Month: February 2024
Don’t ignore Asia tech
A lot can change in 12 years. When I first joined TechCrunch in 2012, I was the only writer it had based out of Asia. For several years, it often felt like I was writing to correct misperceptions I saw in my articles’ comments or on Twitter. Even though Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent were innovating
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
A lot can change in 12 years. When I first joined TechCrunch in 2012, I was the only writer it had based out of Asia. For several years, it often felt like I was writing to correct misperceptions I saw in my articles’ comments or on Twitter. Even though Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent were innovating […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
HDMI Forum Rejects Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Driver Support Sought By AMD
Michael Larabel, reporting at Phoronix: One of the limitations of AMD’s open-source Linux graphics driver has been the inability to implement HDMI 2.1+ functionality on the basis of legal requirements by the HDMI Forum. AMD engineers had been working to come up with a solution in conjunction with the HDMI Forum for being able to provide HDMI 2.1+ capabilities with their open-source Linux kernel driver, but it looks like those efforts for now have concluded and failed. For three years there has been a bug report around 4K@120Hz being unavailable via HDMI 2.1 on the AMD Linux driver. Similarly, there have been bug reports like 5K @ 240Hz not possible either with the AMD graphics driver on Linux.
As covered back in 2021, the HDMI Forum closing public specification access is hurting open-source support. AMD as well as the X.Org Foundation have been engaged with the HDMI Forum to try to come up with a solution to be able to provide open-source implementations of the now-private HDMI specs. AMD Linux engineers have spent months working with their legal team and evaluating all HDMI features to determine if/how they can be exposed in their open-source driver. AMD had code working internally and then the past few months were waiting on approval from the HDMI Forum. Sadly, the HDMI Forum has turned down AMD’s request for open-source driver support.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Michael Larabel, reporting at Phoronix: One of the limitations of AMD’s open-source Linux graphics driver has been the inability to implement HDMI 2.1+ functionality on the basis of legal requirements by the HDMI Forum. AMD engineers had been working to come up with a solution in conjunction with the HDMI Forum for being able to provide HDMI 2.1+ capabilities with their open-source Linux kernel driver, but it looks like those efforts for now have concluded and failed. For three years there has been a bug report around 4K@120Hz being unavailable via HDMI 2.1 on the AMD Linux driver. Similarly, there have been bug reports like 5K @ 240Hz not possible either with the AMD graphics driver on Linux.
As covered back in 2021, the HDMI Forum closing public specification access is hurting open-source support. AMD as well as the X.Org Foundation have been engaged with the HDMI Forum to try to come up with a solution to be able to provide open-source implementations of the now-private HDMI specs. AMD Linux engineers have spent months working with their legal team and evaluating all HDMI features to determine if/how they can be exposed in their open-source driver. AMD had code working internally and then the past few months were waiting on approval from the HDMI Forum. Sadly, the HDMI Forum has turned down AMD’s request for open-source driver support.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
UK government wants to use AI to cut civil service jobs
The two primary fears around AI are that the information these systems produce is gibberish, and that it’ll unjustly take jobs away from people who won’t make such sloppy mistakes. But the UK’s current government is actively promoting the use of AI to do the work normally done by civil servants, including drafting responses to parliamentary inquiries, the Financial Times reports.
UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden is set to unveil a “red box” tool that can allegedly absorb and summarize information from reputable sources, like the parliamentary record. A separate instrument is also being trialed that should work similarly but with individual responses to public consultations. While it’s unclear how quickly the AI tool can perform this work, Dowden claims it takes three months with 25 civil servants. However, the drafts would allegedly always be double-checked by a human and include sourcing.
The Telegraph quoted Dowden arguing that implementing AI technology is critical to cutting civil service jobs — something he wants to do. “It really is the only way, I think, if we want to get on a sustainable path to headcount reduction. Remember how much the size of the Civil Service has grown as a result of the pandemic and, and EU exit preparedness. We need to really embrace this stuff to drive the numbers down.” Dowden’s statement aligns with hopes from his boss, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to use technology to increase government productivity — shockingly, neither person has offered to save money by giving AI their job.
Dowden does show some restraint against having AI do everything. In a pre-speech briefing, he noted that the government wouldn’t use AI for any “novel or contentious or highly politically sensitive areas.” At the same time, the Cabinet Office’s AI division is set to grow from 30 to 70 employees and to get a new budget of £110 million ($139.1 million), up from £5 million ($6.3 million).This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uk-government-wants-to-use-ai-to-cut-civil-service-jobs-140031159.html?src=rss
The two primary fears around AI are that the information these systems produce is gibberish, and that it’ll unjustly take jobs away from people who won’t make such sloppy mistakes. But the UK’s current government is actively promoting the use of AI to do the work normally done by civil servants, including drafting responses to parliamentary inquiries, the Financial Times reports.
UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden is set to unveil a “red box” tool that can allegedly absorb and summarize information from reputable sources, like the parliamentary record. A separate instrument is also being trialed that should work similarly but with individual responses to public consultations. While it’s unclear how quickly the AI tool can perform this work, Dowden claims it takes three months with 25 civil servants. However, the drafts would allegedly always be double-checked by a human and include sourcing.
The Telegraph quoted Dowden arguing that implementing AI technology is critical to cutting civil service jobs — something he wants to do. “It really is the only way, I think, if we want to get on a sustainable path to headcount reduction. Remember how much the size of the Civil Service has grown as a result of the pandemic and, and EU exit preparedness. We need to really embrace this stuff to drive the numbers down.” Dowden’s statement aligns with hopes from his boss, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to use technology to increase government productivity — shockingly, neither person has offered to save money by giving AI their job.
Dowden does show some restraint against having AI do everything. In a pre-speech briefing, he noted that the government wouldn’t use AI for any “novel or contentious or highly politically sensitive areas.” At the same time, the Cabinet Office’s AI division is set to grow from 30 to 70 employees and to get a new budget of £110 million ($139.1 million), up from £5 million ($6.3 million).
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uk-government-wants-to-use-ai-to-cut-civil-service-jobs-140031159.html?src=rss
A.I. Frenzy Complicates Efforts to Keep Power-Hungry Data Sites Green
Artificial intelligence’s booming growth is radically reshaping an already red-hot data center market, raising questions about whether these sites can be operated sustainably.
Artificial intelligence’s booming growth is radically reshaping an already red-hot data center market, raising questions about whether these sites can be operated sustainably.
Nvidia just released a new code generator that can run on most modern CPUs
Considerable advancements in code-generating LLMs means you may be able to get away with running the smallest.
Nvidia has come together with ServiceNow and Hugging Face to introduce a new family of open-access large language models (LLMs) for code generation.
The StarCoder2 platform was developed by the BigCode community with performance, transparency, and cost-effectiveness considered.
StarCoder2’s extensive reach is founded on the training of 619 programming languages. The AI code generator comes in three flavors: 3 billion, 7 billion and 15 billion parameters.
StarCoder2 brings code generation to all
According to the announcement, the smaller variants were created to provide strong performance while managing compute costs. The smallest model was built together with ServiceNow and promises to match the performance of the original StarCoder’s 15 billion-parameter option, while the mid-spec option gets the support of Hugging Face.
StarCoder2’s 15 billion-parameter option was trained on Nvidia accelerated infrastructure.
The considerable improvements mean that, while greater performance can be unlocked by the Nvidia-accelerated option, even the most basic variant is a considerable advancement on previous generations, and requires less sophisticated infrastructure.
Jonathan Cohen, VP for Applied Research at Nvidia. “Nvidia’s collaboration with ServiceNow and Hugging Face introduces secure, responsibly developed models, and supports broader access to accountable generative AI that we hope will benefit the global community.”
Moreover, StarCoder2 uses a new code dataset called The Stack v2, which incorporates new training techniques to understand low-resource programming languages, mathematics, and program source code discussions.
Besides performance and efficiency improvements, the organizations insist that StarCoder2 adheres to ethical AI practices, such as using responsibly sourced data under license from the digital commons of Software Heritage. Developers can also opt out of having their data used for training.
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Best Internet Providers in Riverside, California – CNET
Ready to check out your broadband options in Riverside? Spectrum is our top pick, but other providers might offer cheaper prices and faster speeds.
Ready to check out your broadband options in Riverside? Spectrum is our top pick, but other providers might offer cheaper prices and faster speeds.
Vibe helps small companies buy video ads on streaming services
As streaming apps and services are gradually showing more ads to viewers, adtech startup Vibe plans to help small businesses take advantage of that trend by letting them access that ad inventory with a self-serve ad platform like the ones small businesses use to run ads on Google’s or Meta’s services. The startup recently raised
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As streaming apps and services are gradually showing more ads to viewers, adtech startup Vibe plans to help small businesses take advantage of that trend by letting them access that ad inventory with a self-serve ad platform like the ones small businesses use to run ads on Google’s or Meta’s services. The startup recently raised […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.