NVIDIA

AI's Benevolent Leader

Nvidia wants to rule the roost in the “Age of AI”...but also share the spoils? At its annual GPU Technology Conference, which started Monday, the chipmaker mounted a charm offensive.

Petaflops in the U.K. ...

Nvidia is building Cambridge-1, a $52 million AI supercomputer for drug discovery and other healthcare applications. Due to boot up by the end of 2020, Cambridge-1 will be the U.K.’s most powerful supercomputer. 

• GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca, Oxford Nanopore, two London hospitals, and King’s College all have supercomputer logins.
• GSK and Nvidia also built a London AI lab for vaccine and treatment discovery. 

Olive branch? U.K. regulators are a make-or-break player in Nvidia’s proposed $40 billion takeover of Cambridge-based Arm.

And the smaller stuff...

Nvidia demoed new data processing units and a $59 mini AI computer for budding coders. The company expects shortages of some new graphics chips to stretch into 2021. 

As it irons out supply chain kinks, Nvidia is building new developer tools like Omniverse. The virtual 3D collaboration platform, which launched in open beta, is best described as a Fortnite metaverse for engineers and graphic designers. 

And now, for the quarantine trend trailing only sweatpants in popularity...Nvidia is working on videoconferencing. Nvidia Maxine is a new set of AI tools that reduces bandwidth/latency in video calls. If that sentence was the veggies, here comes dessert: 

• Maxine compresses video by algorithmically filtering faces and reanimating them in higher quality. The tool can even make it seem like you’re always looking at your webcam. 

Big picture: There’s a new computing paradigm afoot, per the WSJ’s Chris Mims: Huang’s Law. Named after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the law states that AI processors’ performance more than doubles every two years (due to hardware and software gains). 

As you can tell, Nvidia remains focused on pushing that law along. It’s looking toward new trends, too, from silicon brains for self-driving cars to tiny processors for the internet of things.

+ Huang’s Law, huh? Maybe it’s time to update our AI guide.

TECH POLICY

Antitrust Fall

Yesterday, the bipartisan House Judiciary Committee released the results of its 16-month investigation into Big Tech and antitrust concerns. Only the Dems endorsed the report, which found that Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple each hold some degree of monopoly power.

In case you don't feel like reading 449 pages yourself… 

Some emtech takeaways 

Two of the problems: 

• A leading voice assistant platform, for instance, could use insights from successful third-party voice apps to boost its own product, whether by competitive acquisitions or feature integrations. 
• Dominant companies can currently issue “take-it-or-leave-it” demands to third parties on their platform—like requiring access to a third-party product’s technical details and proprietary data.

The (proposed) start of a solution: 

• Restricting unfair competition between dominant platforms and third parties could help prohibit “self-preferencing” and grant some power to smaller firms. 
• Interoperability and data portability would benefit both consumers and independent developers—allowing them to transfer info easily between platforms or use it in creating something entirely new. 

Bottom line: Both parties generally agree that these tech giants pose a threat to competition, though Republicans released alternative recommendations for fixes. Any of the changes on the table would, in theory, help facilitate greater tech innovation and competition.

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AI

The Newest Line of Defense

The best offense is a tech-heavy defense, according to the House’s Future of Defense task force. 

After almost a year, the bipartisan group—which was charged with reviewing the Pentagon in 2019—has released recommendations for bolstering the nation’s defense strategy. 

The report called traditional battlefields “increasingly irrelevant” and urged the Pentagon to prioritize emerging tech development. Think: artificial intelligence, biotech, and quantum computing—plus space, and cyber, warfare. 

Out with the old, in with the new 

This would mean a major structural overhaul at the DOD, plus an extensive review of existing systems and missions. Other action items the report suggests: 

• Before any major defense acquisition program is funded, it should assess at least one AI project (or “autonomous alternative”). 
• The U.S. should form a global AI treaty, in the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, to introduce international usage “guardrails.” 

What’s the timeline? Knowing what we do about government red tape, congressional standstills, and the past adoption timeline for new tech, we’re not holding our breath. 

But the wheels are in motion, and this report should lead to more funding for cutting-edge tech—and widespread conversation about ethical use.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Electric vehicles cost half as much to maintain as internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, according to Consumer Reports. On lifetime average, EVs cost $.031 per mile in maintenance and repair fees; ICE cars cost $.061.

Quote: “What a computer is to me is...the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. And it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."—Steve Jobs, who passed away nine years ago this past Monday, in a 1990 film. 

Read: The quest for a quantum internet.

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• John McAfee, eccentric founder of the eponymous antivirus company, was arrested in Spain. The U.S. is seeking extradition and the SEC is suing McAfee for boosting cryptocurrencies he was paid to promote. 
• Apple has ended retail sales of third-party audio products, Bloomberg reports, in anticipation of releasing AirPods Studio over-ear headphones. Also, Apple is expected to unveil its new 5G iPhone on Oct. 13. 
• Samsonite and Google are launching a Jacquard smart backpack with touch-enabled controls. Project Jacquard = Google’s smart fabric tech division. 
• Toyota and subsidiary Hino Motor will develop a heavy-duty fuel cell truck for the North American market.
• SpaceX won a $149 million Pentagon contract to build missile-tracking satellites.

TRIVIA

SpaceX didn’t just win a sizable contract this week—it also launched a new batch of satellites. We’ve covered SpaceX-related developments for the last few months, so now it’s time to test your retention of that info. 

Take today’s quiz here. 

TECH THINGAMABOBS

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For song SEO: Spotify is now letting iOS and Android users search songs by lyrics.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• When algorithms run the workplace 
• Q3 recap: Tech tie-ups and tensions
• Google-Fitbit deal on track for EU approval