The US should allow Nvidia’s artificial intelligence (AI) chips only to buyers who agree to ethically use the technology, Google DeepMind’s co-founder Mustafa Suleyman was quoted as saying over the weekend. The US should enforce minimum global standards for the use of AI, and companies should at a minimum agree to abide by the same pledge made by leading AI firms to the White House, Suleyman said.
In July, AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta Platforms, made voluntary commitments to the White House to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content to help make the technology safer.
“The US should mandate that any consumer of Nvidia chips sign up to at least the voluntary commitments — and more likely, more than that,” Suleyman said.
The US has expanded restrictions on exports of sophisticated Nvidia and AMD AI chips beyond China to other regions including some countries in the Middle East.
Mustafa Suleyman is also CEO of Inflection AI, a Microsoft-backed AI start-up that raised US$1.3-billion in June from Nvidia and other firms.
In May, Inflection released an AI chatbot named Pi that uses generative AI technology to interact with users through conversations, in which people can ask questions and share interests. Executives and experts have been calling on AI developers to work with policymakers on governance and regulatory authorities.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Google unveiled a swathe of fresh artificial intelligence technology and partnerships on Tuesday that were geared towards bringing more of the growing technology to large businesses. The batch of announcements from its Google Next conference in San Francisco included new customers for its cloud software such as General Motors and Estee Lauder Companies.
The Alphabet subsidiary made public a new version of its custom-built AI chips, unveiled an enterprise-scale tool to watermark and identify images generated with AI — plus tools for security and its office suite.
There’s been this sort of Fomo of, ‘I need to be in generative AI for generative AI’s sake
The flurry of announcements is part of Google’s recent effort to showcase its AI plans, after Microsoft caught the company off guard with an ambitious AI strategy it has been rolling out since last year.
Google CEO, Sundar Pichai
But its big business customers need to be deliberate and move at a different pace, Google Cloud chief Thomas Kurian said in an interview.
“We’ve generally told enterprise customers, ‘Go slowly and methodically because it’s important that you treat this as a strategic software development,’” he said. “There’s been this sort of Fomo of, ‘I need to be in generative AI for generative AI’s sake.’”
Fomo refers to fear of missing out, a common refrain in AI in recent months.
To bolster Google’s enterprise cloud service, it added 20 AI models to its collection, bringing the total to 100. The AI infrastructure includes deals to bring Google Cloud customers access to Meta Platforms’ AI model LLaMa 2, and to the start-up Anthropic’s Claude 2.
Google’s PaLM
Google announced new versions of its own foundation AI infrastructure that improve performance and add features. The new version of its text model called PaLM, for example, increased the amount of text users can input to make it easier to process longer documents such as legal briefs and books.
Google discussed a tool that adds the capability to watermark AI-generated images. Called SynthID, the technology alters a digital image file in a way invisible to human eyes. It is designed to remain intact after an image is altered or tampered with.
Google also rolled out AI updates to its suite of office software and security tools. The company unveiled an AI-powered tool that can port databases from Oracle to an open-source version, a notoriously difficult task.
Ahead of the announcement of its full-fledged fifth-generation tensor processing unit (TPU), Google has opened access to a version that is optimised for generative AI and large language models.
The new chip, called TPU v5e, is designed to train large models but also efficiently serve content from those models. It is not as powerful as the as yet unlaunched flagship fifth AI generation chip.
Google has stitched together the TPU v5e chips into batches of 256 that it describes as a “supercomputer”. Cloud customers can connect several pods together in order to tackle more complex computing problems.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world with over two billion monthly active users. While the Meta Platforms-owned app dominates in many emerging markets, including South Africa, there are places where the default messaging app is something completely different.
South Koreans, for example, prefer to use homegrown KakaoTalk, while in North America and Australia, Facebook Messenger is the go-to communication app, and in Japan, it’s an app called Line.
The only way you can disrupt a market incumbent with massive network effect is if you have a value proposition.
Messenger, WhatsApp, Line and KakaoTalk did not always hold dominant positions in their respective markets. So, why is it that some messaging apps rise to dominant status – and what eventually causes their decline, only to be replaced by something else?
“One of the most valuable things any app can build is called the ‘network effect’,” Gour Lentell, founder and CEO of the data-free chat platform MoyaApp, said in a recent interview with the media. “The only way you can disrupt a market incumbent with massive network effects is if you have a value proposition that is so much better or different.”
whatsapp
“Network effects” is a term coined by former Bell Telephone president Theodore Vail and describes marketplaces such as telephone networks, online classifieds and messaging apps where the value that a single user derives from the goods or service being provided increases with the number of other people using that utility. Network effects drive more people into the marketplace and increase the likelihood that they will stay there as well.
‘Platform of choice’
“I moved to South Africa from Australia five years ago. I can’t come here and say to everybody that I use Telegram and that is how I message; no one will talk to me. I will adapt to the platform of choice in a market because that is where everyone is,” Lentell said to illustrate the binding power of network effects.
In South Africa, Mxit was once “the platform of choice where everyone is”, only to be overtaken by BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and eventually WhatsApp. Mxit certainly had network effects of its own for a while, along with a compelling value proposition since it made chatting cheaper.
Although BBM seemed like a strong contender for a while, BlackBerry’s insistence on device integration blinded the company to the potential that BBM had independent of Blackberry, Lentell said. BBM was not available on other platforms other than BlackBerry phones.
This hampered BBM’s value proposition by creating a barrier that excluded a large portion of the market. Lentell said BlackBerry’s device-first strategy worked while its devices were the most attractive to consumers. The arrival of Android changed that narrative.
“It was only years later [after the fall of BlackBerry] when someone said, ‘You know, if we’d just taken BBM out of BlackBerry devices and made it work on all devices, we could have won the game.’ They didn’t because they were focused on selling phones.”
MoyaApp’s Gour Lentell
WhatsApp then came along with a value proposition so compelling that it overcame any of the network effects that Mxit and BBM had amassed in the local market: a high-quality, asynchronous chat experience that is also cheap and accessible on any kind of device.
Mxit, as the incumbent, was in a position to provide this kind of chat platform to South Africans, so why did it fail?
“Mxit failed because we didn’t have a critical mass on smartphones,” former Mxit CEO Alan Knott-Craig said. Lentell’s opinion the matter adds some background to Knott-Craig’s assertion.
“Mxit failed because their smartphone app strategy didn’t really work. They did build a smartphone app but it was a bit clunky and it wasn’t a great experience. It worked but it was all a bit too much. Mxit had a slightly confusing product strategy because they were trying to do other things with content and moola and all these things,” Lentell said.
By Lentell’s account, Mxit’s value proposition weakened, making it easier for users to consider WhatsApp as a new alternative as it entered the market. Since then, WhatsApp’s network effects have entrenched the application as South Africa’s number one chat app.
Invariably, what most determines network effect is not who’s got the best product, it is who is first
The framework Lentell describes, a compelling value proposition combined with network effects, can be used to understand why Meta’s Threads is struggling to dethrone Elon Musk’s X as the incumbent microblogging application. Threads tried to simulate network effects by pushing for scale fast, using Instagram accounts to ease sign-ups. But without a compelling value proposition, users had no real reason to leave X.
The very same framework also explains why Facebook Messenger is dominant in North America. Facebook had huge network effects in those regions by the time WhatsApp arrived, and although it could be argued that WhatsApp provides a better chat experience, its value proposition is not superior enough to Messenger’s to be compelling to users.
“Invariably, what most determines network effect is not who’s got the best product, it is who is first. It is very difficult to take market share away from whoever captures it first, even if you have got a better product,” Lentell added.
ICQ, MSN, Jabber, Mig33 and others – all once prominent chat applications – benefited from the network effects derived from their once-innovative value propositions, only to suffer when a more compelling proposition came along and enjoyed network effects to steal market share from the incumbents.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
X, the social network that used to be known as Twitter, updated its privacy policy to include a new kind of user data it plans to collect: biometric.
“Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security and identification purposes,” the company said in its new policy. X doesn’t define what it considers biometric, though other companies have used the term to describe data gleaned from a person’s face, eyes and fingerprints.
A representative of San Francisco-based X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The previous policy, in place until 29 September, didn’t include references to biometric data.
Social media companies have long drawn criticism from users and regulators around the world for the information they gather and how they use that data, including the sale of advertising tailored to a person’s interests and search histories. It’s unclear how X will collect the biometric data or how it may be used.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk, who bought Twitter last year, has said one of his priorities is to rid the site of inauthentic accounts, and push more users towards using a service that applies a blue checkmark, indicating the user has paid $8/month and is more likely to be human.
X said it also intends to gather information about users’ jobs and education histories.
Biometric data
“We may collect and use your personal information (such as your employment history, educational history, employment preferences, skills and abilities, job search activity and engagement, and so on) to recommend potential jobs for you, to share with potential employers when you apply for a job, to enable employers to find potential candidates, and to show you more relevant advertising,” according to the updated privacy policy.
The previous policy, in place until 29 September, didn’t include references to biometric data or job and employment history.
A proposed class action suit earlier this year alleged that X wrongfully captured, stored and used Illinois residents’ biometric data without consent. X “has not adequately informed individuals who have interacted (knowingly or not) with Twitter, that it collects and/or stores their biometric identifiers in every photograph containing a face that is uploaded to Twitter”, according to the suit, which was filed on 11 July.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Nigerian startup Moniepoint, the leading business banking platform in the country, has announced its entry into the personal banking market with the launch of a consumer app and debit card.
Founded in 2019, the well-funded Moniepoint is a global, all-in-one, digital financial services provider with operations in Nigeria and an ongoing expansion into other emerging markets. The company has so far powered over a million businesses, offering all the payment, banking, credit and business management tools they need to succeed.
The company’s new personal banking solution offers reliable debit cards to over 33 million Nigerians who currently use its terminals monthly, with an easy dispute resolution system that ensures funds reversal for failed card transactions.
Moniepoint, through one of its subsidiaries in Nigeria, leads the in-person payments market and with this personal banking solution, Moniepoint Microfinance Bank, another subsidiary of Moniepoint, will be extending its reliable banking infrastructure from the businesses it serves to their customers and employees.
Millions of people will enjoy seamless and reliable payments with Moniepoint Microfinance Bank debit cards, at the over 1.5 million businesses who currently use its platform. These debit cards will be issued through global payment processors, including Mastercard and Verve.
The app will enable users to make transfers, pay bills and buy airtime, while its debit cards can be used at ATMs, POS terminals, and online. Merchants will also benefit from seamless transactions when customers use Moniepoint cards.
“Launching a personal banking product means we can connect businesses and their customers more effectively, backing them with our reliable infrastructure and services. We have always been committed to providing financial happiness, so it was a natural next step when dealing with so many businesses, to also offer our reliable services to their customers and employees. By taking this step, we are determined to power the dreams of millions of people across the continent,’ said Ope Adeyemi, SVP for channels and sales tools at Moniepoint. Other services such as salary advances, will be rolled out in the coming months.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
A new study from Juniper Research has found losses from global data roaming fraud are anticipated to exceed US$8-billion by 2028. This will be driven by the increase in bilateral roaming agreements for data-intensive use cases over 5G networks. In turn, Juniper predicts fraudulent data traffic will account for 80% of global operator roaming-based losses by 2024.
As 2G and 3G networks draw to a close, operators are accelerating the move to 5G and voice-over-LTE roaming services to leverage the high levels of virtualisation and lower operational costs. However, the highly virtualised nature of 5G networks is creating more opportunities for fraudsters to attack, leaving operator networks open to emerging fraud tactics over 5G networks.
Cybersecurity
Operators must implement 5G-specific signalling detection and firewalls that offer real-time monitoring
As bilateral 5G roaming agreements proliferate, Juniper predicts operators will deploy more sophisticated fraud mitigation tools. The greater amounts of data that 5G roaming connections generate will require the development of solutions to detect fraudulent users and traffic over new 5G networks as they evolve.
An example is the rise in 5G subscription fraud, whereby fraudsters create new subscriptions with false information, incurring roaming charges without intending to pay. Until the subscription is cancelled, fraudsters will continue anonymously using 5G roaming data, with operators losing potential roaming revenue.
Research author Rosie O’Connor said in a statement: “Operators must implement 5G-specific signalling detection and firewalls that offer real-time monitoring and ID-registry analysis. Only then can operators more efficiently identify subscription fraud across 100 million 5G roaming connections predicted globally in 2024.”
Fraud mitigation services will alert operators of any potentially fraudulent activity across 5G networks in real-time and enable them to identify and block suspicious roaming subscribers. This will allow operators to minimise fraudulent activity; reducing the impact on their roaming revenue.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Challenger bank TymeBank has become the latest financial services institution to offer instant payments through PayShap, South Africa’s real-time digital settlement platform that doesn’t require users to share their account details. Unlike other banks, though, TymeBank has promised not to levy a fee on PayShap transactions.
“This is a significant win for the consumer who is feeling the pinch financially due to the ongoing cost of living crisis, TymeBank said on Tuesday in a statement.
TymeBank
PayShap was built by BankservAfrica and was launched commercially in March
“We are passionate about financial inclusion and making banking affordable for everyone, which is why we decided to make PayShap free for our customers, having seen similar digital payment systems introduced in Brazil, India and Singapore successfully for free,” said CEO Coen Jonker.
Payments are free, though there is a limit of R3 000/transaction to ShapIDs (a bank account holder’s cellphone number, for example).
“By making PayShap mobile numbers free, we are giving all our individual and business customers the opportunity to fully enjoy the benefits of real-time digital payments across banks without having to worry about transaction fees,” said chief commercial officer Cheslyn Jacobs.
TCS | PayShap: The fintech revolution coming to SA’s payments system
PayShap was built by BankservAfrica and was launched commercially in March. It is being released to the market in two stages. The second leg will introduce an additional request-to-pay function to make it possible for a person to request payment and receive money securely and immediately in their bank account.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
One of the fastest growing mobile phones manufacturing companies in China, Xiaomi has recorded a 4% fall in revenue in the second quarter, tracking a continued sales decline in China’s handset market. Sales dropped to C¥67.4-billion, down from ¥70.2-billion in the same quarter a year earlier, but beating analysts’ estimates of ¥65.1-billion.
Net income rose to C¥5.1-billion over the period, an increase of 147% from C¥2.1-billion a year earlier, also beating analysts’ expectations. Xiaomi’s shipments declined by 19% to 8.6 million, while in India, Xiaomi shipments also fell 22%. Consumer demand in China’s smartphone market continued to shrink in the second quarter, dropping 5% to 64.3 million units, according to research firm Canalys.
Xiaomi’s shipments declined by 19% to 8.6 million, while in major overseas market India, Xiaomi shipments also fell 22% to 5.4 million units, Canalys said.
In light of declining handset sales, Xiaomi is planning to manufacture electric vehicles and has received approval from China’s state planner, Reuters reported this month. The company has pledged a US$10-billion investment over a decade in the EV business and set a goal of mass car production for the first half of 2024.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Owner of X, formerly known as Twitter Elon Musk has said that X will remove a protective feature that lets users block other accounts, in another controversial move for the company he bought last year. The block function on X allows a user to restrict specific accounts from contacting them, seeing their posts or following them.
“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Musk said in a post on the platform, referring to direct messages.
We’re building something better than the current state of block and mute. Please keep the feedbacks coming.
He said X would retain the mute function, which screens a user from seeing specified accounts but, unlike blocking, does not alert the other account to the action.
Elon Musk
The billionaire owner has described himself as a free speech absolutist, but some critics have said his approach is irresponsible. Researchers have found an increase in hate speech and antisemitic content on the platform since he took over, and some governments have accused the company of not doing enough to moderate its content.
Removing or limiting the block feature might bring X into conflict with guidelines incorporated by the Apple App Store and Google’s Play store.
Apple says apps with user-generated content must have the ability to block abusive users. Google Play Store says apps must provide an in-app system for blocking user-generated content and users.
Safety
X, Google and Apple did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Responding to a post from anti-bullying activist Monica Lewinsky urging X to keep the “critical tool to keep people safe online”, CEO Linda Yaccarino defended Musk’s move.
“Our users’ safety on X is our number one priority. And we’re building something better than the current state of block and mute. Please keep the feedback coming,” Yaccarino posted.
The company has said Musk would lead the product and engineering teams, while Yaccarino would lead all other teams, including legal and sales.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Netflix will test games on select TVs and computers in a first step to make them playable on more devices, the company’s vice president of games, Mike Verdu has said.
The company is rolling out a limited beta test to a small group of members in Canada and the UK on select TVs starting immediately and on PCs and Macs through netflix.com on supported browsers in the next few weeks.
The streaming platform had begun its push into the gaming experience by launching Netflix games on mobiles in November 2021. So far, the company’s titles have only been available on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos
Users can play the games on TV using their phones and those on PCs and Macs can play on netflix.com. Oxenfree from Night School Studio, a Netflix Game Studio, and Molehew’s Mining Adventure, a gem-mining arcade game, will be part of the initial testing.
Users can play the games on TV using their phones and those on PCs and Macs can play on netflix.com with a keyboard and mouse. “By making games available on more devices, we hope to make games even easier to play for our members around the world,” Verdu said.
Netflix said games on TV will operate on select devices from initial partners Amazon Fire TV Streaming Media Players, Chromecast with Google TV and Roku devices, among others.
In March, the company had said it had a content slate of 40 more games scheduled for later this year and 70 in development with its partners, which would be in addition to the 16 games currently being developed by its in-house game studios.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
