21st Century Learning and Teaching

Google will allow anyone to use its custom AI chips via the cloud
Dedicated machine-learning hardware could help Google fight off rivals in an increasingly competitive cloud AI market.

Backstory: Last year, Google announced it had designed a new chip, called a tensor processing unit (TPU), built to crunch the math AI uses. At the time, it ran the chips itself and allowed just a select group of researchers to make use of them.

What's new: The New York Times reports that Google will allow other companies to make use of the hardware via the cloud. “We are trying to reach as many people as we can as quickly as we can,” Zak Stone, leader of Google’s TPU team, told the newspaper.

Why it matters: Putting AI in the cloud is big business. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all provide AI software on their cloud servers, and China is joining the race, too. By offering dedicated hardware for AI grunt work, Google will hope to gain a competitive edge over the others.

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The Washington Post recently reported on a 2013 Google study of its hiring, firing, and promotion data since 1998. The study, called Project Oxygen, shockingly concluded that “among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last.”

So, what came out on top? “The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.”

The soft skills valued by employers are byproducts of foreign language acquisition.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Soft+Skills