ISPs are quietly distributing “netflow” data that can, among other things, trace traffic through VPNs.
There’s something of an open secret in the cybersecurity world: internet service providers quietly give away detailed information about which computer is communicating with another to private businesses, which then sells access to that data to a range of third parties, according to multiple sources in the threat intelligence industry.
The information, known as netflow data, is a useful tool for digital investigators. They can use it to identify servers being used by hackers, or to follow data as it is stolen. But the sale of this information still makes some people nervous because they are concerned about whose hands it may fall into. Read More
Daily Archives: August 26, 2021
VICReg: Variance-Invariance-Covariance Regularization for Self-Supervised Learning
Recent self-supervised methods for image representation learning are based on maximizing the agreement between embedding vectors from different views of the same image. A trivial solution is obtained when the encoder outputs constant vectors. This collapse problem is often avoided through implicit biases in the learning architecture, that often lack a clear justification or interpretation. In this paper, we introduce VICReg (Variance-Invariance-Covariance Regularization), a method that explicitly avoids the collapse problem with a simple regularization term on the variance of the embeddings along each dimension individually. VICReg combines the variance term with a decorrelation mechanism based on redundancy reduction and covariance regularization, and achieves results on par with the state of the art on several downstream tasks. In addition, we show that incorporating our new variance term into other methods helps stabilize the training and leads to performance improvements. Read More
#image-recognition, #self-supervisedUnity acquires AI chat analysis platform Oto, launches toxicity in gaming report
Unity has acquired Oto, an AI-based audio chat analysis platform that figures out if humans need to intercede in a toxic multiplayer gaming environment. The companies did not disclose terms.
We all know that online gamers can be toxic, trash-talking each other. Some of that is OK and can be chalked up to the culture around a game. But some of it also crosses the line, and that’s where Oto comes in. Read More
The world’s largest chip is creating AI networks larger than the human brain
Cerebras Systems, maker of the world’s largest chip, has lifted the lid on new architecture capable of supporting AI models that outscale the human brain.
The current largest AI models (such as Switch Transformer from Google) are built on circa 1 trillion parameters, which Cerebras suggests can be compared loosely to synapses in the brain, of which there are 100 trillion.
By harnessing a combination of technologies (and with the assistance of Wafer-Scale Engine 2 (WSE-2), the world’s largest chip), Cerebras has now created a single system capable of supporting AI models with more than 120 trillion parameters. Read More
Rick's Cafe AI 