Weekly Roundup: Friday, 2 June, 2017
Here are some links I thought were worth sharing this week:
DATA SCIENCE
Apple Is Working on a Dedicated Chip to Power AI on Devices
While this article makes a comparison to the recent announcement of the Google TPUs and Amazons technology behind the Echo both are data centre driven, with data being sent from devices to a data centre for processing. If Apple are moving the dedicated AI processing to the device this would be a step change in the development of AI.
An in-depth look at Google’s first Tensor Processing Unit (TPU)
This is a deep look into the technology behind the new Google Tensor Processing Unit (TPU).
Why NVIDIA Is Building Its Own TPU
"The blistering pace of innovation in artificial intelligence for image, voice, robotic and self-driving vehicle applications has been fueled, in large part, by NVIDIA GPU chips that deliver the massive compute power required by the underlying math required for Deep Learning. While NVIDIA continues to reap the benefits of its investments in GPUs, there has been speculation that fixed function application-specific circuits (ASICs) might one day eclipse NVIDIA’s GPU-centric approach. This argument has been fueled in part by noting Google's investment in its own custom ASIC for Deep Learning inference, the TensorFlow Processor Unit (TPU). Now NVIDIA itself seems to have embraced this approach, albeit in a limited fashion, announcing its own ASIC technology for Deep Learning acceleration."
DATA PRIVACY
Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff
"Google has begun using billions of credit-card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores". "The advance allows Google to determine how many sales have been generated by digital ad campaigns, a goal that industry insiders have long described as 'the holy grail' of online advertising. But the announcement also renewed long-standing privacy complaints about how the company uses personal information."
Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure' and 'worthless'
"Leaked documents said to describe how the social network shares psychological insights on young people with advertisers". While the data available to Facebook to do this kind of research could potentially be used for social good if the company's sole business is to sell advertising then they will inevitably use it to you guessed it, sell advertising. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To an online advertising company, all data is for targeting ads.
Revealed: How Facebook chief, Sheryl Sandberg, lobbied Taoiseach Enda Kenny over data protection role and taxation
"Facebook chief, Sheryl Sandberg, personally lobbied the Taoiseach at one-to-one meetings and in correspondence, on who would be appointed as Ireland’s next Data Protection Commissioner."