This week we have an interview with Rob Barton, CTO of Cisco Canada. Find out why Cisco has such ambitious and aggressive goals to meet net carbon zero and a little bit about how they’re getting there when the hashtag trending, weekend edition continues Saturday morning for your weekend listening. is done.
Forget “Terminator” warnings, Microsoft predicts that deep fakes are the biggest threat from artificial intelligence. And the meta doubles down on layoffs but struggles to find efficiency.
these top tech news Stories and more for Friday, May 26th Your host is Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and Tech News Day in the US.
Worldwide government IT spending set to grow by 8 percent in 2023 According to research firm Gartner.
Technology leaders in government are grappling with inflation and its impact on their budgets, as well as the difficulty of attracting and retaining tech talent. Despite big tech layoffs and cutbacks, there is still a worldwide shortage of tech talent and governments are feeling the pinch more than others. According to Gartner, this has forced governments to “re-examine their approaches to counteracting the internal talent shortage”.
Add to that, the need to replace the old system, Gartner’s 2023 CIO and Technology Executive Survey predicts that 57 percent of government CIOs plan to increase funding for application modernization in 2023, up from 42 percent in 2022.
The big winners in this new spending will be the software providers. According to the report, “in 2023, software will continue to be the largest growing segment. Application modernization investments will be supported by more software as a service-based solution offerings. Using the low-code application platform Is is also on the rise and will give further impetus to the efforts to modernize the heritage.
The report also notes that government CIOs are increasingly concerned that they are not realizing the full benefits of their digital transformation investments. And governments think in terms of their mission and purpose, so software and solution providers would be well-advised to be able to link their solutions not only to efficiency, but also to their ability to deliver those results. , Whose governments are looking for.
Sources include: Gartner Inc.
Chip maker Nvidia became the first trillion-dollar chip firm as its stock soared in the past week. Nvidia stock soared more than 25 percent to reach a trillion-dollar market cap, more than double that of its closest rival. It was the biggest one-day gain in the history of the US market, breaking the record previously set by Apple last November.
What is driving this growth? Nvidia’s GPU chips are an integral part of artificial intelligence and spectacular growth in demand for AI systems led the company to forecast quarterly revenue that was 50 percent above Wall Street’s expectations.
This makes nvidia 5th the most precious The company and some in the US predict that it could take the number four spot from Amazon in the near future if the AI market continues to grow.
Will it grow? Is it a shock? At least one analyst thinks not. “We’re really just seeing the tip of the iceberg,” Darren Nathan, head of equity analysis at Hargreaves Lansdowne, told Reuters. This could actually be another turning point in technological history, like the internal combustion engine – or the Internet.
Sources include: reuters
And forget Terminator – the real and present danger of AI comes from deep fakes. That’s according to Microsoft President Brad Smith.
Deep Fakes, with advances in AI technology, have the ability to alter existing or generate entirely new content that is nearly indistinguishable from “reality”. allows anyone Create a realistic fake audio or video. There are many examples of this and we’ll post some links to the text version for those who haven’t seen it in action.
Recently someone who commented on this podcast created a fake version of the podcast using AI. Thankfully they only faked my voice, but I was almost unable to tell it wasn’t me.
In a world where cyber criminals are taking advantage of phishing and fraud like never before, this would be a real threat. A familiar fraud scheme where elderly parents are phoned by people impersonating their children and asked to send bail money can now appear to be the very realistic voices of these children. In corporate life, you may receive a message from your boss instructing you to transfer money or give some other instructions.
what’s called spear phishing – carefully targeted emails and other electronic communications that fool employees into taking actions that leave the company open to subsequent theft or cyberattacks, bypassing the best defenses already in place One of the most successful ways to do it. Deep fakes make criminals a devastating addition to their tool kit.
But Smith and others aren’t only concerned about corporate fraud. Ability of foreign adversaries to interfere in elections and other government activitiesThe things our adversaries are already doing – they are getting worse.
In a speech in Washington, Smith spoke about the need to regulate AI to do damage control, saying:
“We need to take steps to protect people from alterations to legitimate content with the intent to deceive or deceive through the use of AI.”
Sources include: reuters
And it looks like the layoffs aren’t making tech companies more efficient. On Wednesday of this week, Mark Zuckerberg launched another phase of layoffs, with 4,000 employees expected to lay off another 5,000. Really boosted morale. This is in addition to the 11,000 who were allowed to go earlier.
Zuckerberg has said that Meta is “restructuring teams to increase our efficiency,” adding that they allowed the company to “over-hire” during the pandemic. This was echoed by people such as venture capitalist Keith Rabois, who said that this “over-hiring” led employees to fake jobs.
But Facebook employees have reportedly said told Bloomberg they are unsure about who they are about to “collaborate” with and how or to whom they can reassign responsibilities.
Without clear direction, employees say they are “making things up to do” and ignoring some key priorities.
So the “fake job” problem, if it has indeed occurred, has gotten worse and not better.
Which raises a question about Meta’s leadership role — after all, they’re so valuable that several of them got six-figure bonuses in one case, worth $940,000, while letting thousands of employees go to rein in costs. was going.
Which makes you wonder – who is doing the “fake work”?
That’s the top tech news for today. We air five days a week with a daily newscast In the form of a special weekend interview with an expert on topics related to today’s tech news.
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I’m your host, Jim Love. Have a wonderful Friday!
