Hi, I’m Samantha Edwards, an editor at The Globe and Mail. Welcome back to Lately, The Globe’s new tech newsletter – and if you’re here for the first time, welcome! Every Friday morning, I break down the week’s biggest tech stories and how they intersect with, and even change, our world.
In this issue:
🔥 Nvidia becomes world’s most valuable company
🚨 Surgeon-General calls for warnings on social media platforms
☝️ YouTube adds community notes
🥷 ICYMI: The story of EncroChat
As Nvidia skyrockets to first, Toronto’s Untether is trying to carve its own path
Jensen Huang is the CEO of Nvidia, the world's most valuable public company.Ann Wang/Reuters
After years of Microsoft and Apple jockeying for first place, this week computer chip maker Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company, worth $3.4-trillion. As OpenAI and other big tech firms gobble up the company’s chips to train their AI models, Nvidia’s revenues have skyrocketed – up from $7.2-billion a year ago to $26-billion in the first quarter of this year.
Some companies such as Google, Amazon and Meta are developing their own chips, and a host of startups are joining the race too. One of those startups is Toronto-based Untether, which is launching a new inference chip versus a training chip. (I’m going to get a bit in the weeds here, but stay with me.) There are currently two main types of chips used in AI: training chips, Nvidia’s bread and butter, which teach AI models to recognize patterns and make decisions by processing massive data sets. Inference chips, meanwhile, allow us to use the already-trained models for our AI tasks, which require them to be more efficient. Untether sees an opportunity to become a big player by sticking with inference, where Nvidia isn’t dominant. One of the sources my colleagues Sean Silcoff and Joe Castaldo spoke to said that inference will be an even bigger market than training, worth around US$100-billion.
U.S. Surgeon-General calls for warnings on social media
This week the U.S. top doctor called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms about their effects on young people’s mental health. “Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food?” wrote U.S. Surgeon-General Dr. Vivek Murthy in an op-ed for The New York Times. The Public Health Agency of Canada hasn’t made similar recommendations yet, but a growing number of provinces and school boards are trying to tackle the issue on their own by banning cellphone use in classrooms and accusing the platforms in lawsuits of designing unsafe and addictive products.
YouTube testing community notes to fight misinformation
YouTube will soon allow viewers to add context notes to videos.Supplied
YouTube is experimenting with a new feature that will allow viewers to add context notes to videos, such as pointing out when old footage is being portrayed as current or when a video is a parody. X has had similar context notes since 2021. Earlier this year YouTube added a new requirement for creators to indicate if their videos feature AI-generated or altered media, the latest effort by tech companies to combat misinformation on their platforms.
The Canadian tech nerd accused of building a digital den for Europe’s drug dealers
Illustration by Robert Carter
Last week, the Globe’s Joe Castaldo and Alexandra Posadzki reported on the story of Paul Krusky, the unassuming Ontario entrepreneur who built the encrypted phone service EncroChat and is now sitting in a French prison as police say the vast majority of EncroChat users were carrying out criminal activity. But some industry watchers fear this crackdown could give precedent for authorities to conduct similar data surveillance operations into mainstream services like Signal and Telegram. Read the full story here.
What else we’re reading this week:
This Canadian non-profit is helping to fix Wikipedia’s diversity gap (Chatelaine)
Have we been overthinking EV sounds? (The Verge)
The big loser in Tesla’s shareholder vote is Delaware (Wall Street Journal)
Sound bite:
“We are treading on dangerous territory when we want to know everything about everything all the time, because it means we’re not giving people room to breathe.” – Dr. Katina Michael, a professor at Arizona State University, on what we lose by using location sharing apps, as heard on this week’s episode of Lately.
Adult Money:
Dyson Cool tower fan, $499
My primary weapon in the battle against this heat wave.Supplied
As a punishing heat wave continues to roll through Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, many of us are looking for strategies to keep cool and sane. My strategy? Buy a fancy fan. After a long hot summer, last fall I bought a Dyson tower fan off Facebook Marketplace. Even second-hand it was pricier than your average tower, but it’s been a game-changer these past few days. It’s compact, looks sleek and even at the highest speed, feels less like being caught in a windstorm – an issue I’ve encountered with other fans – and more like frolicking in a cool ocean breeze.
Culture Radar:
Gen Z is looking for a job in finance, with security and high salaries
You may recall a few weeks ago I wrote about “I’m Looking for a Man in Finance,” the viral TikTok video where creator Megan Boni lists the traits of an ideal partner: Someone who works in finance. Trust fund. 6′5. Blue eyes. I dug a bit deeper and as it turns out, finance is considered the most desirable career among Canadian Gen Z students, and that’s partially because of the glamorous portrayal of the industry in film and TV. Hundreds of clips on TikTok offer a window into a lifestyle that’s seemingly untouched by student debt, rising rents or the phrase “cost of living” – so it’s really not that surprising a generation that graduated into a world of high interest rates is looking for high-salaried jobs.
More tech and telecom news:
Caisse cashes out of data centre consolidator eStruxture in $1.8-billion deal
Cellphone plan prices, satellite connectivity issues highlighted at telecom summit
Waabi raises $200-million to launch driverless commercial trucks in Texas