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New Chip Offers Artificial Intelligence On A USB Stick (pcmag.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "Pretty much any device with a USB port will be able to use advanced neural networks," reports PC Magazine, announcing the new Fathom Neural Compute Stick from chip-maker (and Google supplier) Movidius. "Once it's plugged into a Linux-powered device, it will enable that device to perform neural network functions like language comprehension, image recognition, and pattern detection," and without even using an external power supply.
Device manufacturers could now move AI-level processing from the cloud down to end users, PC Magazine reports, with one New York computer science professor saying the technology means that now "every robot, big and small, can now have state-of-the-art vision capabilities."
The article argues that this standalone, ultra-low power neural network could start the creation of a whole new category of next-generation consumer technologies.
Device manufacturers could now move AI-level processing from the cloud down to end users, PC Magazine reports, with one New York computer science professor saying the technology means that now "every robot, big and small, can now have state-of-the-art vision capabilities."
The article argues that this standalone, ultra-low power neural network could start the creation of a whole new category of next-generation consumer technologies.
This is all very interesting. However, there is no indication of when the sticks will become generally available. Their website indicates that they intend to create 1000 sticks shortly for use by selected customers. It is difficult to know how real this is, actually.
Well, first time I've seen that in a long time. Sounds like this Xkcd (https://xkcd.com/644/) might have something to do with it.
We should first create AI before we start selling it on fucking USB sticks.
I can see a niche market for such a thing(aerial robotics, marketing research, statistics data collection for some other purpose such as at a kiosk) but the question is: is it less effort to integrate than rolling your own with other frameworks? Unless there is a severe power budget or weight limitation of the application(IE aerial drones), the notion of "plug and play" is dependent on how much the device does, and how easy it makes it to add the capabilities it doesn't.
more like a magic 8-ball with a USB connector.
This is AI on a USB stick is smart enough to know that it was go into the drawer with all the non-AI USB sticks that I don't use anymore?
and without even using an external power supply.
What are the 5 volts provided by the USB bus if not "external power"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
That question is absurd. A straight linux nerd? Please.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Can anyone explain to me why I should care about this?
I doubt it.
Why would a neural network on a stick be preferable to any of the dozens of free and open neural network libraries already available without dedicated hardware requirements?
Cut a small hole into a coconut and name it Jane.
This USB stick will do a better job of editing Slashdot than the humans,
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
"New Chip Offers Artificial Intelligence..."
They keep using that phrase, but I do not think that phrase means what they think that phrase means.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Fuck off. If you want me to have even a passing interest in this i want to see how easy it will be to use and port applications BEFORE I give you my details.
Because that's how you get Skynet. - Archer
http://uploads.movidius.com/1441734401-Myriad-2-product-brief.pdf
Seems to provide a comprehensive list of features of the chip. I still can't find any documentation on the memory included in the USB stick itself, however..
It also means that soon ever USB stick will have that or something similar in it, which means you won't be able to rely on them for keeping your data secure, and not under control of others.
But, maybe in the short term we can take advantage of this as a way to establish convert communications channels.
For example:
* Tell people what kind of monsters the lefties are. They taught Hitler how to be a brute in Russia. The wholesale killing of the Romanovs was just the start of their multi million killings.
* Expose Mohammedism. It is as evil as Communism. And it has similar goals, including world domination.
* Throw out the TV. It is a programming machine using your ears and your eyes. If they could, they would also electrically generate smell for you. Well, for them, so that you are one of their obendient slaves.
* Blast their covert aid for the Mohammedist War in Syria. Stop believing that they 'fight' ISIS. No, the opposite is true.
So - these are some things you can do. Start today and help many other people to make the world a better place.
One "troll" comment at a time.
You and your 1% folks are so evil, you openly discuss plans to assassinate Donald Trump. One of your NYTimes hacks did it.
And of course you try to smear Linux with the Sodom and Gomorrea practices you promote yourself via 1% orgs.
...if you are stupid enough to hand them relevant data on a silver plate. Like using ZuckBook, G-Mail and the like.
Patriots use an RPI and ssh. And similar things running on the RPI.
And for top secret patriotic information, we use a petrol carriage to meet other people in the woods. They cannot bug up all the forests.
Now if we can get 90% of Americans to have a USB port coming out of their head...
perform neural network functions like language comprehension
They let on it was bullshit with this one. Ain't no AI that can do language comprehension (natural language processing doesn't actually comprehend language) let alone one on a USB stick. If it can correctly answer questions like:
"The city councilmen refused the demonstrators a permit because they feared/advocated violence. Who feared/advocated violence?"
...then I'll believe they're getting closer to AI that can comprehend language.
I'm surprised Slashdot commentators aren't catching this one. Everything in the article is nonsense. Neural networks, even deep NNs, are handled easily with either cloud computing or simply a bit of time. The article mentions bandwidth problems which makes no sense, as trained neural network require very little in terms of space or computational power at runtime. The bottleneck for deep NNs are quality training sets, which this device doesn't solve.
If anything, it creates more problems than it could possibly solve by removing the crowd-sourcing capabilities of training through a class of devices and completely localizing training to a single device, which is incredibly limited in the amount of data it can provide to train the network.
Just, it's all complete nonsense.
I want an "AI button" on the front of the case, just like the old Turbo button
which gave incredible improvements in performance.
USB, USB, USB!
So who has any spare ports available anyways?
Most of these "sticks" I've seen are so wide that they block adjacent ports, so that means it will take up a pair (at least, all the USB ports I've seen have been a pair here, a pair there).
You have devices that need to be powered by the computer, and cannot go into a hub.
You have your high-speed devices that take up a full port.
You have printers that refuse to work properly through a hub.
By the time you're done? I'm glad that USB is hot swappable, because I'm constantly swapping already.