Good morning, everyone!
After my relaxing break in Marbella, I'm back in the rainy UK (sad face).
Anyway, let's dive into this week's edition!
What’s Been Cooking
Collaboration Between Google And Music Labels To Licence AI Music
Google is speaking to the likes of Universal Music about AI-generated songs that use the voices and melodies of certain artists. People have created ‘deep fake’ songs with AI that sound as if they're sung by artists such as Drake and Ed Sheeran.
The music industry is of course not too happy with the rise of AI songs as it creeps into copyright and intellectual property territory. Their view is that artists should have a say in whether their voice is allowed to be used.
Now, talks are happening with Google about how artists' voices could be used. One option would be allowing fans to make their music whilst ensuring the relevant artists and copyright owners are paid in the process.
IBM Building A New Prototype AI Chip
AI systems consume a lot of energy and as a consequence, this is not good for the planet due to their emissions. Just consider the energy costs of an AWS warehouse!
However, IBM this week may have come up with a solution. They’ve developed a prototype chip that is analog rather than digital. Current chips are mainly digital and operate as binary switches: they're either on (1) or off (0). Whereas, analog chips can be a range of values between 0 and 1.
The technology driving that is driving this is memristors (memory resistors). These chips have ‘memory’ and remember the amount of charge that has previously flowed through them. IBM has used this phenomenon to start developing a prototype chip that they claim is more energy efficient.
No real physical system has been built though, and experts say it is very difficult to produce computers based on memristors. Nevertheless, this tech sounds like it could be revolutionary!
Side Dishes
Some more tasty stories this week:
Insider Insights
Tools To Boost Python Code Quality
Python is the gold standard when it comes to implementing data science solutions. But how many of us ensure our code adheres to best practices? The good news is that some tools and packages make your Python code production standard for you! This Medium post details how you can use isort, black and mypy to improve your code quality.
Reading & Listening
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth
I have just started ‘This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends’ by Nicole Perlroth, which is about cyber weapons and how they have transformed the digital landscape. Though I’m only 50 pages in, it's already proving to be an exciting read!