Tech Giants go head to head over AI; Spoofing the AI; Samsung takes number one spot from Intel; USB 3.2 announced

In engineering AI is the hottest of hot topics. With AI now advanced enough to navigate our roads, and in some cases beat the best games players in the world at their own game, the era of AI is now upon us. But, the overall effects of the technology are still argued over, even by the people pioneering it. This week saw a Twitter spat between Mark Zuckerburg and Elon Musk over whether the fearmongering that has sprung up over the potential dangers of AI is overstated or not. In the red corner, founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg thinks that the doomsday scenarios have been overplayed and AI will be a force for good. In the blue corner, Elon Musk, replied that he has spoken to Mark on the subject and “his knowledge is limited”, which surely must be a grave insult to a tech giant. 

Musk, who had earlier this month spoken to the National Governor’s Association on the potential danger of out of control AI, and the need to legislate now to prevent trouble in the future, believes that AI is the biggest danger facing humanity. With AI being more of a force in all aspects of society, this is an argument that is not going to go away.

Staying on the subject of the dangers of AI, the New Scientist has an interesting article on the danger of hackers spoofing AI. Due to the way that AI learns how to differentiate images and sound, it can be deliberately misled by a tampered image that could look normal to a human. The technique could lead to driverless vehicles not “seeing” humans or cautionary signs, leading to accidents. Currently there is no protection against this type of attack. Any hacker attempting such an attack would have to have a deep knowledge of the algorithms the AI uses to learn to differentiate different objects, so any attacks are unlikely at the moment, but in the future? You can read more here https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142059-sneaky-attacks-trick-ais-into-seeing-or-hearing-whats-not-there/.

For the first time in almost a quarter of a century, Intel is no longer the biggest chipmaker in the world. The Korean giant, Samsung posted revenue of $15.8 billion this week, more than $1 billion ahead of Intel’s revenue over the same period. The rise in the use of smartphones and tablets at the expense of personal PCs and laptops has seen Samsung’s figures rise, while Intel’s has slowed. Intel has turned to datacentres to fill the revenue gap from declining PC sales, but the additional revenue from that source has not grown as fast as the smartphone market. Samsung’s lead may not last long though, as Intel is ramping up production of memory chips.

Finally, and more on topic, USB 3.2 specification was announced this week. USB 3.0 was meant to be an all in one cable that supported power and data. As the world has gone wireless, data transfer has become less of an issue and USB 3.0 has been used commercially for power, primarily the charging of smartphones and laptops. This week’s news has mainly concentrated on the data transfer aspect, claiming the new standard will boost current USB 3.1 generation one connections by 2 gbps to 10 gbps and enable USB 3.1 generation two cables to transfer data at up to 20 gbps. The full specification will be released in September.

PSD