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Red Hat is Selling Buzzwords/Hype, IBM Impacted by Embargo, IBM is Also Laying Off Almost 10,000 Americans
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Red Hat Official ☛ Synthetic data: A secret ingredient for better language models
Training high-performing LLMs requires vast amounts of diverse, high-quality data. Historically, this meant scraping all parts of the internet, manually curating datasets or paying teams of annotators—a process that’s expensive, slow and sometimes ethically complicated. At the same time, for specialized models in industries like healthcare, traditional data may contain personally identifiable information (PII) and be subject to regulations such as HIPPA or the EU AI Act.
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Red Hat Official ☛ New Red Hat AI Foundations offers training on AI at no cost
To help enterprises build a solid foundation of knowledge for AI, understand ethical considerations, as well as the value of open source in AI, Red Hat offers Red Hat AI Foundations. Red Hat AI Foundations provides two learning and certification paths to help enterprises build an understanding of AI–all at no cost to participants. Topics covered in Red Hat AI Foundations include:
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Reuters ☛ US adds dozens of Chinese entities to export restrictions list, including Inspur units [Ed: IBMers Question IBM's Decision to Send Money to "Chinese Military Companies" in Spite of US Sanctions]
The U.S. added six subsidiaries of Inspur Group, China's leading cloud computing and big data service provider, and dozens of other Chinese entities to its export restriction list on Tuesday.
The Inspur units were listed for contributing to the development of supercomputers for the Chinese military, the Commerce department said in a posting. Five of the subsidiaries are based in China and one in Taiwan. Inspur Group itself was placed on the list in 2023.
The Inspur units are among about 80 companies and institutes added to the export control list Tuesday. Over 50 are based in China. Others are in Taiwan, Iran, Pakistan, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.
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IBM Layoff: A Setback for US Workers but a Growth Opportunity for India’s Tech Sector
The US is IBM’s biggest market, and it is making major workforce changes in 2024, laying off around 9,000 employees. The Register report states that this is part of IBM's restructuring strategy, and many of these jobs may be relocated to India. The employees affected are spread across several divisions including IBM’s Cloud Classic division, which was formed from the acquisition of SoftLayer. It is estimated that 25 percent of that team is affected. This layoff is a blow to employees in the US but also an opportunity for India’s tech workforce.
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IBM layoffs: “Aim is to shift employment to India as much as possible,” say sources
IBM is cutting off thousands of employees across numerous locations in the United States of America (ISA), as per a report by The Register.
According to sources familiar with the situation, the employment losses include a significant drop in IBM's Cloud Classic segment. Layoffs were reported in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York City and State; Dallas, Texas; and California.
The exact number of affected employees is unknown, but a source informed the publication that "concrete numbers are being kept private," adding, "It is in the thousands."
Employees from multiple departments have been impacted. These include consultancy, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, and internal information technology systems.