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Google open sources tools to support AI model development | TechCrunch

April 17, 2024 7:28 PM0


In a typical year, Cloud Next — one of Google’s two major annual developer conferences, the other being I/O — almost exclusively features managed and otherwise closed source, gated-behind-locked-down-APIs products and services. But this year, whether to foster developer goodwill or advance its ecosystem ambitions (or both), Google debuted a number of open source tools primarily aimed at supporting generative AI projects and infrastructure.

The first, MaxDiffusion, which Google actually quietly released in February, is a collection of reference implementations of various diffusion models — models like the image generator Stable Diffusion — that run on XLA devices. “XLA” stands for Accelerated Linear Algebra, an admittedly awkward acronym referring to a technique that optimizes and speeds up specific types of AI workloads, including fine-tuning and serving.

Google’s own tensor processing units (TPUs) are XLA devices, as are recent Nvidia GPUs.

Beyond MaxDiffusion, Google’s launching JetStream, a new engine to run generative AI models — specifically text-generating models (so not Stable Diffusion). Currently limited to supporting TPUs with GPU compatibility supposedly coming in the future, JetStream offers up to 3x higher “performance per dollar” for models like Google’s own Gemma 7B and Meta’s Llama 2, Google claims.

“As customers bring their AI workloads to production, there’s an increasing demand for a cost-efficient inference stack that delivers high performance,” Mark Lohmeyer, Google Cloud’s GM of compute and machine learning infrastructure, wrote in a blog post shared with TechCrunch. “JetStream helps with this need … and includes optimizations for popular open models such as Llama 2 and Gemma.”

Now, “3x” improvement is quite a claim to make, and it’s not exactly clear how Google arrived at that figure. Using which generation of TPU? Compared to which baseline engine? And how’s “performance” being defined here, anyway?

I’ve asked Google all these questions and will update this post if I hear back.

Second-to-last on the list of Google’s open source contributions are new additions to MaxText, Google’s collection of text-generating AI models targeting TPUs and Nvidia GPUs in the cloud. MaxText now includes Gemma 7B, OpenAI’s GPT-3 (the predecessor to GPT-4), Llama 2 and models from AI startup Mistral — all of which Google says can be customized and fine-tuned to developers’ needs.

“We’ve heavily optimized [the models’] performance on TPUs and also partnered closely with Nvidia to optimize performance on large GPU clusters,” Lohmeyer said. “These improvements maximize GPU and TPU utilization, leading to higher energy efficiency and cost optimization.”

Finally, Google’s collaborated with Hugging Face, the AI startup, to create Optimum TPU, which provides tooling to bring certain AI workloads to TPUs. The goal is to reduce the barrier to entry for getting generative AI models onto TPU hardware, according to Google — in particular text-generating models.

But at present, Optimum TPU is a bit bare-bones. The only model it works with is Gemma 7B. And Optimum TPU doesn’t yet support training generative models on TPUs — only running them.

Google’s promising improvements down the line.


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Robotic Automations

Intel and others commit to building open generative AI tools for the enterprise | TechCrunch

April 17, 2024 1:07 AM0


Can generative AI designed for the enterprise (e.g. AI that autocompletes reports, spreadsheet formulas and so on) ever be interoperable? Along with a coterie of organizations including Cloudera and Intel, the Linux Foundation — the nonprofit organization that supports and maintains a growing number of open source efforts — aim to find out.

The Linux Foundation today announced the launch of the Open Platform for Enterprise AI (OPEA), a project to foster the development of open, multi-provider and composable (i.e. modular) generative AI systems. Under the purview of the Linux Foundation’s LFAI and Data org, which focuses on AI- and data-related platform initiatives, OPEA’s goal will be to pave the way for the release of “hardened,” “scalable” generative AI systems that “harness the best open source innovation from across the ecosystem,” LFAI and Data executive director Ibrahim Haddad said in a press release.

“OPEA will unlock new possibilities in AI by creating a detailed, composable framework that stands at the forefront of technology stacks,” Haddad said. “This initiative is a testament to our mission to drive open source innovation and collaboration within the AI and data communities under a neutral and open governance model.”

In addition to Cloudera and Intel, OPEA — one of the Linux Foundation’s Sandbox Projects, an incubator program of sorts — counts among its members enterprise heavyweights like Intel, IBM-owned Red Hat, Hugging Face, Domino Data Lab, MariaDB and VMWare.

So what might they build together exactly? Haddad hints at a few possibilities, such as “optimized” support for AI toolchains and compilers, which enable AI workloads to run across different hardware components, as well as “heterogeneous” pipelines for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

RAG is becoming increasingly popular in enterprise applications of generative AI, and it’s not difficult to see why. Most generative AI models’ answers and actions are limited to the data on which they’re trained. But with RAG, a model’s knowledge base can be extended to info outside the original training data. RAG models reference this outside info — which can take the form of proprietary company data, a public database or some combination of the two — before generating a response or performing a task.

A diagram explaining RAG models.

Intel offered a few more details in its own press release:

Enterprises are challenged with a do-it-yourself approach [to RAG] because there are no de facto standards across components that allow enterprises to choose and deploy RAG solutions that are open and interoperable and that help them quickly get to market. OPEA intends to address these issues by collaborating with the industry to standardize components, including frameworks, architecture blueprints and reference solutions.

Evaluation will also be a key part of what OPEA tackles.

In its GitHub repository, OPEA proposes a rubric for grading generative AI systems along four axes: performance, features, trustworthiness and “enterprise-grade” readiness. Performance as OPEA defines it pertains to “black-box” benchmarks from real-world use cases. Features is an appraisal of a system’s interoperability, deployment choices and ease of use. Trustworthiness looks at an AI model’s ability to guarantee “robustness” and quality. And enterprise readiness focuses on the requirements to get a system up and running sans major issues.

Rachel Roumeliotis, director of open source strategy at Intel, says that OPEA will work with the open source community to offer tests based on the rubric — and provide assessments and grading of generative AI deployments on request.

OPEA’s other endeavors are a bit up in the air at the moment. But Haddad floated the potential of open model development along the lines of Meta’s expanding Llama family and Databricks’ DBRX. Toward that end, in the OPEA repo, Intel has already contributed reference implementations for an generative-AI-powered chatbot, document summarizer and code generator optimized for its Xeon 6 and Gaudi 2 hardware.

Now, OPEA’s members are very clearly invested (and self-interested, for that matter) in building tooling for enterprise generative AI. Cloudera recently launched partnerships to create what it’s pitching as an “AI ecosystem” in the cloud. Domino offers a suite of apps for building and auditing business-forward generative AI. And VMWare — oriented toward the infrastructure side of enterprise AI — last August rolled out new “private AI” compute products.

The question is — under OPEA — will these vendors actually work together to build cross-compatible AI tools?

There’s an obvious benefit to doing so. Customers will happily draw on multiple vendors depending on their needs, resources and budgets. But history has shown that it’s all too easy to become inclined toward vendor lock-in. Let’s hope that’s not the ultimate outcome here.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Overture Maps Foundation releases the first beta of its open map dataset | TechCrunch

April 16, 2024 6:01 PM0


The Overture Maps Foundation today launched the first beta of its global open map dataset. With this, the foundation, which is backed by the likes of Amazon, Esri, Meta, Microsoft and TomTom, is getting one step closer to launching a production-ready open dataset for developers who need geospatial data to power their applications.

“This Beta release brings together multiple sources of open data, has been through several validation tests, is formatted in a new schema and has an entity reference system that allows attachment of other spatial data,” said Marc Prioleau, executive director of Overture Maps Foundation. “This is a significant step forward for open map data by delivering data that is ready to be used in applications.”

Overture was founded back in 2022, under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation. At the time, Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin noted that “mapping the physical environment and every community in the world, even as they grow and change, is a massively complex challenge that no one organization can manage. Industry needs to come together to do this for the benefit of all.”

Now, two years later, some Overture members have already started integrating its data into their applications. Meta, the foundation says, is using Overture data for its map solutions while Microsoft is adopting it to add coverage to Bing Maps.

Overture’s dataset includes five base layers in the beta release that include 54 million places of interest, 2.3 billion buildings, roads, footbaths and other travel infrastructure, administrative boundaries, and a contextual base layer including land and water data.

In a world where OpenStreetMap (OSM) has been around for a very long time, it’s worth asking why the industry would need a project like Overture (which actually uses OSM data as part of its data set).

“Overture is a data-centric map project, not a community of individual map editors,” the project’s FAQ explains. “Therefore, Overture is intended to be complementary to OSM. We combine OSM with other sources to produce new open map data sets. Overture data will be available for use by the OpenStreetMap community under compatible open data licenses. Overture members are encouraged to contribute to OSM directly.”

Meta, Microsoft, AWS and TomTom launch the Overture Maps Foundation to develop interoperable open map data


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Robotic Automations

Open source Substack rival Ghost may join the fediverse | TechCrunch

April 16, 2024 3:17 AM0


Ghost, the open source alternative to Substack’s newsletter platform, is considering joining the fediverse, the social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. According to a post from Ghost founder John O’Nolan, the company — which is structured as a nonprofit — is considering federating Ghost over ActivityPub, the social networking protocol that powers the fediverse.

O’Nolan said that the most requested feature over the past few years has been to federate his software. “It seems like there are many potential ways to do it. Curious to hear how you would want it to work?” he asked in a post on Threads, which was syndicated to Mastodon via Threads’ own integration with ActivityPub.

The survey asks users if they use any ActivityPub platforms like Mastodon or Threads, and how they would expect ActivityPub functionality to work in Ghost, if it were to be added. It also asks how federation would personally benefit Ghost users. It invites survey respondents to optionally provide an email address if they want to be contacted for more input in the future, as well.

Image Credits: Ghost

While the launch of a survey isn’t necessarily a commitment to federating Ghost, it is another signal pointing to the broader reshaping of the web that’s now underway.

Following Twitter’s acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk, online users have experienced the downsides of putting their trust in centralized platforms: With a shift in ownership, Twitter was overhauled to be a different type of platform called X, with revised ethics and long-term ambitions. (Musk wants X to be an “everything” app for transactions, creator content, video, shopping and more and takes a more hands-off role in terms of content moderation.)

For those unhappy with Musk’s changes, having a portable social networking identity suddenly seemed like an idea that had more value. That is, if you don’t like the way your Mastodon server (or other federated service) is run, you can pick up your profile and move it elsewhere, followers in tow.

With Ghost, however, the idea could be to federate the accounts of the writers who use Ghost to publish their content. Their posts, which would also be published on the web and to their newsletter subscribers, could also exist in the fediverse, where others could read, like and reply to the post from their preferred app. These replies could also potentially syndicate back to Ghost, where they could exist as comments.

Assuming Ghost went this route, it would be similar to how WordPress federated with ActivityPub after the acquisition of an ActivityPub blog plug-in. When enabled, WordPress blogs can be followed by people on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse and then receive replies as comments on their own sites.

After seeing O’Nolan’s post, Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput reached out to help with the ActivityPub integration, which O’Nolan accepted.

Ghost has gained attention as a Substack rival in recent months for the same reason that some have fled X: People disagree about how platforms should be moderated. Substack has taken to promoting free speech, as Musk does on X, but that’s also led to the platform being used by pro-Nazi publications, as detailed by The Atlantic late last year.

As a result, one of Substack’s more high-profile writers, Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack and migrated to Ghost instead.

“I’m not aware of any major U.S. consumer internet platform that does not explicitly ban praise for Nazi hate speech, much less one that welcomes them to set up shop and start selling subscriptions,” Newton wrote at the time.

In addition to Newton, other notable Ghost users include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever and Tangle, to name a few.

Today, Ghost has been installed over 3 million times, which would make for a healthy addition to the wider fediverse and its roughly 13+ million total users, around 1.5 million of which are active monthly. (This figure doesn’t include Threads’ 130+ million monthly active users as it’s not fully integrated with ActivityPub as of yet.)

How Twitter’s descent into chaos is paving the way for a new web


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Robotic Automations

Fisker's Ocean SUV investigated for doors that won't open | TechCrunch

April 13, 2024 1:00 AM0


The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a third investigation into EV startup Fisker’s Ocean SUV, this time centered on problems getting the doors to open.

The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) says in a new notice that it has received 14 complaints from owners who have not been able to open the doors to their Fisker Oceans, either from the inside or the outside. The agency says the complaints point to an “intermittent failure” of the door latch and handle system. The complaints also raise the possibility that the emergency override mechanism also does not work.

Customers have reported getting stuck in or out of their car to Fisker for months, according to internal documents that TechCrunch exclusively reported on in February. Some of those incidents were related to the Ocean’s troublesome key fob. But the new safety probe suggests a deeper problem with the SUV’s doors. The investigation is designated as a “preliminary evaluation,” which ODI typically resolves within eight months.

The Ocean SUV is already being investigated by ODI over problems with its braking system, and for complaints about the vehicle rolling away on uneven surfaces. The company has not issued any recalls for the Ocean. Fisker told TechCrunch it is “fully cooperating with NHTSA on this matter.”

The third probe is being opened as Fisker is on the brink. It paused production of the Ocean in March and reported just $121 million in the bank. Fisker is still sitting on thousands of Ocean SUVs in inventory that it is struggling to sell, either directly or through its nascent dealership model, and recently slashed prices by up to 39% in a desperate attempt to generate sales. It was recently removed from the New York Stock Exchange. A potential partnership with Nissan fell through, endangering an attempt at securing $150 million in rescue funding.

This story has been updated to include a comment from Fisker.


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Robotic Automations

Open source foundations unite on common standards for EU's Cyber Resilience Act | TechCrunch

April 12, 2024 11:59 PM0


Seven open source foundations are coming together to create common specifications and standards for Europe’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), regulation adopted by the European Parliament last month.

The Apache Software Foundation, Blender Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, OpenSSL Software Foundation, PHP Foundation, Python Software Foundation, and Rust Foundation revealed their intentions to pool their collective resources and connect the dots between existing security best practices in open source software development — and ensure that the much-maligned software supply chain is up to the task when the new legislation comes into force in three years.

Componentry

It’s estimated that between 70% and 90% of software today is made up of open source components, many of which are developed for free by programmers in their own time and on their own dime.

The Cyber Resilience Act was first unveiled in draft form nearly two years ago, with a view toward codifying best cybersecurity practices for both hardware and software products sold across the European Union. It’s designed to force all manufacturers of any internet-connected product to stay up-to-date with all the latest patches and security updates, with penalties in place for shortcomings.

These noncompliance penalties include fines of up to €15 million, or 2.5% of global turnover.

The legislation in its initial guise prompted fierce criticism from numerous third-party bodies, including more than a dozen open source industry bodies that last year wrote an open letter saying that the Act could have a “chilling effect” on software development. The crux of the complaints centered on how “upstream” open source developers might be held liable for security defects in downstream products, thus deterring volunteer project maintainers from working on critical components for fear of legal retribution (this is similar to concerns that abounded around the EU AI Act, which was greenlighted last month).

The wording within the CRA regulation did offer some protections for the open source realm, insofar as developers not concerned with commercializing their work were technically exempt. However, the language was open to interpretation in terms of what exactly fell under the “commercial activity” banner — would sponsorships, grants, and other forms of financial assistance count, for example?

Some changes to the text were eventually made, and the revised legislation substantively addressed the concerns through clarifying open source project exclusions, and carves out a specific role for what it calls “open source stewards,” which includes not-for profit foundations.

“In general, we are pleased with the outcome… the process worked, and the open source community was listened to,” Eclipse Foundation executive director Mike Milinkovich told TechCrunch. “One of the most interesting aspects of the final regulation is that it recognizes ‘open source software stewards’ as a form of economic actor which are part of the overall software supply chain. This is the first piece of legislation globally that recognizes the role played by foundations and other forms of community stewards.”

Although the new regulation has already been rubber stamped, it won’t come into force until 2027, giving all parties time to meet the requirements and iron out some of the finer details of what’s expected of them. And this is what the seven open source foundations are coming together for now.

“There is an enormous amount of work that will need to be done over the next three years in order to implement the CRA,” Milinkovich said. “Keep in mind that the CRA is the first law anywhere in the world regulating the software industry as a whole. The implications of this go far beyond the open source community and will impact startups and small enterprises as well as the global industry players.”

Documentation

The manner in which many open source projects evolve has meant that they often have patchy documentation (if any at all), which makes it difficult to support audits and makes it difficult for downstream manufacturers and developers to develop their own CRA processes.

Many of the better-resourced open source initiatives already have decent best practice standards in place, relating to things like coordinated vulnerability disclosures and peer review, but each entity might use different methodologies and terminologies. By coming together as one, this should go some way toward treating open source software development as a single “thing” bound by the same standards and processes.

Throw into the mix other proposed regulation, including the Securing Open Source Software Act in the U.S., and it’s clear that the various foundations and “open source stewards” will come under greater scrutiny for their role in the software supply chain.

“While open source communities and foundations generally adhere to and have historically established industry best practices around security, their approaches often lack alignment and comprehensive documentation,” the Eclipse Foundation wrote in a blog post today. “The open source community and the broader software industry now share a common challenge: legislation has introduced an urgent need for cybersecurity process standards.”

The new collaboration, while consisting of seven foundations initially, will be spearheaded in Brussels by the Eclipse Foundation, which is home to hundreds of individual open source projects spanning developer tools, frameworks, specifications, and more. Members of the foundation include Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat and Oracle.


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