Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
The darlings of the tech world are facing the harsh embrace of reality. Both Uber and WeWork have been under fire for their valuations and other operational issues. Now leaders from other companies are commenting on their future viability.
Meanwhile many firms are clinging to the hope of artificial intelligence to improve their margins, increase their sales, and usher in a new market for customers to get excited about.
Acquisitions/Investments
- McDonald’s Is Acquiring AI Startup Apprente
McDonald’s is acquiring Apprente, a startup which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand speech in multiple languages. The technology will be used in the company’s drive-thrus and could also be used in its self-order kiosks and a mobile app. This is McDonald’s third tech deal this year.
There is a new self-checkout shopping cart that makes grocery shopping easier. When you are shopping with a Caper cart, all you have to do is scan the item barcode and simply add it to your cart. Once you are done shopping you pay directly on the cart. Caper recently closed a $10 million Series A led by Lux Capital.
- T-Mobile’s Sprint merger is opposed by 18 state attorneys general
In July, the Department of Justice approved T-Mobile’s $26.5 billion bid to merge with Sprint — on the condition that it sell some of its business to Dish Network. And Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai endorsed the deal. But opposition from so many attorneys general could pose a legitimate threat.
The state attorneys general fear the merger would hurt competition, raise prices for cell service, result in a loss of retail jobs and lower wages for the employees who remain. “The merger between T-Mobile and Sprint would severely undermine competition in the telecommunications sector, which would hurt Pennsylvanian consumers by driving up prices, limiting coverage, and diminishing quality,” Shapiro said in a statement.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/18/t-mobile-sprint-pennsylvania/
Artificial Intelligence
- Google’s quantum bet on the future of AI—and what it means for humanity
The full reach of Google’s AI influence stretches far beyond the company’s offerings. Outside developers—at startups and big corporations alike—now use Google’s AI tools to do everything from training smart satellites to monitoring changes to the earth’s surface to rooting out abusive language on Twitter (well, it’s trying). There are now millions of devices using Google AI, and this is just the beginning. Google is on the verge of achieving what’s known as quantum supremacy. This new breed of computer will be able to crack complex equations a million or more times faster than regular ones. We are about to enter the rocket age of computing.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90396213/google-quantum-supremacy-future-ai-humanity
- Artificial Intelligence Confronts a ‘Reproducibility’ Crisis
Pineau is trying to change the standards. She’s the reproducibility chair for NeurIPS, a premier artificial intelligence conference. Under her watch, the conference now asks researchers to submit a “reproducibility checklist” including items often omitted from papers, like the number of models trained before the “best” one was selected, the computing power used, and links to code and datasets. That’s a change for a field where prestige rests on leaderboards—rankings that determine whose system is the “state of the art” for a particular task—and offers great incentive to gloss over the tribulations that led to those spectacular results.
The idea, Pineau says, is to encourage researchers to offer a road map for others to replicate their work. It’s one thing to marvel at the eloquence of a new text generator or the “superhuman” agility of a videogame-playing bot. But even the most sophisticated researchers have little sense of how they work.
https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-confronts-reproducibility-crisis/
Cloud
- IBM sees Amazon and Microsoft as cloud allies, not rivals
CEO Ginni Rometty is betting on the hybrid cloud, which lets IBM offer services on corporate customers’ cloud-based servers as well as on third-party clouds operated by the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. IBM has traditionally viewed these cloud giants as direct competitors, but it now aims to partner with them by supporting clients as they shift sensitive databases on to the cloud, regardless of which provider they use.
After struggling to keep up in the cloud market for more than a decade, IBM has switched to a hybrid cloud strategy, cementing its future with last year’s US$34-billion acquisition of Red Hat, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based open-source software provider.
https://techcentral.co.za/ibm-sees-amazon-and-microsoft-as-cloud-allies-not-rivals/92641/
- Larry Ellison says Oracle will ‘write into your contract that your bill will be half’ of what you’d pay Amazon, as the database giant announces new cloud products
Larry Ellison announced a new so-called autonomous operating system in a new initiative to challenge to Amazon Web Services, the leader in cloud computing — and took a jab at Amazon over its small role in the massive Capital One hack.
A highlight of Ellison’s speech was the unveiling of what it touted as the world’s first autonomous operating system, that will automatically be maintained and updated and will not require manual management. This operating system is based on Linux, the free and open source operating system that’s ubiqitious in server rooms and data centers around the world.
https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-oracle-autonomous-os-free-cloud-access-2019-9
Security/Privacy
- The FBI Tried to Plant a Backdoor in an Encrypted Phone Network
The FBI tried to force the owner of an encrypted phone company to put a backdoor in his devices, Motherboard has learned. The company involved is Phantom Secure, a firm that sold privacy-focused BlackBerry phones and which ended up catering heavily to the criminal market, including members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, formerly run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
- Thinkful confirms data breach days after Chegg’s $80M acquisition
Thinkful, based in Brooklyn, New York, provides education and training for developers and programmers. The company claims the vast majority of its graduates get jobs in their field of study within a half-year of finishing their program. Earlier this month, education tech giant Chegg bought Thinkful for $80 million in cash.
But the company would not say when the breach happened — or if Chegg knew of the data breach prior to the acquisition announcement.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/thinkful-data-breach-chegg-acquisition/
Infrastructure/Hardware
- Google is investing $3.3B to build clean data centers in Europe
This new investment is in addition to the $7 billion the company has invested since 2007 in the EU, but today’s announcement was focused on Google’s commitment to building data centers running on clean energy, as much as the data centers themselves.
Of the 3 billion Euros, the company plans to spend, it will invest 600 million to expand its presence in Hamina, Finland, which he wrote “serves as a model of sustainability and energy efficiency for all of our data centers.” Further, the company already announced 18 new renewable energy deals earlier this week, which encompass a total of 1,600-megawatts in the US, South America and Europe.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/20/google-is-investing-3-3b-to-build-clean-data-centers-in-europe/
- IBM will soon launch a 53-qubit quantum computer
IBM notes that the new 53-qubit system introduces a number of new techniques that enable the company to launch larger, more reliable systems for cloud deployments. It features more compact custom electronics for improving scaling and lower error rates, as well as a new processor design.
The fact that IBM is now opening this Quantum Computation itself, of course, is a pretty good indication about how serious the company is about its quantum efforts. The company’s quantum program also now supports 80 partnerships with commercial clients, academic institutions and research laboratories. Some of these have started to use the available machines to work on real-world problems, though the current state of the art in quantum computing is still not quite ready for solving anything but toy problems and testing basic algorithms.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/ibm-will-soon-launch-a-53-qubit-quantum-computer/
Other
- Uber Vows to Fight California Legislation on Gig Economy
The legislation, which intends to force companies to reclassify certain contract workers as employees, is considered a serious threat to Uber and Lyft, already losing billions of dollars a year combined, as their business models have relied on flexible labor and minimal worker costs.
The bill’s passage in the state Assembly on Wednesday, after the state Senate’s passage the night before, reflects the degree to which the large Democratic majority in Sacramento has increased scrutiny of tech companies in recent years, as well as the strength of labor unions in the state.
Given California’s size and history of creating influential business regulations, it also is the first significant step in a new paradigm for a changing workforce, fueled by people who have forgone benefits for the sake of flexibility and occasional incentives.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-governor-still-in-talks-with-uber-lyft-over-gig-workers-law-11568212014
Oracle Founder Larry Ellison Calls Uber and WeWork ‘Almost Worthless’Ellison argued that while Uber raises capital to spend on gaining market share from rival Lyft (LYFT), the business they secure doesn’t necessarily stay with the company. He pointed out that Uber doesn’t own its cars and doesn’t control their drivers. And he declared that “they have an app my cat could have written.”
Ellison said losing money to gain market share is “idiotic” if customers won’t stay with the firm. “They have nothing,” he said. “No technology. And no loyalty.”
He mocked WeWork’s assertion that it is a technology company. “WeWork rents a building from me, and breaks it up, and then rents it,” Ellison said. “They say, ‘We’re a technology company, and we want a tech multiple.’ It’s bizarre.”
- Avaya Goes Global With IBM Cloud
As part of the IBM deal, Avaya gains access to Watson, to help its contact center customers improve routing and automation for dealing with customer calls, McGugan says. Additionally, IBM provides important automation tools and professional services for the cloud migration.
In addition to IBM, Avaya has partnerships with other cloud providers, with compute resources in Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. “My customers sometimes dictate where they want their solutions housed,” McGugan said. Some workloads span multiple clouds.
- Amazon Will Double Chicago Headcount, Add 70K SF at Tech Hub
Amazon plans to expand its Chicago Tech Hub and create 400 new tech jobs in fields including cloud computing, advertising, and business development. To accommodate this job creation, Amazon will expand its space at Tishman Speyer’s Franklin office tower by more than 70,000 square feet.
In all, Amazon employs more than 11,000 across Illinois, including workers at its fulfillment centers and retail stores.
https://www.connect.media/amazon-will-double-chicago-headcount-add-70k-sf-at-tech-hub/
