encounter. We also believe that there should be a purpose to where an individual or team chooses to work. This results in an office-first mindset among managers and employees,” he said via email.
Jessica Nygren describes the change very differently.
“The decision came very suddenly, without warning, which meant that many managers took it straight at their word. Every day we see horror examples where managers state that employees should come in three days a week, full days. But it is stated in the policy that it is about 60 percent of the working time over a year, which makes a fairly big difference. To follow it to the letter strangles flexibility,” she said.
Rules without reason
Bagner wrote, “Ericsson’s hybrid guideline has always given every manager, employee and team the opportunity to work in dialogue on how and where they work best and that everyone understands the importance and benefits of meeting, from an individual and team perspective, and from a social and cultural perspective.”
But this is not what it looks like in practice, according to the union.
“We also believe that the company needs a greater presence in the office — developers need to brainstorm to find new products going forward — but no motive has been presented for us to use this particular model.
As it looks now, many are in a bind according to Jessica Nygren. Some of the employees come from other locations where Ericsson has previously had operations that have downsized or disappeared. They have then been offered a position in Kista but have remained in Örebro or Gävle. Now they are suddenly required to commute five, six hours a day, three days a week.
And when they arrive, the office may be full already.
“If you’ve been commuting for several hours, you want an adequate workplace: We’re supposed to be inside 60 percent of the time, but there are only seats for 50 percent of the staff, so you have to puzzle. In some places there is a lot of space left, in others not. Yesterday, for example, two of my colleagues sat in the toilet and took meetings because there was no room. Others go out and get in the car,” she says.
Not opposed
At the same time, Jessica Nygren emphasizes that the union is not against more people coming into the office, but that it is a process that should be allowed to take some time and be better adapted to different individuals.
“If we had been told that they wanted to increase the presence in the offices, we would have given the thumbs up. But then perhaps they should have announced that it would be launched after the turn of the year and that they took in feedback in the meantime. Are there parking spaces? What is commuting? How can we attract people — instead of with “push” as today, it would be better with “pull”.
Managers should also avoid having a harsh policy imposed on them and be able to decide what works in their particular work group, according to Jessica Nygren — someone may need to be in the office for more than three days while someone else can work more from home.
From the union’s side, however, they think they have a good dialogue with CEO Börje Ekholm, who has clarified in his weekly newsletters that “one size” does not fit all.
“Now the company management just has to get the other managers to understand it — as it looks now, the employees do not feel safe and they do not feel welcome in the office in cases where they are squeezed by the new policy,” says Jessica Nygren.
Source:: Computer World
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