Welcome to the April 21, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.
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Tech Industry Pioneer Sees Way for U.S. to Lead in Advanced Chips
The New York Times
John Markoff
April 19, 2023
Ivan Sutherland, who helped pioneer the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor decades ago, believes the U.S. can regain the global lead in advanced computer chipmaking. The 1988 ACM Turing Award recipient said computer designers will be able to create faster systems via supercooled electronic circuits that switch without electrical resistance and produce no excess heat at higher speeds. Superconductor-based systems might address the cooling problems that hound the world's datacenters. Sutherland said such technologies also could be critical to national security, with their high speed and low power requirements benefiting next-generation 6G chips that could replace Chinese-dominant 5G technology. He also suggested the U.S. should consider training young engineers to conceive of alternative concepts rather than continuing to focus on ever-less-reliable and costly chip technology.
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Sleptsov Net Computing Resolves Modern Supercomputing Problems
International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems
Dmitry Zaitsev
April 19, 2023
Dmitry Zaitsev at France's Université Côte d'Azur writes that the Sleptsov Net Computing (SNC) paradigm addresses modern supercomputing challenges highlighted by the University of Tennessee's Jack Dongarra during his 2022 ACM Turing Award Lecture. The 2021 Turing Award recipient cited the problem of many leading supercomputers achieving only about 0.8% efficiency in solving real-life tasks in various application domains. Zaitsev writes that SNC tackles this challenge by implementing computing memory via a unified graphical language of concurrent programming. He explains, "Implementation of Sleptsov net processors in the form of a matrix of computing memory leads to the nanosecond tack of time of massively parallel computations that means good ability to control hypersonic objects in real-time applications."
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Advanced AI Faces New Regulatory Push in Europe
The Wall Street Journal
Sam Schechner; Kim Mackrael
April 18, 2023
In an open letter published April 17, a group of EU lawmakers said regulators should be given authority to govern the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The lawmakers, tasked with developing a draft of the AI Act, said the bill will direct AI development "in a direction that is human centric, safe, and trustworthy." They added that the bill "could serve as a blueprint for other regulatory initiatives in different regulatory traditions and environments around the world." The EU Parliament letter called for a high-level global AI summit with a focus on preliminary governing principles for deploying AI, and requested the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council develop an agenda for the summit at its next meeting.
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(Almost) Everyone Likes a Helpful Trash Robot
Cornell Chronicle
Patricia Waldron
April 19, 2023
A study by Cornell University researchers found that the public responded well to two remote-controlled trash barrel robots installed at a Manhattan plaza, one for landfill waste and one for recycling. The researchers found most people willingly handed over their trash to the robots. The joystick-operated robots were outfitted with 360-degree cameras, which captured footage of people showing appreciation for the robots, helping them when they got stuck, moving obstacles out of their way, and even calling them over to pick up trash. However, some were concerned about the cameras and public surveillance, and one individual knocked over one of the robots. The researchers plan to study public interactions with the robots in other locations.
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The Most In-Demand Tech Roles in 2023
ZDNet
Joe McKendrick
April 18, 2023
The State of the Tech Workforce report by Information Technology (IT) certification provider CompTIA highlights the technology occupations expected to be in greatest demand this year, as CompTIA anticipates the U.S. technology workforce will expand by 3%. The report estimates 9.2 million tech professionals within the U.S., constituting 5.8% of the total workforce. CompTIA predicts data scientist and data analyst roles will see the most growth in 2023 at 5.5%, followed by cybersecurity analysts and engineers, Web and user interface/experience designers, software developers and engineers, software quality assurance testers, chief information officers and IT directors, systems analysts and engineers, and IT support specialists. The report cited New York City as the metropolitan area seeing the greatest growth in tech jobs between 2021 and 2022, followed by Dallas and Seattle.
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Surface Steers Signals for Next-Gen Networks
Princeton University
Molly Sharlach
April 19, 2023
Researchers at Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst have engineered a device to help millimeter-wave (mmWave) signals circumvent obstacles, improving connectivity. The surface of the mmWall can reflect mmWave signals to reach all corners of a large room. The device consists of 76 vertical panels that can reflect and refract radio waves at frequencies above 24 gigahertz, supplying bandwidth up to 10 times greater than 4G networks' maximum capability. Outdoor 5G base stations using technologies like the mmWall could someday replace Wi-Fi systems and provide high-speed connectivity both indoors and outdoors, preventing glitches when devices switch between networks, said Kun Woo Cho of Princeton’s Department of Computer Science.
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Drones Can Fly Themselves with Worm-Inspired AI Software
Popular Science
Jamie Dickman
April 19, 2023
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers developed artificial intelligence software modeled on a worm brain that can be used to train drones to identify a target object and fly toward it amid changes in its environment. Inspired by the 2-millimeter-long worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the researchers developed liquid neural networks that allow for real-time adaptation when new information is received. Studying the worm's small brain, which has 302 neurons and 8,000 synaptic connections, provided the researchers a deep understanding of neural connections. Two of the liquid neural networks outperformed four non-liquid neural networks during testing. The networks also were found to be more than 90% successful in reaching their targets.
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Neuromorphic Visual Sensor Can Recognize Moving Objects, Predict Their Path
Aalto University (Finland)
April 17, 2023
Scientists at Finland's Aalto University have developed a neuromorphic visual sensor that can recognize moving objects in a single video frame and anticipate their trajectories. An array of photomemristors that generate electricity when exposed to light forms the heart of the sensor; the current's gradual decay after the light's removal enables the devices to recall recent exposures, providing a dynamic memory of the preceding instants. Aalto's Hongwei Tan said, "The unique property of our technology is its ability to integrate a series of optical images in one frame," which "lets us detect motion earlier in the video by analyzing only the final frame with a simple artificial neural network."
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Broadcom Releases Chip for Wiring Together AI Supercomputers
Reuters
Stephen Nellis
April 18, 2023
Chipmaker Broadcom has released a new processor for connecting supercomputers for artificial intelligence (AI) operations utilizing widely used networking technology. The Jericho3-AI chip can connect up to 32,000 graphics processing unit (GPU) chips, as an alternative to InfiniBand supercomputer networking technology. Broadcom supplies chips for Ethernet switches, the main current approach for connecting computers in conventional datacenters. New AI applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT require datacenter network computers to be trained on vast databases, which requires dividing up the task among thousands of GPUs. Broadcom's Ram Velaga said although Nvidia is both the GPU market leader and the biggest InfiniBand equipment manufacturer, many companies would rather not surrender Ethernet to purchase GPUs and networking gear from the same source.
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A Brain Model Learns to Drive
Human Brain Project
Roberto Inchingolo
April 17, 2023
Human Brain Project scientists at the Institute of Biophysics of the National Research Council in Italy have developed a robotic platform that can learn to navigate like a human. The researchers emulated the hippocampus' neuronal framework and linkages, designing the platform to change synaptic connections as it maneuvers a car-like virtual robot along a path. The platform can recall a route the robot has already taken. Unlike deep learning systems that must calculate thousands of possible trajectories to ascertain the least expensive route, the new system "bases its calculation on what it can actively see through its camera," explained the researchers.
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Yokosuka Becomes Japan's First City to Use ChatGPT for Administrative Tasks
The Japan Times
Anika Osaki Exum
April 20, 2023
Yokosuka is the first city in Japan to use OpenAI's ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot for municipal government tasks. About 4,000 municipal employees are engaged in a one-month test of ChatGPT and how it might enhance administrative operations. City officials hope the chatbot will help with tasks like summarization, copy ideation for marketing and communications, drafting the foundation for administrative documents, and refining easy-to-understand language. "We aim to use useful ICT [information and communications technology] tools, like ChatGPT, to free up human resources for things that can only be done in a person-to-person format," said Takayuki Samukawa with Yokosuka's digital management department.
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NASA 3D-Printed Superalloy Can Take the Heat
NASA
Brian Newbacher
April 20, 2023
A team of researchers from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Ohio State University has developed a three-dimensionally (3D)-printable high-temperature superalloy that could boost the durability of aircraft and spacecraft components. NASA's Tim Smith and Christopher Kantzos invented the GRX-810 oxide dispersion-strengthened alloy,which has twice the strength and oxidation resistance of current state-of-the-art 3D-printed superalloys, coupled with over 1,000 times more durability. Said Smith, ”This superalloy has the potential to dramatically improve the strength and toughness of components and parts used in aviation and space exploration.”
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Two Qudits Fully Entangled
University of Innsbruck (Austria)
April 21, 2023
Researchers at Austria's University of Innsbruck have efficiently entangled two quantum digits (qudits) in a step toward more efficient and powerful quantum calculations. The researchers encoded each qudit in up to five states of individual calcium ions, yielding a new tool enabling theoretical and experimental physicists to surpass binary information processing, which also could lead to faster, more robust quantum computers. Said Innsbruck's Martin Ringbauer, "Quantum systems have many available states waiting to be used for quantum computing, rather than limiting them to work with qubits [quantum bits]."
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