Above the Fold
- In the past year, we have heard a lot about AI/ML/LLMs and the future of work. Here FT considers robots and food service and here is a Spectrum on MIT Insitute Professor Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson look into to the future of work on machine tools themselves.
- Does xAI now have 100,000 H100 GPUs all running in Tennessee and is 20+% of Ireland's electrical capacity really going to datacenters?
Cloud Provider Pilots
ORCD has two pilots going with cloud providers.
With AWS, ORCD and IS&T are running a pilot program looking at how the AWS Research and Engineering Studio (RES) can be used in practice and whether/when its economics can work for MIT researchers. Currently six research projects across campus are working closely in a study with an AWS team to look at what researchers do, what they like and what they don’t. The AWS team are looking for more researchers who might be interested in seeing if RES is a good fit for them. If you are an MIT researcher who may have an interest, please feel free to reach out to us at orcd-help@mit.edu.
The second is with Lambda Labs, who provides “1-Click access” that allows researchers to gain access to 16-128 GPUs for runs lasting up to a week. The Lambda rate is $4.50/card/hour for H100 cards, but ORCD will be offering a rate of around $1/card/hour starting in September. We will have a total of 276,000/card/hours available for reservation sometime in September. Lambda and ORCD will work out the details in the coming weeks. Any MIT researchers who have an interest, please contact us at orcd-help@mit.edu.
What We're Reading
- Smashing quantum supremacy: the hype, the paper
- Nobody likes 2FA, but why we need it
- Keeping work fun and rewarding for all
Events Around Campus
- Innovations in AI for Education: A Talk by Cynthia Breazeal: Tuesday, August 6, 8-9:15 AM ET, via Zoom.
- Join the MIT Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) to explore the revolutionary potential of AI-powered education with MIT Professor Cynthia Breazeal, a pioneer in the field of social robotics.
- Counting Feminicide Book Launch and Signing Party: Thursday, September 19, 4:30-6PM ET, Building 9, Room 255.
- Counting Feminicide documents the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists across the Americas who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account. Catherine D'Ignazio will do a short talk about the overall project, followed by talks by two junior scholars who have worked on this project. Harini Suresh (Computer Science) will speak about her contributions to the co-design of AI/ML technologies with feminist activists and Alessandra Jungs de Almeida (International Relations, Women & Gender Studies) on her leadership of participatory action research and design with Brazilian activists.
- About the book: https://mitpress-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/9780262048873/counting-feminicide/
HPC and Research Computing Events
- 28th Annual IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Virtual Conference: September 23-27, online.
- HPEC is the largest computing conference in New England and is the premier conference in the world on the convergence of High Performance and Embedded Computing. We are passionate about performance. Our community is interested in computing hardware, software, systems and applications where performance matters. We welcome experts and people who are new to the field.
- Second Annual US Research Software Engineer Association Conference, October 15-17, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
- This year's theme is Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: A celebration of all that RSEs have done for computing in the past, in the present, and in the future.