Tag Archives: Microsoft Corp

Microsoft Corp. seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the Artificial Intelligence boom; Three Mile Island will be that source

Important Takeaways:

  • Microsoft AI Needs So Much Power It’s Tapping Site of US Nuclear Meltdown
  • The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom.
  • Constellation Energy Corp., the biggest US operator of reactors, expects Three Mile Island to go back into service in 2028, according to a statement Friday.
  • While one of the site’s two units permanently closed almost a half-century ago after the worst US nuclear accident, Constellation is planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019 because it couldn’t compete economically.
  • Microsoft has agreed to purchase the energy for two decades and declined to disclose financial terms.
  • This is the first time Microsoft has secured a dedicated, 100% nuclear facility for its use.
  • The decision is the latest sign of surging interest in the nuclear industry as power demand for AI soars.
  • “There’s no version of the future of this country that doesn’t rely on these nuclear assets.”
  • Wind and solar power outputs can vary, while a nuclear plant generally runs constantly and requires a customer that can take all of that electricity
  • That makes tech companies selling cloud computing an ideal option.

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Big U.S. companies form group to boost hiring of minorities in New York

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – Leaders from major U.S. companies, including banks and tech giants, have formed a group aimed at increasing the hiring of individuals from minority communities in New York.

The New York Jobs CEO Council, which counts chief executives from 27 firms among its members, aims to hire 100,000 people from low-income Black, Latino and Asian communities by 2030.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co, IBM CEO, Arvind Krishna, and Accenture CEO, Julie Sweet, will co-chair the group.

Other companies in the group include Amazon.com Inc., Google, Microsoft Corp. and Goldman Sachs, according to a press statement.

U.S. companies have been under increasing pressure to do more to provide minority groups with access to opportunities in the wake of anti-racism protests sparked by the death of a 46-year-old African-American man, George Floyd. Floyd died in May after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The protests also came as minorities were disproportionately represented in coronavirus deaths, and lower-income communities in the United States were hit hard economically.

“Today’s economic crisis is exacerbating economic and racial divides and exposing systemic barriers to opportunity,” Dimon said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, adding that often high-achieving people across New York were not given opportunities at the city’s top employers.

“Young people in low-income and minority communities feel this failure the most. Unless we actively work to close the gap, COVID-19 will make matters worse,” said the opinion piece which was co-authored with Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, the chancellor of the City University of New York.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

LinkedIn cuts 960 jobs as pandemic puts the brakes on corporate hiring

By Supantha Mukherjee

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp’s professional networking site LinkedIn said on Tuesday it would cut about 960 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce, as the coronavirus pandemic is having a sustained impact on demand for its recruitment products.

California-based LinkedIn helps employers assess a candidate’s suitability for a role and employees use the platform to find a new job.

Jobs will be cut across sales and hiring divisions of the group globally. Announcing the plan in a message posted on LinkedIn’s website, Chief Executive Ryan Roslansky said the company would provide at least 10 weeks of severance pay as well as health insurance for a year for U.S. employees, and will hire for newly-created roles from laid-off staff.

“I want you to know these are the only layoffs we are planning,” Roslansky said in his message. Affected staff, who have not yet been told, would be able to keep company-issued cell phones, laptops, and recently purchased equipment to help them work from home while making career transitions, he said.

As lockdowns to contain the coronavirus have hit businesses around the world, LinkedIn’s business has been hit as companies lay off staff or sharply curtail hiring.

LinkedIn said employees affected by its job cuts will be informed this week and they will start receiving invitations in the next few hours to meetings to learn more about next steps.

“If you don’t receive a meeting invite, you are not directly impacted by this change,” Roslansky said.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Ethical question takes center stage at Silicon Valley summit on artificial intelligence

FILE PHOTO: A research support officer and PhD student works on his artificial intelligence projects to train robots to autonomously carry out various tasks, at the Department of Artificial Intelligence in the Faculty of Information Communication Technology at the University of Malta in Msida, Malta February 8, 2019. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

By Jeffrey Dastin and Paresh Dave

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Technology executives were put on the spot at an artificial intelligence summit this week, each faced with a simple question growing out of increased public scrutiny of Silicon Valley: ‘When have you put ethics before your business interests?’

A Microsoft Corp executive pointed to how the company considered whether it ought to sell nascent facial recognition technology to certain customers, while a Google executive spoke about the company’s decision not to market a face ID service at all.

The big news at the summit, in San Francisco, came from Google, which announced it was launching a council of public policy and other external experts to make recommendations on AI ethics to the company.

The discussions at EmTech Digital, run by the MIT Technology Review, underscored how companies are making a bigger show of their moral compass.

At the summit, activists critical of Silicon Valley questioned whether big companies could deliver on promises to address ethical concerns. The teeth the companies’ efforts have may sharply affect how governments regulate the firms in the future.

“It is really good to see the community holding companies accountable,” David Budden, research engineering team lead at Alphabet Inc’s DeepMind, said of the debates at the conference. “Companies are thinking of the ethical and moral implications of their work.”

Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president for global affairs, said the internet giant debated whether to publish research on automated lip-reading. While beneficial to people with disabilities, it risked helping authoritarian governments surveil people, he said.

Ultimately, the company found the research was “more suited for person to person lip-reading than surveillance so on that basis decided to publish” the research, Walker said. The study was published last July.”

Kebotix, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup seeking to use AI to speed up the development of new chemicals, used part of its time on stage to discuss ethics. Chief Executive Jill Becker said the company reviews its clients and partners to guard against misuse of its technology.

Still, Rashida Richardson, director of policy research for the AI Now Institute, said little around ethics has changed since Amazon.com Inc, Facebook Inc, Microsoft and others launched the nonprofit Partnership on AI to engage the public on AI issues.

“There is a real imbalance in priorities” for tech companies, Richardson said. Considering “the amount of resources and the level of acceleration that’s going into commercial products, I don’t think the same level of investment is going into making sure their products are also safe and not discriminatory.”

Google’s Walker said the company has some 300 people working to address issues such as racial bias in algorithms but the company has a long way to go.

“Baby steps is probably a fair characterization,” he said.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin and Paresh Dave in San Francisco; Editing by Greg Mitchell)