From Israel, the Blue Whale autonomous submarine.
Too little higher education in the United States and too much in Australia? Both have consequences for competitiveness. Following the University of Southern California’s program to expand computing education across the university (flagged on 8 May), UC Berkeley is opening a new College of Computing, Data Science and Society and offering a free curriculum to meet an ‘insatiable demand’: ‘In just five years, data science has become the university’s fourth most popular major among more than 100 offered.’
A paper in the Journal of Computational Science on democracy by design. I particularly like the values expressed in the illustration from the paper, see below: it’s not simply security or even privacy that need to be inculcated in the design and engineering–and I should note, ongoing management and operation of the systems–but fairness, diversity, inclusion, autonomy, participation, decision quality, trust and legitimacy. I’d also argue that if you can’t ensure security, privacy and fairness, then trust and legitimacy will suffer. Last, the paper offers a good coverage of the breadth of applications available to strengthen digital democracy–it’s not just election systems or simply a means for governments to push information, or control misinformation, to communities.
More details shared by Meta re its chip and data centre work and research AI supercomputer. Google announced its new AI supercomputer at its annual I/O conference earlier in May.
Surprise. Palantir says ‘demand for its new artificial intelligence tool due this month is “without precedent.”’
DarkBert, a LLM trained on the DarkWeb–for research.
The UK government is spending $US1.24 billion on its semiconductor industry, markedly less than both the United States ($US52 billion for domestic production, out of a total $US280 billion package) and the European Union ($US45.9 billion).
In the sidelines of the G7 summit–and as it turns out, the Quad–IBM and Google give $US150 million for U.S.-Japan quantum-computing. US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel ‘said the partnership was hatched when the University of Tokyo’s president came over for lunch last July and mentioned the university’s quantum-computing program. As mayor of Chicago, Emanuel had promoted the University of Chicago’s ambitions in the field, so he pitched a joint research program with funds from U.S. companies.’
The use of Reddit by the US military, most often social, but also to crowdsource solutions to problems or for more personal help.
Microsoft contracts to buy electricity from fusion start-up, Helion, in 2028.
Lesley Seebeck 