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| AI concept image generated by Dream by WOMBO. |
- Alibaba's Eddie Wu, Group CEO and head of Alibaba Cloud, was also tasked with leading the Taobao and Tmall Group. Wu replaced Trudy Dai, one of Alibaba's original 18 founders. He became Group CEO in September.
Alibaba Group’s research institute DAMO Academy unveiled two large language models (LLMs) specific to Southeast Asia. SeaLLM and the conversationally-finetuned SeaLLM-chat come in two sizes each: 13 billion and 7 billion parameters. The models can process Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, Malay, Khmer, Lao, Tagalog, and Burmese, and perform tasks that better align with local customs, style and legal stipulations.
Alibaba Cloud opened access to the 72-billion-parameter and 1.8-billion-parameter versions of its proprietary foundation model Tongyi Qianwen.
Its Qwen-Audio and Qwen-Audio-Chat, a pretrained model that understands audio and its conversationally-finetuned version respectively, are now accessible for research and commercial purposes.
- AMD launched the Ryzen 8040 series of mobile processors, most of which feature neural processing units (NPUs), and shared that Ryzen AI 1.0 software offers a pre-optimised model zoo on Hugging Face. Laptops with Ryzen AI can offload AI models to the NPU, thereby freeing up the CPU for other activities.
The company also announced general availability of the AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators and the AMD Instinct MI300A accelerated processing unit (APU), designed for high-performance computing and AI workloads.
Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, Supermicro showcased AMD Instinct-based hardware at the launch.
AMD also introduced the ROCm 6 open software platform and committed to contributing libraries to the open-source community for AI software development.
- ASEAN and Japan issued a Joint Vision Statement on ASEAN-Japan Friendship and Cooperation detailing plans to collaborate on various areas, including technology. In addition to continued cooperation on science and technology, ASEAN and Japan committed to:
- Enhance cooperation with the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) towards the realisation of smart cities in ASEAN Encourage creating use cases and best practices of supply chain data sharing and utilisation, together with supporting digital infrastructure, a platform, rules and standards
- Co-establish of interoperable data infrastructures (IDIs) and the localisation and implementation of a Digital Lifeline Development Plan (DLDP) in the ASEAN region by reinforcing the Ouranos Ecosystem
- May: The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan launched the Ouranos Ecosystem, which is designed to accelerate innovation through linking information systems that are operated and managed by different entities.
- Promote free, open and trusted data flows
- Improve the region’s digital connectivity through access to critical and emerging technologies and advanced telecommunications technology
- Support initiatives to strengthen broadband penetration, affordability and universal access in ASEAN
- Promote greater cooperation in areas such as the digital economy, AI governance, cybersecurity, and information and communications technology (ICT)
- Promote trade digitalisation and data linkage based on international standards
- Support ASEAN’s efforts on AI governance and ethics
- Promote membership of ASEAN member states in the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI)
- Support digital transformation and capacity building for ASEAN micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs)
- Support digital startups such as those in the fields of AI, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT) and logistics technology as well as promote Japanese investment and business matching for digital startups in the region; and
- Support ASEAN’s efforts in the regulatory pilot space to facilitate digital cross-border data flows to enable self-driving cars in ASEAN.
- China clamps down on incentives designed to encourage online gaming.
- Dell Technologies launched enterprise data storage advancements and validation with the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD AI infrastructure.
- The European Parliament and Council negotiators reached a provisional agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Act. While from Europe, this pioneering regulation aims to "ensure that fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability are protected from high-risk AI", and establish obligations for AI based on its potential risks and level of impact. Governments around the world will likely use this legislation to guide their own AI strategies.
"We share the goals of enabling AI’s safe and trustworthy development and creating an open, pro-innovation AI ecosystem, and recognise that both government and industry have roles to play. Recently, IBM announced watsonx.governance to provide organisations with the toolkit they need to manage risk, embrace transparency, and anticipate compliance with AI-focused regulation like this," commented Jean-Marc Leclerc, Director of EU Affairs, IBM in a December statement about the act.
- Google introduced Gemini, its most capable and general model to date. It can combine different kinds of information, such as text, audio, video and code, and runs everywhere, from mobile phones to data centres, in three tiers: Ultra, Pro and Nano.
- H3C, in collaboration with Spirent Communications, completed the industry's first large-scale 800GE test with a high density of up to 64 800G ports.
- Huawei completed a world-first trial with etisalat by e& for the first 1.6 Tbps per wavelength technology trial on an optical transport network.
- IBM and Meta launch the AI Alliance to advance open, safe and responsible AI. Founding members include vendors AMD, Dell Technologies, Intel, Linux Foundation, Oracle, Red Hat, ServiceNow, and the Sony Group. Organisations in APME include the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Keio University, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, and the University of Tokyo.
At the time of the announcement, Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman and CEO said: "The progress we continue to witness in AI is a testament to open innovation and collaboration across communities of creators, scientists, academics and business leaders. This is a pivotal moment in defining the future of AI. IBM is proud to partner with like-minded organisations through the AI Alliance to ensure this open ecosystem drives an innovative AI agenda underpinned by safety, accountability and scientific rigour."
Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs of Meta noted: “We believe it’s better when AI is developed openly – more people can access the benefits, build innovative products and work on safety. The AI Alliance brings together researchers, developers and companies to share tools and knowledge that can help us all make progress whether models are shared openly or not. We’re looking forward to working with partners to advance the state-of-the-art in AI and help everyone build responsibly.”
Added Lisa Su, AMD CEO and Chair: “At AMD, we are committed to advancing technology through collaboration. The history of our industry highlights how open, standards-based development leveraging the capabilities of the entire industry both accelerate innovation and ensure technology advances have the largest positive impact.
"By embracing open standards and transparency across all aspects of the rapidly developing AI ecosystem, we can help ensure the transformational benefits of responsible AI are broadly available. We are proud to join with other industry leaders as a founding member of the AI Alliance and look forward to working together to ensure the rapid advances in AI are a force for positive change.”
Dr Sun Sumei, Acting Executive Director, A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R) commented: “As a research institute under A*STAR, I²R spearheads research initiatives and actively strives to enhance the tangible impact of our innovations to address the national needs of Singapore and its people. We are proud to be a founding member of this AI Alliance, which will allow us to play a pivotal role in the ecosystem, contribute to the development of ethical and trustworthy AI innovations with well-regulated AI models for impactful real-world applications.
"Through the collective efforts with the rest of the members, we believe that the evolution, application and adoption of AI will reach new heights.”
- The Oman Cyber Defense Centre joined Microsoft’s Government Security Program.
- NVIDIA announced that 500 RTX games and applications are using NVIDIA DLSS, ray tracing or AI technologies.NVIDIA introduced RTX in 2018.
"Ray tracing was once limited to high-end movie production. NVIDIA’s RTX
graphics cards have made this cinematic quality accessible in real-time
gaming, enhancing experiences with dynamic lighting, reflections and
shadows," noted Keoki Young in a blog post.
- PayPal appointed Suzan Kereere President, Global Markets, effective January 1, 2024.
- Salesforce rolls out Unlimited Edition+ (UE+), a simplified technology package that brings together Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Einstein AI, Data Cloud, Slack, Tableau, and Industries in a single offering. Data Cloud Vector Database, built into Einstein 1, will unify all business data, including unstructured data like PDFs, emails, and transcripts, with customer relationship management (CRM) data to enable grounded AI prompts, eliminating the need for costly and complex finetuning of large language models (LLMs).
- ServiceNow announced a 5-year strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS). From 2024, the ServiceNow platform and solutions will be available as a software as‑a‑service (Saas) offering in the AWS Marketplace. In addition, the companies will co‑develop and launch industry‑specific, AI‑powered business applications to host on AWS and list in AWS Marketplace.
- Singapore launched its 2nd National AI Strategy (NAIS 2.0), focusing on excellence and empowerment. NAIS 2.0 outlines the country's ambition and commitment to build a trusted and responsible AI ecosystem, driving innovation and growth through AI, and empowering its people and businesses to understand and engage with AI.
IMDA partnered with AI Singapore (AISG) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) to launch the National Multimodal LLM Programme. This S$70 M initiative will develop Singapore’s research and engineering capabilities in multimodal large language models.
The inaugural Singapore Conference on AI for the Global Good (SCAI) resulted in a set of problem statements for AI stakeholders.
The Singapore Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) and IMDA signed eight memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with partners from Shenzhen and launched 14 new joint projects, including projects on the use of AI for logistics in e-commerce, green energy storage, smart rehabilitation care, and smart city solutions.
- Singtel is the first to successfully trial 5G RedCap technology for Internet of Things (IoT) devices in Singapore.
The company is also building AI data centres, which incorporate more efficient cooling solutions like direct-to-chip liquid or immersive cooling to avoid affecting the performance of the expensive GPUs that run AI workloads. A data centre in Singapore, currently under construction, will be Singtel's first AI data centre. DC Tuas is also designed to mitigate carbon impact while driving greater energy efficiency by incorporating liquid cooling capabilities. Singtel is also working to transition the energy for its data centres to green and renewable sources.
Besides DC Tuas, data centre projects in Thailand and Indonesia will increase its total pipeline capacity beyond 200 MW from its current operational capacity of 62 MW in Singapore.
- Tesla recalls vehicles in the US to address Autopilot issues.
- Thales completed the acquisition of Imperva earlier than expected.
- TikTok goes beyond mobile phones to upgrade experience for larger screens like tablets and foldable devices. The company also invested US$1.5 B in Indonesia’s GoTo Gojek Tokopedia, paving the way to restarting an online shopping business that had been halted by the government.
November 2023
- Alibaba introduced OKKI AI, a tool for businesses which automates client-facing operations. Together with Smart Assistant, OKKI AI is expected to "empower suppliers to navigate the complexities of international trade".
The Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group also revealed that it is piloting Aidge, its first artificial intelligence-powered suite of application programming interfaces. During the pilot, merchants can use Aidge to help boost conversion rates and cut costs.
Alibaba's landmark 11.11 sale, which ran from October 24 to November 11, saw 402 brands surpassing US$13.72 M in gross merchandise value (GMV) just after midnight on November 11. Additionally, Alibaba said 38,000 brands more than doubled their GMV year-on-year, and that Taobao and Tmall’s merchants used Alibaba Cloud's AI tools over 1.5 billion times from the run-up to 11.11 and through the campaign itself.
- Amazon released Amazon Q, a gen AI assistant for work. The AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2 were launched. The AWS-designed chips are designed to make running generative AI and other workloads faster, less expensive, and more energy efficient.
- Australia released the 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy, which was created to improve national cybersecurity, manage cyber risks and better support citizens and Australian businesses to manage the cyber environment around them. Six 'cyber shields' will be deployed:
- Strong businesses and citizens
- Safe technology
- World-class threat sharing and blocking
- Protected critical infrastructure
- Sovereign capabilities
- Resilient region and global leadership.
- Autodesk introduced Autodesk AI for Design and Make, which is available in Autodesk products and native to its Design and Make Platform.
- AXIS Capital closed the first cyber catastrophe bond, a US$75 million transaction providing several of the company’s subsidiaries with fully collateralised indemnity reinsurance protection for systemic cyber events on a per occurrence basis.
"This past year we saw the issuance of the first cyber catastrophe bond by a major cyber insurer as a means to access alternative capital to the traditional reinsurance market. In 2024, we will see more cyber insurers pursue this route,” said Ben Beeson, VP, BlueVoyant.
"In 2023, we continued to see the insurance market struggle to define a cyber war event and give insurance buyers clarity on what is and is not insurable. In 2024, we will see the emergence of a dedicated cyber war insurance market similar to what has existed in the marine insurance market for years with specialist war underwriters. Reinsurance capacity continues to remain constrained relative to the magnitude of the risk."
- Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng stepped down after pleading guilty to money laundering. Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world and is now helmed by Richard Teng. The now-defunct FTX, once a Binance competitor, saw its founder Sam Bankman-Fried convicted of fraud.
- Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware.
- Bytedance is reported to have shut down Nuverse, its gaming arm.
- Crowdstrike opened an expanded Asian hub in Singapore. The new facility offers double the capacity of the previous premises.
- Dell Technologies delivered professional services for
Microsoft, including services for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
- Dropbox will use NVIDIA’s AI Foundry to build custom models and improve AI-powered knowledge work with Dropbox Dash Universal Search Tool and Dropbox AI.
- ESET unified its consumer product portfolio, introducing three new subscription tiers.
- Google Cloud opens a Saudi Arabia region.
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) collaborated with NVIDIA to deliver an
enterprise-class, full-stack Gen AI solution. The company also launched
new AI-native architecture and hybrid cloud solutions. A supercomputing solution for generative AI
to accelerate the training and tuning of AI models using private data sets was further introduced mid of the month.
- Huawei and Indonesia's XL Asiata completed a live network trial and initiated the first commercial launch of iMaster NCE Network Digital Map with an Asia-Pacific carrier. The network digital map is based on the end-to-end (E2E) SRv6 network architecture and software-defined networking (SDN) automation technology. It enables traffic optimisation and automatic load balancing, and can complete optimisation and self-healing in minutes to boost the 4G/5G user experience.
Huawei and Sharp also signed a new long-term global patent cross-licensing agreement covering cellular standard essential patents, including for 4G and 5G.
The company further announced it had brought connectivity to 90 million people in remote regions in nearly 80 countries following its pledge to the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Partner2Connect (P2C) Digital Coalition.
- IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the general availability of Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Db2, a fully-managed cloud offering that helps manage data for AI workloads across hybrid cloud environments.
- Microsoft announced Microsoft Copilot Studio, a low-code tool to customise Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and build standalone copilots. Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR (previously Microsoft 365 Defender), and Microsoft Security Copilot were also combined into a unified security platform.
- Microsoft and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) of Singapore teamed up to offer complimentary workshops for 2,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them acquire foundational data use and protection skills, including for AI.
- Dell Technologies, HPE and Lenovo will be the first to integrate NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking technologies for AI into their server lineups.
- OpenAI rolls out custom versions of ChatGPT for specific purposes: GPTs. In a shock announcement, CEO Sam Altman departed as CEO and left the board of directors, joined Microsoft, then rejoined OpenAI.
- SGTech, Singapore's largest tech association, formed the Digital Trust Centre of Excellence Advisory. The Advisory is expected to help shape policies and strategies to promote and enhance digital trust.
- The Sustainable Tropical Data Centre Testbed (STDCT) – the first of its kind for the tropical environment – went live in Singapore. Hosted by the National University of Singapore (NUS)’s College of Design and Engineering and led by NUS and the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, the project aims to fast-track the adoption of innovative and sustainable data centre cooling solutions tailored for the tropical climate.
- SolarWinds appointed Bharat Bedi as MD of its Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) operations. Bedi also heads strategic alliances business globally. This follows the naming of Rain Hu as Country Leader for Singapore and Taiwan in August. Abhijit Banerjee subsequently became the MD of SolarWind's India operations, including the region of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), in December.
October 2023
- Activision Blizzard King joins Team XBox.
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| Source: Microsoft. The new Surface devices. |
- Alibaba launched a Southeast Asian pavilion on its platform to smooth the way for B2B commerce. The pavilion is designed to help merchants target Southeast Asia.
Alibaba subsidiary Tmall Taobao World targeted key markets, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia with a cross-border shopping service. The Taobao PLUS service aims to provide a hassle-free shopping experience with lowered free shipping thresholds, expanded local return options and dedicated customer service.
- Amazon Bedrock became generally available. The fully-managed AWS service makes large language models and other foundation models from leading AI companies accessible through a single API.
- Apple unveiled a 24" iMac and a new Macbook Pro laptop lineup. All of the devices feature M3 chips.
- Google launched Android 14, featuring new customisation capabilties, more control over health and safety, and improved accessibility. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro smartphones also debuted, running on Google Tensor G3 and sporting powerful new camera features. The Pixel 8 Pro is the first smartphone with built-in AI.
- Huawei and Telkomsel signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for joint innovation on Superior City. Both parties will jointly explore and apply the latest technologies and emerging 5G applications to build ubiquitous high-quality networks in pioneering cities.
- Indonesia's National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) set up a computer security incident response team (CSIRT) to prevent cyberattacks. As of late October, there had been over 300 million cyberattacks in Indonesia in 2023.
"The mantra that organisations should stick by is ‘prevention is better than cure’. Preparedness is still nascent, and the available talent pool falls short of the required numbers and levels of expertise. As a result, organisations often underestimate the need for cybersecurity—usually due to a lack of understanding," said Teo Xiang Zheng, VP, Advisory, Ensign InfoSecurity.
"It is essential to emphasise that cybersecurity is not just a technology-only consideration, but one that impacts the entire business operations. The key lies in planning. By establishing a secure foundation for digital transformation, businesses can confidently navigate the evolving threat landscape.
"Implementing a Zero-Trust policy is increasingly a necessity. Multifactor authentication, tokenisation of sensitive data, endpoint management and protection, and network segmentation are key elements too. While individually these may not be the safest methods, combined they can do just enough to raise the bar and cost for the threat actors to be put off from attacking an organisation."
- Microsoft introduced new Surface devices built for AI.
- Microsoft offered a five-point blueprint for the public governance of AI specially for the Japanese context.
- Japan was in the limelight with the sixth Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Lab worldwide opened in Kobe. Microsoft Singapore and the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) deepened a multi-year collaboration, committing to jointly strengthen cybersecurity foundations and protect Singapore’s cyberspace. The two will also expand on international partnerships.
In Australia, Microsoft announced an A$5 B investment to expand its hyperscale cloud computing and AI infrastructure in Australia over the next two years – the single largest investment in its 40-year history in the country. This investment will also grow Microsoft’s local data centre footprint from 20 sites to a total of 29.
- At least 13 million Philippine Health Insurance (PhilHealth) members were affected by a ransomware cyberattack.
- The SG Cyber Leadership and Alumni Programme is launched in Singapore. The initiative offers training at the Executive, Foundation and Advanced levels, and is open to all countries. A SG Cyber Associates programme was also set up to provide foundational and targeted cybersecurity training for non-cybersecurity professionals.
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| Source: Veeam. Spiteri. |
- The United Nations announced a new Artificial Intelligence Advisory Body on risks, opportunities and international governance of AI. Members from the APME region include:
- Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence of the United Arab Emirates, United Arab Emirates
- Latifa Al-Abdulkarim, Member of the Shura Council (Saudi Parliament), Assistant Professor of Computer Science at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
- Natasha Crampton, Chief Responsible AI Officer at Microsoft, New Zealand
- Nighat Dad, Executive Director of the Digital Rights Foundation Pakistan, Pakistan
- Arisa Ema, Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan
- Hiroaki Kitano, Chief Technology Officer of Sony Group Corporation, Japan
- Haksoo Ko, Chairman of Republic of Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), Republic of Korea
- Nazneen Rajani, Lead Researcher at Hugging Face, India
- He Ruimin, Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer & Deputy Chief Digital Technology Officer, Government of Singapore, Singapore
- Sharad Sharma, Co-founder iSPIRT Foundation, India
- Yi Zeng, Professor and Director of Brain-inspired Cognitive AI Lab, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
- Zhang Linghan, Professor at the Institute of Data Law, China University of Political Science and Law, China
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