Latest news with #technology
CTV News
an hour ago
- Business
- CTV News
Pitches, networking, deal-making: Web Summit thrives in Vancouver
The Vancouver Convention Centre has been full of the tech industry's biggest movers and shakers this week. On the penultimate day of Web Summit, the mammoth tech conference saw thousands of attendees flowing between expert panels and a bustling exhibition hall at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Organizers have now confirmed 50 countries sent government-backed delegations to the summit, a record for the event marking its first of three years in Vancouver. The first Web Summit was in Dublin in 2009 with just 150 attendees, and now four events are held around the globe each year. The Polish and Qatari delegations have massive footprints, while Hong Kong and Greece, for example, have smaller dedicated booths. 'We wanted you to see the response of the Canadian market as we have a quite good sample from the European market,' said Georgios Karakatsanis, a Greek entrepreneur with Evotropia. 'We wanted to see the response of markets that are really environmentally friendly and have similar policies to the European Union.' For Yarn Guru, a Pakistani company using artificial intelligence to match textiles with potential buyers, the event was an opportunity to connect with North American clients. 'Our customers are people who need help finding products globally,' said Akhlaq Rana. 'We use artificial intelligence to find the thickness they want, length, various details which can be very hard to find.' Canadian entrepreneurs make their case Startups and established companies from across Canada represented a significant portion of the booths in the exhibition hall, some of them having attended the conference in Toronto, when it was named Collision. 'It is a great platform for startups and entrepreneurs like myself to come and help get the amplification we need to move and scale our product,' said Toronto's Maman Khalid, with cleantech AI marketplace RevoHubInc. For Vancouver-based ImmerRock, a mixed-reality app for learning guitar, the company gained as much from networking within the field as pitching to potential investors. 'It's helpful to know what everybody else is doing in the ecosystem, kind of get to know each other and share some of the problems and solutions that we all kind of have to encounter,' said Evanna Roman. The representatives weren't all software-oriented, however. Seawise Packaging was there with a cold-packaging alternative to styrofoam developed in Prince George for a company in Campbell River. '(Being here) opens our eyes so we also get some insightful ideas from (other companies) to improve our product and also we get to connect with some customers,' said Banchi Kassuan, the company's product researcher. American companies were the second-most common after Canadians in the exhibition hall, but many of the delegates from Europe and Asia have said that making connections in Canada are important as they try to mitigate — or outright avoid — issues with the United States' erratic trade war, while still doing business in North America. 'I think Canada has a lot to gain by getting a lot of people come work in Canada rather than the United States,' said economist William Lazonick, at a Web Summit news conference. 'I think the government policy needs to kind of be ready for that, and corporations have to be doing their part and towards investment.'
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Drones, doubts as US allies look to NATO summit
LONDON, May 30 (Reuters) - As Estonia's defence minister opened a tech conference this week focused heavily on cutting-edge military equipment, he said his nation's strategy in the face of mounting Russian pressure was to turn itself into a 'fly that can paralyse an elephant'. Estonia and its fellow nearby Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania are among the first of America's allies to make good on U.S. President Donald Trump's demand that they devote at least 5% of their gross domestic product on defence. That means a combination of conscription, drones, long-range rockets and 'whole-of-society' efforts to prepare for war. It's an approach increasingly being advocated for what might be termed a whole new generation of 'frontline' governments and states from Finland and Romania to Taiwan and the Philippines. It's also being talked of in more established Western militaries such as those of the U.S. and Britain, with speculation that upcoming reforms will put much lower emphasis on heavy equipment such as tanks and more on unmanned systems, such as drones. But it's also an approach leaving some worried that excessive talk of technology is being used as an excuse to fail to provide the forces that may still be needed to win or deter a war. Earlier this month, the new U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, confirmed what had been rumoured for months - that the U.S. intends to cut back troops stationed on the continent, although he said discussions on this were unlikely to start until after the NATO summit in the Dutch capital, The Hague. "President Trump just is going to happen and it's going to happen now," Whitaker told a conference in Estonia earlier this month. "This is going to be orderly, but we are not to have any more patience for foot-dragging in this just need to work through the practical consequences." U.S. officials have made it clear they intend to use that meeting to push every NATO member to spend at least 5% of their GDP on defence, more than twice what many of them commit to at present. How that discussion goes may shape how many U.S. troops stay. In multiple European nations, then, there are growing worries about what that really means. Under former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, the NATO alliance and U.S. European Command drew up plans to defend eastern, central and northern Europe from potential Russian incursion. But those plans relied heavily on large commitments of tanks and troops led by the United States. Now, despite increasing U.S. defence spending overall, there is mounting speculation that some of those U.S. heavy tank brigades that might fight in Europe may simply be abolished. At the end of April, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the U.S. Army to become "leaner", with Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll telling reporters what the Pentagon called the "old way of doing war" was no longer sufficient. "These are hard decisions," said Driscoll, saying that "legacy systems that have been around a long time" were likely to be cut to make the force "the most lethal they can be." While neither mentioned any particular systems likely to be axed, they said the U.S. Army would be putting more effort into long-range strike missiles to hit both sea and shore targets particularly in the Pacific. They cited the example of recent fighting in Ukraine as showing how effective such weaponry could be. That offers little comfort to nervous European governments. This week, Hegseth met with Polish Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz – who is also defence minister – at the Pentagon, calling Poland a 'model ally' for spending almost 5 percent of GDP on defence and building the largest army in Europe, a force that will include hundreds of U.S.- and South Korean-built tanks. According to the Pentagon, Poland currently hosts some 8,000-plus U.S. personnel, most of them rotating through from other bases in the U.S. or Europe. Some U.S. forces are also forward-located in the Baltic states including HIMARS batteries in Estonia and Apache attack helicopters in Latvia. Others including airborne forces and armour pass through during the exercise season or have been deployed fast during crises. Exactly how much of that is under question is hard to predict. Outside the high-profile U.S. embrace of Poland, some European officials complain that their U.S. counterparts – particularly in Washington – have shown less interest in discussing such specifics. Senior U.S. European Command personnel have continued to assert U.S. support, but are seen to be much less in the loop. Some current administration officials are rumoured to believe that such U.S. forces in the former Baltic states are antagonising Russia and making matters worse. But others, particularly in the U.S. military, view them as providing much-needed deterrence by making it clear any attack would drag in the United States. What is clear is that the focus of U.S. defence spending is shifting fast, including to homeland defence. The Trump administration's plans to do so include America's first trillion-dollar defence budget. But it is increasingly clear that significant amounts of that will be focused on the U.S. homeland, including $175 billion for a new 'Golden Dome' missile defence shield the administration says it wants ready and operational by 2029. This week, the Pentagon announced more than 1,000 further U.S. military personnel to help secure the U.S. southern border with Mexico, joining more than 8,000 already there. Beyond homeland defence, officials have made it clear the priority is confronting China – but that still leaves a huge amount unclear. At worst, some worry that lack of clarity means more allied effort is now going into posturing than sensible military planning. In the short term, that means working to ensure that next month's NATO summit avoids too much open disagreement. That is one reason why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to at least largely stay away, while other major decisions including getting alliance-wide agreement on the spending target might wait until later in the year Meanwhile, Western diplomats say discussions are underway among European governments – likely including at the NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels this week – to find mathematical formulas to reclassify spending to reach the Trump administration's 5% target through reclassifying existing spending rather than finding all new money. Suggested examples include the spending definition to include infrastructure such as bridges that can transport heavy weapons or spending on civil preparedness and cyber resilience. Those discussions will also be watched in Asia, where the Trump administration is putting similar pressure on partners including Japan and Taiwan to hit the same 5% target. Some have suggested that Taiwan – widely believed to be under particular threat of Chinese invasion – should be spending as much as twice that to deserve U.S. protection. That is probably politically untenable, particularly given the challenges the Taiwan government is finding in pushing existing spending through its parliament. Speaking to a U.S. House of Representatives committee earlier this month, retired U.S. Admiral Mark Montgomery said he believed 5% was the maximum peacetime democracies could manage. U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that they believe Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. The United States has long maintained 'strategic ambiguity' over whether it would respond militarily should that happen. Montgomery grabbed headlines in Taiwan and beyond by telling the committee the U.S. already had some 500 military trainers on the island, several times the number previously acknowledged or reported – but he said it needed to be at least a thousand. "We absolutely have to grow the joint training team on Taiwan," he said. Montgomery did not describe the make-up of the U.S. training, though it likely comprises a mixture of regular force personnel, contractors and potentially reservists. Much of their focus is reportedly on ensuring Taiwan's military – including its historically ineffective conscript force – is much more prepared for high-intensity, high-tech warfare. At the same Committee hearing, retired U.S. Army Pacific commanding General Charles Flynn warned that the decision of a previous administration to sell 100 harpoon ship missile launchers to Taiwan was largely useless if the island did not have sufficient missile crews with the proper training. The example of Ukraine has shown that conscripted troops can fight hard for years even with only limited support but using cutting-edge technology, particularly drones. But many in both Taiwan and the Baltic states have long believed that U.S. support remains vital to sustaining a successful fight. In this month's 'Hedgehog' drills in Estonia – named for a creature that famously defeats many larger predators, Baltic troops including conscripts and NATO soldiers worked with new drones and dug trenches intended for the current exercise but deliberately positioned to be used if Russia attacks for real. The concept of 'peace through strength' remains as valid as ever, but the current version still needs work, and it remains unclear whether next month's NATO summit will help or hinder that.
Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Business
- Japan Times
Trump aims at Chinese students and tech in threat to truce with Xi
Just weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump declared a "total reset' with China following a trade truce in Geneva, tensions are rising again between the world's biggest economies. Trump's administration on Wednesday announced it would start revoking Chinese student visas, while also introducing new restrictions on the sales of chip design software and reportedly some jet engine parts to China. That came shortly after it sought to block Huawei from selling advanced AI chips anywhere in the world, prompting an angry rebuke from Beijing. "Geneva was positive because both sides are officially talking to each other,' said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, senior adviser to the China Center at the Conference Board. "But the negotiations didn't really deal with the core issues that are driving competition between the two sides. Chief of them all — technological dominance.' While U.S. and Chinese negotiators brought down tariffs from eye-watering levels for 90-days, they still need to hammer out a deal to rebalance trade — that took years in Trump's first term. Both sides are also in disagreement over Beijing's role in the illegal fentanyl trade, as well as rare earths and chip controls. In a sign any larger deal is a way off, Trump has yet to speak with his Chinese counterpart since returning to office, despite suggesting several times such a call was imminent. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said negotiations with China had stalled but he believed more would be held in the next few weeks. He added that a call between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will happen at some point. The crackdown on Chinese students — the second largest international group in the U.S. — was unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who before taking office was twice sanctioned by Beijing. That dispelled any notion China hawks within the Trump administration are losing influence, after trade officials in Switzerland showed a preference for dealmaking with Beijing. China's Foreign Ministry called the visa policy "discriminatory' at a regular briefing in Beijing on Thursday, with spokeswomen Mao Ning saying it would "only further undermine' America's global reputation. That relatively restrained response, along with the fact officials didn't signal any retaliation, suggests Beijing is trying to avoid sending ties into another tailspin. U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to speak with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping since returning to office — a sign that any larger trade deal is a way off. | AFP-Jiji Still, the decision to put Chinese students under fresh scrutiny highlights the deep suspicion underpinning bilateral ties, with Republicans and Democrats alike now viewing China as a major threat to American security. For its part, Beijing has launched an anti-spying campaign that casts a wide net of suspicion on foreigners, particularly from the U.S.. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, denied the U.S. actions were designed to target ordinary people in the Asian country. "It's the aggression of the Chinese Communist Party that we're pushing back on,' he said. Moolenaar represents U.S. lawmakers who are skeptical of China's influence in the U.S., including on campuses across the country. He accused Beijing of making Chinese students do its bidding and earlier this month co-signed a letter to Harvard University demanding information on its China links. "The end goal is to have a relationship with China that acknowledges the reality that their government is moving in a very different direction than they promised,' he added. Moolenaar got what he wanted when Trump moved to block Harvard from enrolling international students over claims the school's leadership had co-ordinated with the Communist Party. U.S. lawmakers allege the university trained members of a company sanctioned for alleged human-rights abuses. "This will only stoke misunderstanding, mistrust and even hatred between two societies,' said Wu Xinbo, director at Fudan University's Center for American Studies in Shanghai. "I'm afraid the Trump administration will come up with more crazy ideas and actions hurting China-U.S. relations.' Trump's approach contrasts sharply with Xi, who has touted people-to-people exchanges as the foundation of healthy U.S. ties. The Chinese leader in 2023 pledged to bring 50,000 young Americans to China over five years to stabilize relations. Some 16,000 American youths participated last year, according to Jing Quan, a minister at the Chinese embassy in the U.S. A Kirin 9000s chip taken from a Huawei smartphone | bloomberg While it's unclear how the latest policy will be enforced, expelling Chinese students from the U.S. threatens to reignite a flash point in ties from Trump's first term. Back then, the U.S. revoked over 1,000 visas of Chinese pupils and scholars, alleging they were stealing U.S. technology and intellectual property for China's military. In China, the hardening U.S. stance was met with disbelief and resentment on social media. "I can't believe Trump has shown us in our life time how quickly the U.S. empire is declining,' one user wrote on China's X-like Weibo platform. Creating a hostile environment for overseas students could push talent back toward China. That aligns with Beijing's ambition to bolster domestic innovation, as Xi turns high-tech manufacturing into a key growth driver for the economy. Chinese students have made critical contributions to America's technological success and scientific leadership, said Jessica Chen Weiss, the David M. Lampton professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. During the McCarthy era of intense U.S. suspicion, leading rocket scientist Qian Xuesen was prevented from continuing his scientific career in the country, despite having co-founded NASA's jet propulsion laboratory at Caltech. That was to Beijing's benefit, Chen Weiss said: "He returned to China, where he helped develop China's ballistic missile program.'
Geek Vibes Nation
3 hours ago
- Business
- Geek Vibes Nation
From AI To Gen AI: How Cloud Computing Is Accelerating Intelligent Automation
Over the past few years, AI has gone from being a future idea to a basic technology used by many industries. AI allows organizations in both customer service and manufacturing to streamline their workflows and make better decisions. Our shift to Gen AI in AI is bringing about an increased use of intelligent automation, made stronger by cloud computing. When Gen AI is linked to cloud computing, it affects more than technology; it also reforms how enterprises work, experiment and reach their targets. Still, what roles does cloud computing play in this development? How can we help professionals keep up with these evolving trends? We're ready to get started. Being aware of the stance from AI to Gen AI To truly value cloud computing, you must be familiar with the movement of AI into Gen AI. AI systems that use traditional approaches receive training from organized data, then look for patterns and generate predictions or decisions. You might think about machine learning algorithms that distinguish images, estimate sales or recognize fraud. Generative AI is an even bigger development than creating repetitive text. It does not limit itself to understanding or forecasting; it also makes original work. With help from GPT and diffusion models for image generation, Gen AI generates text that reads like what a human would write, as well as types of coding, musical pieces, videos and anything else viable. Because of this capability, AI is starting to carry out creative and thought tasks that people previously did alone — writing advertisements, designing models and providing data for training other models. Cloud Computing Supports the Main Framework for Intelligent Automation Although Gen AI has a lot of promise, it takes a lot of effort and resources to create and implement these models. Very large language models (LLMs) cannot be trained unless one has a lot of data, powerful computers and enough storage — and all of these are readily available through cloud computing. Here's why cloud platforms are speeding up the Gen AI revolution for automation. Easily Scalable Resources for Model Training and Using the Model GPT-4 and Google's Gemini need billions of parameters and a large amount of data to develop their models. The way organizations run on their own servers is not flexible enough to tackle today's requirements. People working in AI can quickly increase or reduce compute power (AWS EC2, Google TPUs, Azure VMs) from the cloud as needed. This way, AI is accessible to startups, educational places, as well as technology leaders, since they can test and use the cloud or pay as needed. Qlouds offers a straightforward way to use pre-made models and APIs. Providers of cloud technology now make Gen AI models accessible via application programming interfaces. You can access OpenAI's models on Azure, as well as Google's PaLM models from Vertex AI. By doing this, Gen AI now allows developers to build apps using existing models, instead of having to build and train their own. It only takes calling an API for businesses to add tasks such as summarization, translation or the generation of images into their processes, resulting in much shorter development times. Artificial Intelligence development with integrated toolchains Developing AI in the cloud is supported by complete platforms used along the entire process. Such resources consist of data import tools, places to train models (for example, SageMaker and Azure ML Studio), tracking experiments, versions of the models and MLOps pipelines. With this integration, automated solutions are developed more easily as data science, engineering and operations teams work together without as many problems. Organizations should focus on Security, Compliance and Governance. Because AI is now central to business operations, data privacy and the integrity of models are very important. Thanks to advanced security measures, identity verification, logs for everything and compliance certifications, businesses can rely on the AI they create. Intelligent Automation in Real Business Settings Take a look at these ways in which Gen AI and the cloud are supporting intelligent automation: Gen AI courses are used to train agents of AI on specific information, letting them address consumer concerns with natural speech which reduces work for people. Developers can now use GitHub Copilot which uses Gen AI, to make programming faster and help avoid making errors. IDP systems supported by Gen AI enable people in financial services to retrieve information from invoices, contracts and KYC documentation much faster with fewer mistakes. AI diagnostics in healthcare work with cloud records and images to notice diseases early and form fitting treatment plans just for each person. Gaining new knowledge for the age of AI and the Cloud Since there is an upsurge in Gen AI-powered automation by companies, skilled people who can handle both AI and cloud are needed more than ever. All types of developers and data professionals need to learn more about these areas to stay important. Join an artificial intelligence course to gain solid knowledge of machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing. Most of these programs involve doing projects with data that is typical within a company setting. Find courses that cover large language models, prompt engineering, ethical AI and building things with APIs from companies including OpenAI, Cohere and Anthropic. Don't forget the basics — take on cloud computing courses to master cloud architecture, creating code for your infrastructure, dockerization and the services provided by AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Connecting information from these three parts of engineering helps professionals build solutions that truly matter. What's ahead: Introducing the New Wave of Co-Pilots The future will see cloud computing and Gen AI working together as the main drivers of new digital change. We are headed toward having AI assistants at our sides in many fields such as HR, finance, law and creative industries. Not only will these systems take care of routine activities, but they will also work together with people to make work more effective and encourage new ideas. More mature quantum computing and edge AI will fuel the growth of cloud platforms as the central system for this smart enterprise. Conclusion Cloud computing is playing a big role in the growth of intelligent automation from AI to Gen AI. Because of this combination, businesses are able to invent more quickly, expand more wisely and use their resources more effectively. As technology advances, anyone focused on learning both AI, Gen AI and cloud computing will help design the future. No matter if you're new to AI or seeking greater expertise, now is the best time to look for the right courses on artificial intelligence, dabble in gen ai classes and build a stronger base with cloud computing courses. Caroline is doing her graduation in IT from the University of South California but keens to work as a freelance blogger. She loves to write on the latest information about IoT, technology, and business. She has innovative ideas and shares her experience with her readers.
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
Chinese tech companies prepare for AI future without Nvidia, FT reports
May 29 (Reuters) - China's biggest technology companies have begun the process of switching to homegrown chips as they contend with a dwindling stockpile of Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab processors and tightening United States export controls, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. Alibaba ( opens new tab, Tencent ( opens new tab and Baidu ( opens new tab are among those starting to test alternative semiconductors to meet growing domestic demand for AI, the report said, citing industry executives. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.
