IBM Research

Last week, IBM reaffirmed its commitment to the Rome Call for AI ethics. IBM along with other leaders in the industry, and representatives from many of the world's major religions, came together in Hiroshima, Japan to discuss developing AI ethically. Learn more about the Rome Call for AI ethics and the implications for future development of AI: https://ibm.co/3WjggiZ

On this day in 1965, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, now part of NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, used an IBM 7094 computer to develop photographs taken of Mars by the Mariner IV spacecraft probe. The Mariner IV took pictures with a single television camera on board and radioed the images over 135 million miles back to Earth in a steady stream of digits. It took roughly eight and a half hours to send a single image. The IBM 7094 processed and decoded the digits from Mariner IV, turning them into a series of 40,000 dots that made up a picture. These dots were then printed onto a magnetic tape and scanned by a 35mm film converter. Take a look at the first close up images taken of another planet and keep checking back for more moments in IBM’s research history. #IBMHistory

In this week's newsletter, we explore how IBM Research is serving up AI faster. We dive into IBM's Granite LLM emerging at the top of the SQL class, how speculative decoding and paged attention help serve AI models faster, and we travel across the pond to explore how IBM AI is improving the fan experience at Wimbledon. Read more on the latest news and subscribe here:

On this day in 1954, data from one punch card was transmitted to another overseas using a set of IBM data transceivers linked by radio from across the Atlantic, in a project run with the U.S. Air Force. It was the first data to be radioed across the ocean directly from punched cards. In Port Lyautey near Casablanca, Morocco, an experimental demonstration took place in which a punch card machine operator placed a few cards into a machine and moments later, three thousand miles away, duplicate cards with the same punches were generated out of a similar machine in Washington, D.C. Now, transferring massive amounts of data around the world happens every second, but at the time, this method of data transmission revolutionized Air Force communications. It allowed Air Force officials to send and receive statistical data from their bases in a faster and more accurate way than before. Keep checking back for more moments in IBM’s research history. #IBMHistory

Large language models are removing some of the hurdles that make finding, retrieving, and transforming database information so difficult. In a recent milestone, IBM's text-to-SQL generator, based on several IBM Granite LLMs fine-tuned for SQL tasks, landed at the top of the BIRD leaderboard for handling complex database questions. It's part of a larger IBM effort to infuse generative AI into data services to make it easier to extract business insights from massive databases. https://ibm.co/3xTKKyB

IBM’s open-source Granite 20B code model now runs twice as fast, with four times the throughput, after researchers implemented two AI-optimization techniques known as speculative decoding and paged attention. Learn how researchers got the two methods to play nice, both improving user experience and lowering the costs of serving AI models for enterprises. https://lnkd.in/eZ7dHkKY

Like many, our passion for solving problems stems from a childhood love for completing puzzles. Is there a better feeling? Head over to the blog for the story of cryptography researcher Vadim Lyubashevsky, who detailed his journey into securing the world's systems from tomorrow's quantum risks — and how it all started with math puzzles. https://ibm.co/3Vs8py8

Check out this week's edition of The Short, where we explore tiny benchmark LLM breakthroughs from the teams in Israel and Cambridge, we explore how AI is revolutionizing automation for enterprise, and we celebrate the life and legacy of Bob Dennard, inventor of the DRAM chip. Read more on all the latest news:

On this day in 1960, the U.S Army unveiled an IBM 7090 computer at NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Marshall Space Flight Center’s 7090 computer was the first of its kind to be installed by IBM for scientific or commercial data processing. Four times as powerful as any other computer available at that time, the IBM 7090 was a pivotal tool in designing and developing the Saturn space vehicle for Project Saturn. The end result of the project was the rocket used to send the first people to the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. The 7090 helped to plot flight simulations with accurate and detailed trajectories, allowing space flight personnel at Marshall to see within minutes how their design modifications would affect an actual flight into space. Keep checking back for more moments in IBM’s research history. #IBMHistory

This week we lost an extraordinary IBMer, Lynn Conway. She was a pioneer in every way, both for her contributions to the tech industry and for her gender transition at a time when it was not accepted in the professional sphere. In 2020, Lynn was awarded the rare IBM Lifetime Achievement Award for her approach to VLSI Systems, which paved the way for modern “systems-on-a-chip” (SOCs) that power smartphones, computers, and myriad other devices. Lynn will be missed by all that knew her, and she will be remembered for her ardent work to better both technology and humanity for all. https://ibm.co/3KFqjsa