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The Morning Download: Amazon Rolls Out 'Plug and Play' AI
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Good morning, CIOs. Getting artificial intelligence projects off the ground remains a challenge at many companies. A July study from International Data Corp. on the AI efforts of over 2,400 global organizations found that a quarter of them had up to a 50% failure rate. A major issue: the lack of skilled personnel.
Amazon Tuesday unveiled two artificial-intelligence services, Amazon Kendra, an AI-enabled enterprise search tool, and Contact Lens for call centers. Both are designed to help its cloud customers incorporate functionality such as natural language processing, but without the long waits often associated with AI-related projects, the company said.
"You don't have to get into all the weeds and get the training data and label the data and all those sorts of things,” Matt Wood, vice president for artificial intelligence services at Amazon Web Services, tells CIO Journal's Agam Shah.
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WSJ Pro Cybersecurity's Catherine Stupp interviews Jo De Vliegher, chief information officer at Norsk Hydro, center, and Jamil Farshchi, chief information security officer at Equifax, right. PHOTO: JAMES RUNDLE/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Highlights from Tuesday's WSJ Pro Cybersecurity Executive Forum in New York
Equifax, Norsk Hydro executives describe events after attacks. Jo de Vliegher, chief information officer at Norsk Hydro, described the initial moments after the Norwegian aluminum and energy company became infected with ransomware in March as “pure chaos.” (WSJ)
NSA plans to guidance on cybersecurity in the cloud. Anne Neuberger, director of the National Security Agency’s Cybersecurity Directorate, said that one of her division’s goals is to produce advisories for businesses and other organizations. The advisories will describe attack methods used by nation-state and advanced hackers and will lay out methods to counter them. The Wall Street Journal's James Rundle and Catherine Stupp have more.
Cloud security. It's murky. “Capital One was the poster child for doing things right in cloud security,” said Patty Smith, vice president and chief information security officer at Cox Automotive. Many companies that used Capital One as a model for cloud security are now saying, “If it could happen to them, what about us,” Ms. Smith said. (WSJ)
AI to the rescue. Many corporate security chiefs, in a bid to turn the tables on attackers by better detecting the misuse of data and keeping it safe, are accelerating the development of advanced capabilities. “Artificial intelligence is a backbone of security initiatives,” said Camille François, chief innovation officer of social-media analytics firm Graphika. (WSJ)
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“You can armchair quarterback any breach and the response. I think Equifax actually did a great job in responding to this situation”
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— Jamil Farshchi, chief information security officer of Equifax
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Sundar Pichai, pictured in October, joined Google in 2004 and is credited with helping popularize the Chrome web browser and expand the Android operating system. PHOTO: BRANDON WADE/REUTERS
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Google co-founders give up management roles. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who had been chief executive and president, respectively, of Google parent Alphabet, said Tuesday they would hand control immediately to Sundar Pichai, Google’s existing CEO. They remain on Alphabet’s board and will still together control a majority of voting power over company decisions under Alphabet’s dual-class share structure. (WSJ)
Musk takes the stand. Elon Musk told a Los Angeles jury that a Twitter message he sent last year suggesting a man in Thailand was a pedophile wasn’t, in fact, meant to connotate a dictionary definition of the word. It was his second court appearance this year over his use of Twitter. (WSJ)
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In August, Salesforce completed the purchase of Tableau Software for more than $15 billion in stock. PHOTO: VICTOR J. BLUE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Salesforce sustains growth in billings. Co-CEO Marc Benioff told analysts Tuesday that despite economic slowdowns in several markets, companies were continuing to invest in digital tools, The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley reports. The company posted a fiscal third-quarter net loss of $109 million after closing its Tableau Software acquisition. Sales in the quarter ended Oct. 31 increased 33% to a record $4.51 billion. (WSJ)
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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, right, with Amit Agarwal, head of the company’s India operations, in Bangalore in 2014. PHOTO: JAGADEESH NV/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
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India proving a challenge for U.S. tech titans. U.S. tech companies made a big bet on India, but regulation and policy changes driven by trade protectionism have made adapting to the market a slog. The Wall Street Journal's Newley Purnell looks at how technology companies are changing business processes and dealing with uncertainty after India's policy shifts.
Qualcomm has a new flagship mobile chip with AI. Qualcomm unwrapped its new flagship chip, the Snapdragon 865, which will be in smartphones with the Android operating system starting next year. The chip will have onboard artificial intelligence capabilities, but further details about the AI features weren't shared by the chip maker. (PC World)
Amazon boosts 5G in partnership with Verizon. Amazon is putting its AWS cloud service on 5G networks through a partnership with Verizon Communications. A new AWS service called Wavelength relies on a set of technologies on Verizon's 5G network to speed up cloud application delivery to devices such as smartphones. The partnership was announced at the Amazon's annual cloud conference in Las Vegas. (CNBC)
New data center chip. The AWS Graviton 2 processor is estimated to be seven times faster than its previous chip. (Reuters)
A cloud marquee for Goldman Sachs's Marquee. The trading firm has invested millions in its web application called Marquee which offers products and services to institutional clients. On Tuesday Chief Executive David Solomon said new products on the platform would run on AWS. (Reuters)
Fired engineers hit back at Google. Former Google engineers are filing labor practice charges against the search giant, disputing the circumstances under which they were fired last month. Google cited violation of data security policies as the reason for firing four engineers. The workers claimed they were fired for organizing in the workplace. (Vox)
France vows retaliation at proposed U.S. tariffs. France’s digital-services tax, which affects companies like Facebook and Apple, is driving a wider trade battle. President Trump has responded by proposing tariffs on French imports like luxury goods and cheese, but France has bristled at the idea and stands ready to respond. (WSJ).
NASA to launch robot hotel in space. NASA this week will send a ‘robot hotel’ to the International Space Station as part of a resupply mission. The "hotel" is an external garage that will house idle robots. It will free up real estate on the already cramped ISS. (TechCrunch)
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Everything Else You Need to Know
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A Democratic-led House committee approved a report accusing President Trump of soliciting foreign election interference and abusing his office by pressuring Ukraine to launch probes that could benefit him politically. (WSJ)
United Airlines struck a deal to buy 50 long-range Airbus jets to replace its aging fleet of Boeing 757s, which are due to be retired in coming years. (WSJ)
Sprint has for years failed to accurately measure how many of the low-income Americans it serves through the federal Lifeline program actually use their phones. (WSJ)
The Trump administration is set to tighten work requirements for recipients of federal food assistance, potentially rendering hundreds of thousands of people ineligible for the program by mid-2020. (WSJ)
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