Lifeboat Foundation

This article is part of a series tracking the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on major businesses and sectors. For other articles and earlier versions, go here.

A global shortage of semiconductors — chips that power massive data-centers, modern autos and countless digital devices — has roiled global manufacturing and is not expected to end soon. It isn’t a blanket problem, however, as different sectors within the chip industry will continue to be affected by the shortage in different ways.

As the industry entered 2020, high demand was expected in the mobile chip area because of the rollout of 5G devices. That path was turned on its head when COVID-19 became a global pandemic, driving millions, if not billions, of people into the safety of their homes to work, go to school, be entertained and to socialize.

The Space Development Agency is considering buying its next 150 satellites from three different vendors.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency is considering buying its next 150 satellites from three different vendors, but that could change after the agency evaluates companies’ bids, SDA director Derek Tournear said April 14.

Speaking at the Washington Space Business Roundtable, Tournear said a request for proposals will be issued in August for the agency’s Transport Layer Tranche 1 — a network of hundreds of communications satellites in low Earth orbit projected to start launching in late 2024.

Continue reading “Space Development Agency could select three manufacturers to produce its next batch of satellites” »

Developing Next Generation Artificial Intelligence To Serve Humanity — Dr. Patrick Bangert, Vice President of AI, Samsung SDS.

Dr. Patrick D. Bangert, is Vice President of AI, and heads the AI Engineering and AI Sciences teams, at Samsung SDS is a subsidiary of the Samsung Group, which provides information technology (IT) services, and are active in research and development of emerging IT technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, Internet of things (IoT) and Engineering Outsourcing.

Continue reading “Dr. Patrick Bangert, Vice President of AI, Samsung SDS — Developing Next Gen AI To Serve Humanity” »

Whatever business a company may be in, software plays an increasingly vital role, from managing inventory to interfacing with customers. Software developers, as a result, are in greater demand than ever, and that’s driving the push to automate some of the easier tasks that take up their time.

Productivity tools like Eclipse and Visual Studio suggest snippets of code that developers can easily drop into their work as they write. These automated features are powered by sophisticated language models that have learned to read and write computer code after absorbing thousands of examples. But like other deep learning models trained on big datasets without explicit instructions, language models designed for code-processing have baked-in vulnerabilities.

“Unless you’re really careful, a hacker can subtly manipulate inputs to these models to make them predict anything,” says Shashank Srikant, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “We’re trying to study and prevent that.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is partnering with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for a new quantum computing initiative as part of the company’s efforts, launched in 2019, to explore this area of research. These include a cloud-based quantum computing service Amazon Braket to accelerate research and discovery, the Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab to help businesses explore quantum applications, and the AWS Center for Quantum Computing research and development organization.

AWS’ latest collaboration with Hebrew University will fund a team of researchers from the academic institution’s Quantum Information Science Center (QISC), founded in 2013, and the Racah Institute of Physics to advance the understanding of quantum gates – fundamental building blocks of quantum computers, the parties said in a statement on Monday. The collaboration is the first between AWS and any Israeli academic institution in the field.

The university’s Professor Alex Retzker, a researcher of quantum technologies, will lead the research group as part of his role as a Principal Research Scientist at AWS.

Spot was apparently being used for reconnaissance.

Pictures of the exercises were shared on Twitter by France’s foremost military school, the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr. It described the tests as “raising students’ awareness of the challenges of tomorrow,” which include the “robotization of the battlefield.”

A report by French newspaper Ouest-France offers more detail, saying that Spot was one of a number of robots being tested by students from France’s École Militaire Interarmes (Combined Arms School), with the intention of assessing the usefulness of robots on future battlefields.

Continue reading “The French army is testing Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot in combat scenarios” »

MIT Technology Review Insights, in association with AI cybersecurity company Darktrace, surveyed more than 300 C-level executives, directors, and managers worldwide to understand how they’re addressing the cyberthreats they’re up against—and how to use AI to help fight against them.

Cyberattacks continue to grow in prevalence and sophistication. With the ability to disrupt business operations, wipe out critical data, and cause reputational damage, they pose an existential threat to businesses, critical services, and infrastructure. Today’s new wave of attacks is outsmarting and outpacing humans, and even starting to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). What’s known as “offensive AI” will enable cybercriminals to direct targeted attacks at unprecedented speed and scale while flying under the radar of traditional, rule-based detection tools.

Some of the world’s largest and most trusted organizations have already fallen victim to damaging cyberattacks, undermining their ability to safeguard critical data. With offensive AI on the horizon, organizations need to adopt new defenses to fight back: the battle of algorithms has begun.

Continue reading “Preparing for AI-enabled cyberattacks” »

Two aerospace firms accomplished an industry first on Monday, as a small Northrop Grumman spacecraft docked successfully with an active Intelsat satellite to provide service and extend its life.

Intelsat’s IS-10–02 satellite is nearly 18 years old, and operating well past its expected lifespan, but the Northrop Grumman-built spacecraft called MEV-2 will add another five years of life to IS-10–02, essentially re-fueling the satellite and giving it a new engine for control.

The companies hit a milestone in the growing business of servicing satellites while in space.

Food is big business.

In the U.S., the weight-loss industry is worth $78 billion.

Meat is worth $218 billion.

Continue reading “Why is Nutrition So Damned Confusing?” »