Author: Akin Naphtal

Disney has reportedly disbanded its metaverse division, leading to the dismissal of around 50 employees, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. This move comes as part of the company’s plan to reduce its workforce by nearly 7,000 people. Mike White, who was leading the metaverse team, will reportedly remain with Disney, although his new role within the company remains unclear. READ ALSO:Fetch.ai raises $40 million in funding for its autonomous agents and decentralized machine learning platform Amazon and IIT Bombay team up for multi-year AI-ML research initiative in India CTM360 to showcase its cybersecurity platform at RSA…

Cambridge-based startup Fetch.ai has secured $40m in funding to support the development of its tooling for autonomous agents, decentralised machine learning and network infrastructure, which will enable communication and actions between AI applications to make their work more actionable. The company, which uses blockchain technology, has already created a FET token that will be used on its platform. CEO Humayun Sheikh believes there is a role for Fetch.ai in the creation of learning models, providing a more equitable and traceable approach to AI by way of distributed ledgers for entities to feed data into those models. READ ALSO:Amazon and IIT…

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and Amazon have announced a partnership to collaborate on artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI-ML) projects in speech, language and multimodal domains. The Amazon IIT Bombay AI-ML initiative will be situated in IIT Bombay’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering and will fund research projects, Ph.D. fellowships and community events over multiple years. Milind Atrey, Dean of Research and Development at IIT Bombay, stated that the collaboration would spur development in AI and ML domains, as well as other areas, through community projects, research projects and fellowships. Rohit Prasad, Senior Vice President and Head…

CTM360, a leading cybersecurity technology operating globally, will participate in the RSA Conference 2023 in San Francisco, California, from April 24th to 27th. The RSA Conference is one of the largest cybersecurity conferences worldwide, where cybersecurity experts and professionals from various industries gather to demonstrate their technologies. With the theme “Stronger Together”, the event’s focus is on building community strength and encouraging dialogue and collaboration across the cybersecurity industry. READ ALSO:Government of Ghana launches $1.2 million DigSMART program to accelerate digital transformation in the public sector Microsoft introduces new Exchange Online feature to block emails from unsecured on-prem servers Prominent…

The Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation in partnership with Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), has launched a $1.2 million digital skill training programme, named DigSMART. Other partners are the Ghana Cares ‘OBAATANPA PROGRAMME’, the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) and the Ghana -India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE) The programme is aimed at building digital skills, culture and leadership within the public sector to determine a more cohesive and accelerated digital transformation for service delivery. The Six months programme is scheduled to kick start from April to September 2023 at…

Microsoft is preparing a new feature for its Exchange Online service that will help in blocking emails from unsecured on-prem Exchange servers. The feature aims to reduce the risks of malicious emails reaching organizations while also encouraging customers with unsupported or unpatched Exchange servers to secure their on-premises environments. Administrators will receive notifications if their on-prem exchange servers are unsupported or unpatched from security threats and will be reminded to update their infrastructure. According to Microsoft, it’s critical for customers to protect their Exchange servers by staying current with updates and taking other actions to strengthen their security environment. The…

Over 1,100 signatories, including influential figures such as Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Tristan Harris, have signed an open letter calling on all AI labs to halt the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months. The letter argues that AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, raising concerns about the potential negative effects of AI technology. The signatories ask whether machines should be allowed to flood information channels with propaganda and untruth, whether all jobs, including fulfilling ones, should be automated away and whether nonhuman minds should be developed that could eventually…

Australian biomedical engineers have developed a small flexible robot named F3DB, that can 3D print biomaterials directly inside the human body, with the goal of simplifying medical procedures in the future. The F3DB has a three-axis printing head that can bend and twist using hydraulics on the tip of a soft robotic arm. The nozzle can print pre-programmed shapes or can be operated manually if more complex or undetermined printing is required. 3D bioprinting involves printing natural tissue-like structures using living cells and other natural tissues, known as “bio-ink”, to repair organ or tissue damage or ruptured blood vessels. Currently,…

Billionaire Elon Musk has criticized Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for his “limited” understanding of artificial intelligence (AI). Musk’s comments came in response to a tweet by Sandy Kory, who praised Gates’ leadership at Microsoft and his approach to AI. Kory was citing a lengthy essay by Gates titled “The age of A.I. has begun”, in which the billionaire discussed the potential impact of AI on employment, healthcare and education. Musk, who was one of the earliest investors in OpenAI, a research company co-founded by him and others, responded to Kory’s tweet by saying, “I remember the early meetings with Gates.…

The electronic payment infrastructure for the Riyadh Buses project has been confirmed as ready by Saudi Payments, a subsidiary of the Saudi Central Bank. The Riyadh Buses project is part of the King Abdulaziz Public Transport Project and aims to provide integrated solutions for public transportation in Riyadh. Saudi Payments will offer flexible payment options to the project’s users, including contactless payment cards, which aligns with the financial sector development program’s goals of increasing digital payment adoption. READ ALSO:UK Government unveils plans to open up transport data for app developers and innovation Ghana-Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, cuts…