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Submission + - Intel Execs Address the AI Talent Shortage, AI Education, and the "Cool" Factor (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Those stories about astronomical salaries for AI engineers? They're pretty much on target, say Intel's VP of AI Architecture and Intel's head of AI Talent Acquisition. But there's a reason for that. Says Gadi Singer: "The state of the art in deep learning in 2016 is called ‘legacy’ by 2018. So, people who have the ability to continuously learn and be on or ahead of this fast-moving frontier of deep learning are obviously very valuable."

And academia can't educate engineers fast enough, says Chris Rice: "A lot of the research is actually being conducted in industry because of that fast innovation cycle, so industry is actually hiring a lot of professors out of academia. That’s a confounding issue: industry is moving to pull more people out of academia at a faster rate than it can produce them.”

On the bright side--all this attention is making formerly "dull" fields "cool," and that will eventually increase supply. Singer and Rice also address engineer retention, and the importance of a diverse workforce in reducing algorithm bias.

Submission + - How Window Washers Almost Sunk Salesforce Tower's Interactive Light Sculpture (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: More than 11,000 light fixtures, 8 LEDs in each, 1000 drivers, cables for data and power snaking through multiple floors to a central computer, cameras around the city sending images to the cloud, where AI selects the most interesting ones for display—that's only some of the technology involved in the light show at the top of Salesforce Tower. EE and artist Jim Campbell explains it all--and how the window-washer problem stumped him for nearly a year.

Submission + - The Many Possibilities of California's Kindle-ized, Connected License Plates (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Displaying holiday greetings, flashing the name of the Uber passenger about to be picked up, indicating that a Tesla is in autonomous mode--these are a few of the future applications Reviver Auto CEO Neville Boston envisions for the e-paper, connected license plates--but so far they're just approved by the state of California for a few basic uses--including displaying the license number and wireless registration stickers. Meanwhile, the rulers of Dubai are thinking about the gadgets in a different way--"They want to know who is driving around in their country," says Boston.

Submission + - Where is HBO Silicon Valley's Real Pied Piper? Look in Troon, Scotland (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: The fictional startup Pied Piper of HBO's Silicon Valley started as a compression algorithm company--advised by Tsachy Weissman and his graduate students at Stanford. Last year, Pied Piper pivoted to "reinventing the Internet," and jumped into the decentralized Web movement. Some real world companies already had that in their mission statement. So maybe it's not a surprise that this year the show's tech twists are coming not from a lab at Stanford, but from the leaders of one of those companies--MaidSafe, in Troon, Scotland. "Without trying to sound too much like Richard," says the real-world decentralized Internet pioneer, "we are 100 percent focused on the goals of the decentralized web. Today's Internet is broken."

Submission + - Is it Time for Quantum Computing Startups? Maybe (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: At IBM's Q Summit last week, researchers and entrepreneurs were optimistic that we'll REALLY have quantum computing in ten years (even though it's been ten years out for a lot longer than that.) VCs weren't quite as confident. Bill Coughran, a Sequoia Capital partner said, as an investor, “I’ve struggled with the question whether quantum computing is development or still research. VC firms think [along] a ten-year time horizon, not 20 or 30 years. Are we on the cusp of a breakthrough?... The question is still open.”

In the meantime, the early startups have to be prepared to cross the “long revenue desert," warned IBM's Joe Raffa. Still, IBM hoped the summit would spark startup efforts.

Submission + - Move Over Moore's Law, Make Way for Huang's Law (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Are graphics processors a law unto themselves? Nvidia's Jensen Huang says a 25-times speedup over five years is evidence that they are. He calls this the "supercharged law," and says it's time to start counting advances on multiple fronts, including architecture, interconnects, memory technology, and algorithms, not just circuits on a chip.

Submission + - Robert Noyce is The Conscience of a Female Founder in a Silicon Valley Musical (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: When playwright Michael Najar decided to tell a musical love story involving Silicon Valley's hot button topics, he picked Robert Noyce to represent the soul and conscience of SIlicon Valley--not Hewlett or Packard, as is a more typical choice. Why?

“Robert Noyce was a sort of ‘Mad Men’ character,” Najar says. “He was great looking, he was an athlete, he was charming—he was everything you could want from a male character in a musical. But also, he was something that’s missing in the tech world today: He was very humble.”

There were a few other factors--but what clinched the deal? “He was a Madrigal singer. He truly loved Renaissance choral music.”

Submission + - Checking in With Alphabet Chair John Hennessy (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Google/Alphabet chair John Hennessy talks to IEEE Spectrum about his new gig, Google's morphing motto, "fake news," and the latest technology buzz. AI, he says, just might be as important as the Internet--at least close. Bitcoin is overhyped, and quantum computing is just too soon to call.

Submission + - CES 2018: Tech Industry Leaders Talk DACA, H1-B (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Panelists at CES 2018 last week were encouraged by President Trump's short-lived indication of support for any DACA deal. But even with the subsequent turmoil, it's clear something will happen soon, because “from the Senate Republican staffers I’ve talked to, their bosses think we have hit a point of no return," said one panelist.

The group also discussed H-1B visas, and the pressure the bottleneck in moving green card applications forward is having on H-1B's. Said a representative from Microsoft, Microsoft immediately sponsors anyone the company hires on an H-1B visa for a green card, and considers them permanent workers.

The panelists also debated whether a point-based merit system represents a reasonable path forward, and other potential solutions to the tech-worker immigration mess.

Submission + - After the Fire: HP Archivist Pledges to Rebuild What She Can (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: What was lost in the HP archive fire? History big and small: the evolution of international policy surrounding apartheid, advice to students, discussions about union organizing and how long a coffee/coke break should be, and much, much, much more. The good news is that an index exists, and archivist Karen Lewis is issuing a call for anyone who might have copied any of these documents over the years to come forward and contribute to the rebuilding of the historical trail

Submission + - Sexual Harassment in Tech is as Old as the Computer Age (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Historian Marie Hicks, speaking at the Computer History Museum talks about how women computer operators and programmers were driven out of the industry, gives examples of sexual harassment dating back to the days of the Colossus era, and previews her next research.

Hicks has started looking at the bias baked into algorithms--when did it first cross from human to computer. The first example she turned up had "something to do with transgender people and the government’s main pension computer. She says that when humans were in the loop, petitions to change gender on national insurance cards generally went through, but when the computer came in, the system was “specifically designed to no longer accommodate them, instead, to literally cause an error code to kick out of the processing chain any account of a ‘known transsexual.’”

Submission + - Behind the Scenes at Xerox Parc's Futures Day—40 Years Ago (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Should Xerox Parc's 1977 "Futures Day" go down in history as (almost) an important a demo as the "Mother of All Demos"? It certainly took more than a little innovation just to pull off the demo itself--speaking at an anniversary event held at Xerox Parc, Chuck Geschke recalls borrowing an unlicensed air conditioning truck from a local airport and chopping down a tree to make room for those hose--all in an effort to keep a room full of fragile Altos running

Submission + - Turning the Optical Fiber Network into a Giant Earthquake Sensor (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Researchers at Stanford have demonstrated that they can use ordinary, underground fiber optic cables to monitor for earthquakes, by using innate impurities in the fiber as virtual sensors. “People didn’t believe this would work,” said one of the researchers. “They always assumed that an uncoupled optical fiber would generate too much signal noise to be useful.” They plan a larger test installation in 2018. Their biggest challenge, they say, will not be perfecting the algorithms but rather convincing telcos to allow the technology to piggyback on existing telecommunications lines. Meanwhile, the same data is being used for an art project that visualizes the activity of pedestrians, bicycles, cars, and fountains on the surface above the cables.

Submission + - How Chip Design Can Teach Us to Build Better Hospitals (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: When you've spent your career in chip design, everything looks like a chip. Especially buildings. But why aren't they designed like chips, using the same types of automated tools? That's what former Intel engineer Deepak Aatrash asked himself, after watching a time-lapse video of a building construction. Now his company, Aditazz, is designing hospitals and other medical facilities all around the world--because hospitals are a complex problem that showcase his techniques.

“We created a language to describe those patterns, and a workflow description to stitch together the elements," he says. "We can algorithmically adjust the design for the volume of patients or size of the footprint.” Essentially, “we create a functional description of a building, and use a compiler to create the design.”

Submission + - A $2 Million Contest Seeks a Real-World Pied Piper to Solve Big Internet Challen (ieee.org) 1

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: HBO Silicon Valley's Pied Piper could pick up some of the $2 million prize money in the recently annoynced Mozilla/NSF contest to reinvent the Internet. Says Mozilla's Mehan Jayasuriya, "It’s the kind of thing we are looking for—a big idea, a crazy idea, an idea about how you piggyback on things that already exist." Since Pied Piper is fictional, however, Jayasuriya hopes some real-world companies will take on one of the challenges. The “Smart-Community Networks Challenge” seeks wireless technology designed to enhance Internet connectivity by building on top of existing infrastructure, the “Off-The-Grid Internet Challenge” seeks technology that can be quickly deployed after a disaster to allow people to communicate when Internet access is gone. In each category, top prize is $400,000, but prize money will be handed out along the way to help contenders get to the prototype stage.

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