Latest Tech News This Week: December 2, 2019 – December 6, 2019 – Toolbox

The week couldnt have been more interesting Googles legendary co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin officially withdrew from their operational roles and handed over their bag of worries to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Their departure has a lot to do with antitrust probe technology companies are facing. In the open-source world, a major Python scientific achievement went relatively unreported, an event that underscores how mainstream medias attention is heavily focused on big technology firms. Amazon inches closer to its quantum computing goals by positioning the revolutionary technology as cloud-first. And in other news, Amazons Arm server chip has caused quite a stir in the market.

Here Are This Weeks Top 4 News:

Open Source - March of Open Source Software - Scikit-learn Core Developers Win Major Scientific Prize

Quantum Computing - Amazons Big Quantum Leap - Launches Braket, a Fully Managed Service

Tech Policy - And the Vilification of Big Tech Continues

Data Center - Amazon Moves Up the Chip Value Chain - Debuts New Data Center Chip

Bonus Question: Open Source is at the heart of AI innovation but it requires funding for sustainability

Image Source: Gael Varoquaux

The power of open source software as a building block for Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot be denied. One of the most transformative technologies, AI has hugely benefited from open source projects. AI tools and platforms leaping out of R&D efforts are now widely applied across the enterprise landscape. Now, the machine learning landscape including frameworks, libraries and components has also benefited from open source innovation with a cadre of developers shaping new ideas. Data from Deloittes Open Source Companies indicates 71.7% individuals contributed to machine learning as compared to 28.3% organizations. In addition to that, 14.6% of projects in Machine Learning domain are written in Python. Scikit learn, a core Python library that provides easy to use implementations of standard machine learning algorithms for data science has 70.9% contributions from individuals. For long, open source projects tools and platforms have served as one of the best ways to on-ramp emerging technologies. For instance, TensorFlow, an end-to-end machine learning platform was developed by the Google Brain team in 2011 and released in 2015, is now leveraged by Intel, AMD, GE Healthcare, Twitter, eBay, Bloomberg and LinkedIn among others to power their core businesses. Last week, the co-creator and contributors of scikit-learn, a core data science tool were recognized with the Acadmie des Sciences Inria prize for transfer, for their contributions to the Scikit-Learn project.

Backstory: On December 1, Gal Varoquaux, co-creator of scikit-learn and Inria researcher blogged about the major scientific win which largely went unnoticed in mainstream tech media. A few days ago, Loc Estve, Alexandre Gramfort, Olivier Grisel, Bertrand Thirion, and myself received the Acadmie des Sciences Inria prize for transfer, for our contributions to the scikit-learn project. To put things simply, its quite a big deal to me, because I feel that it illustrates a change of culture in academia, he wrote.

Heres why it matters in the open source world the researchers focused on building software, rather than pushing their own publications in the project. They preferred Python over Matlab, language preferred for academic machine learning. They reached out to the wider community, even non-experts to align development priorities. Consequently, scikit-learn has now become an industry standard and is widely leveraged by a number of internet giants who use it for product recommendations, detect fraud and spam, and understand user buying behavior. For scikit-learns community and its 1500 contributors, it is a huge recognition of its impact on the wider tech ecosystem.

Big Picture: Open source projects serve as building blocks, especially in the broader machine learning ecosystem where tools and platforms are still developing, open source communities can accelerate development and help enterprises develop next-gen capabilities. In the realm of machine learning, Google and Microsoft have built considerable leadership in the space by democratizing ML by putting tools in the hands of the users. We have seen ML patterns deliver value in real-world situations. At a time when most companies are constrained by lack of talent and datasets, open source projects help make ML easier and faster for companies. But open source software requires investment and thats why tech companies should collaborate more actively to define development priorities and functionalities as per the industrys requirement.

Our Take: As Varoquaux describes it, open source software wields tremendous impact across disciplines. Take the case of IBM-owned Red Hat which has become the face of innovation by packaging Linux for enterprise users. While scikit-learns win represents great win for the ML community, moments like this also serve as a reminder to storied tech companies to interact closely and fund the open source community to build next-gen capabilities.

Note to execs - lend your ears to Varoquauxs thoughts.

Bonus thought: The race for quantum supremacy just got more intense with Amazon joining the league

Image Source: Twitter

Amazon means business. The everything-as-a-service company is flexing its muscles into quantum computing, a technology domain led by IBM, Google, Microsoft and D-Wave Systems, striving to make quantum computing a reality. While the technology is a decade away and is yet to mature, tech enterprises and even financial institutions are dabbling in quantum computing to enable breakthroughs across sectors. Life sciences firms are exploring the potential of this game-changing technology for accelerating drug discovery and personalized medicine. Theres huge dollar inflow in R&D in September IBM announced the opening of the IBM Quantum Computation Center in New York State while Google claimed quantum supremacy with their latest research paper, Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor, published in Nature in October. Microsoft advanced quantum software architecture by introducing Q, quantum-focused language. Amid this fast-paced development, how could cloud behemoth Amazon lag behind? Now, Amazon is playing to its strengths by making quantum computing hardware accessible through the cloud.

Backstory: On December 2, Amazon announced the ambitious Amazon Braket - a fully managed AWS service that allows scientists, researchers, and developers to access quantum technologies from different providers like Rigetti, IonQ, D-Wave through Braket. According to Charlie Bell, Senior Vice President, Utility Computing Services, AWS, quantum has the potential to be a cloud-first technology. With our Amazon Braket service and Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab, were making it easier for customers to gain experience using quantum computers and to work with experts from AWS and our partners to figure out how they can benefit from the technology, he said. In addition to that, the tech firm also announced the launch of AWS Center for Quantum Computing, set to play a pivotal role in forging academic and industry partnerships to advance the developments in quantum computing.

Big Picture: Quantum computing holds tremendous promise. Besides technology firms, semiconductor majors like Honeywell and Intel are running active quantum programs to speed up development across the quantum stack -- hardware, software architecture. Consulting majors Accenture and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) are ramping up their quantum consulting practice. Over the last two years, theres been an uptake of VC interest betting big on quantum hardware and software startups. In 2018, Deloitte predicted, it is one of the largest tech revenue opportunities with interest in quantum computing market comparable to supercomputers. The quantum computing market is expected to touch $780 million by 2025, a report by Quantum Computing Strategies, 2019 indicates. The market is heavily dominated by 40 firms, which includes startups, semiconductor players and tech heavyweights.

Our Take: With the need for more computational power going up, quantum computing delivers the promise of exponential speed-ups and can meet the needs for future applications across Industry 4.0, logistics, energy, telecommunications, manufacturing and more. While the promise seems real and industry giants are working to make research a reality, the key question is whether the technology can be commercialized within the time frame promised.

Bonus question: Are antitrust laws and regulations the way forward for large tech companies?

Image Source: Facebook

The biggest management change in the history of Big Tech legendary Google founders stepping away from Alphabet Inc has sparked a feverish debate on the oversized power technology firms hold and how they should be held accountable for falling short of their world-changing goals. The effects are being felt across Silicon Valley on December 2 Twitter updated its global privacy policy to help users understand how their data is leveraged by advertisers. The social media giant is also doubling down on the wave of fake news and synthetic media infiltrating the internet. Earlier this year, Cupertino-based giant Apple updated its privacy policy, simplifying it for users to understand. To enable more data portability, Facebook recently introduced a photo-sharing tool that will be globally rolled out in 2020. Dismantling companies has become the biggest mandate for policymakers and ethicists on both sides of the Atlantic. If the underlying motive is to limit the power of tech companies, it looks like the efforts of regulators are paying off. A spate of public controversies in the last week shows signs of tech firms breaking under pressure.

Backstory: The European Commission (EU) announced on Monday about opening an investigation into Google and Facebooks data collection process. As part of their investigation, EU regulators sent a questionnaire to both the companies to investigate their data practices and how they profit from it. At the heart of the probe is the role played by technology companies in distorting privacy, misinformation and limiting competition. A day later, Google founders stunned the world by announcing they are stepping down from their respective roles at Alphabet Inc and handing the management over to long-time Googler Sundar Pichai, who will now do the bulk of heavy-lifting at Alphabet. Some of Googles other public controversies include the rash firing of its four employees and the recent data sharing partnership with Ascension, which has a chain of 2,600 hospitals. Facebook is facing increased pressure to restrict political ads being hosted on the social media platform. Meanwhile, Amazons e-commerce business is being scrutinized by U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Big Picture: There has been a swathe of unintended consequences of the outsized power wielded by technology companies. From disrupting democracy, breaching peoples privacy, to stifling competition, tech firms are no longer the do-gooders with a mission to change the world. Policymakers and regulators believe tech firms have become monopolistic companies with too much power. They are defiant, stifle innovation and need to be brought in line but heres the key point -- Big Techs big ideas are a reality today. Drones, driverless cars, and Loon (network of balloons that provide internet access) are changing the way the world operates. What Big Tech requires is strong leadership to address these myriad issues which have drawn Capitol Hills attention.

Weve made progress in important areas such as hate speech, child exploitation imagery, and posts about illegal drugs and firearm sales but we still have more to do. Well continue to invest in people and systems to combat harmful content on our platforms. Facebook (@facebook) November 13, 2019

Our Take: Big tech companies have a massive impact on society and have helped shape global economies. Big Tech has fuelled the jobs economy and ushered in a wave of digital transformation. Technological innovation is closely related to the nations progress. While toppling Big Tech has become the biggest agenda on both sides of the Atlantic, the question is are antitrust laws the best way to chasten tech behemoths.

Bonus question: What will happen when hyperscale cloud providers enter the data center business?

Image Source: Twitter

Internet giants changed the rules of the game by opening a door in the cloud market and growing their revenues rapidly. Now the top hyperscale cloud providers - Amazon, Microsoft , Google and Alibaba are making inroads in the data center market, heavily dominated by Intel and IBM. Cloud is now part of every organizations extended infrastructure, with enterprises tapping into AWS, Microsoft Azure and GCP for AI and machine learning capabilities to serve particular use cases. Cloud service providers (CSP) also ushered in a new paradigm in computing by pushing into custom silicon development. Google demonstrated technology leadership by building TPUs to speed up neural network computations behind the scenes. Amazon kicked off the hardware trend with the acquisition of Israeli startup Annapurna Labs in 2015. In 2018, the cloud leader announced Graviton processor to power its data center workloads, and now the company is launching the second generation chip, Reuters report indicates. Check out the details below.

Backstory: AWS introduced Graviton to reduce operating costs and improve performance in 2018. Reuters reported about the second-generation chip based on Arms Neoverse N1 technology which can deliver significant performance gains. On December 3, Jeff Barr, AWS Technical Evangelist gave the details on the new Graviton2 processor, built using a 7 nm (nanometer) manufacturing process and can deliver up to 7x the performance of the A1 instances.

Arms leadership in the mobile ecosystem is well-known with the company commanding more than 95% market share in smartphone processors. Their Neoverse infrastructure ecosystem is thriving thanks to strategic partners with AWS, Nvidia, Marvell and Fujitsu among others. In fact, Amazon partnership has helped Arm move up the computing value chain by competing with data center heavyweights Intel. Intel, which leads with 95% market share in data center CPU space already faces stiff competition from AMD. While industry analysts are hugely divided whether Arm chips can match Intels performances, based on the x86 architecture, Arm-Amazon general purpose processors could very well meet future needs and deliver more power-efficiency.

Coming Soon Graviton2-Powered General Purpose, Compute-Optimized, & Memory-Optimized EC2 Instances - https://t.co/qzivRrtmYL #awsreinvent pic.twitter.com/zcVCWeNLdb Jeff Barr (@jeffbarr) December 3, 2019

Big Picture: When digital natives turned cloud providers, they leveraged their technology leadership to build accelerators -- specialized chips like ASICs, FPGAs and GPUs to power new deep learning and machine learning workloads both at the edge and cloud data centers. While Nvidia started the GPU wave, the hyperscalers Amazon, Google, Microsoft built a new business model around workload-specific accelerators which goes beyond GPUs. With the adoption of AI accelerators soaring, we saw the market tilt towards CSPs for cloud, compute and even the networking building blocks. Data Center is the next battleground for hyperscale cloud providers to innovate where CSPs are striving to provide more choice to enterprise customers.

Our Take: If the goal of major cloud providers is to make a push into the data center market, CSPs are on the right track. It looks like a natural progression for CSPs who are now moving on from custom silicon development to building general purpose processors for the data center market. We believe CSPs are better-positioned to keep up with technology roadmaps as opposed to incumbents.

We drill down into the newsworthy content doing the rounds on Twitter. Heres what we drummed up this week - the fervor around Big Techs new role as surveillance giants gain ground has inspired a spate of companies to update their privacy laws and make privacy by design a key feature in their products and services. Enter Cliqz an independent search engine that can perhaps show everything thats wrong with Google. Is DuckDuckGo listening?

With 93% of the search market in Googles bag, independent search engines provide ground for diversity. Heres a message from Cliqz creators: lets choose privacy over convenience. Try the beta here!

What did you think of this weekly tech news roundup? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Wed love to hear from you!

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Latest Tech News This Week: December 2, 2019 - December 6, 2019 - Toolbox