Coverage here looks at news in specific technologies, and at implementations and developments in the world beyond the broad Asia Pac and Indo-Pacific regions.
In March 2023, tech news headlines spanned issues and developments including US moves to protect critical infrastructure from cyber-attacks, Dubai’s newly-unveiled cryptocurrency licensing and regulation system, large-language AI models and ChatGPT issues, NVIDIA’s web-based supercomputing services, and many more. Hit the headline links below to read each article online and in full.
● ChatGPT & generative AI news in March
Our other editions include daily, weekly, monthly, and mobile technology news updates.
CSIS: Pulling back the curtain on China’s maritime militia
- 15 companies issuing 20 different stablecoins form Stablecoin Standard industry body, aiming to create standards that promote consumer confidence
- Microsoft reportedly working on non-custodial built-in Ethereum crypto wallet for Microsoft Edge browser to allow users to send and receive crypto and NFTs
“Beware the ‘sensible’ crypto crowd – they’re worse than the fanatics. The strait-laced, earnest types threaten to legitimise a high-risk, opaque and ill-understood industry…”
- Nasdaq stock market index to debut cryptocurrency custody services by end of Q2 2023, with safekeeping services for Bitcoin and Ether the first step towards broader services
- US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency launched Ransomware Vulnerability Warning Pilot to warn critical infrastructure entities that their systems have vulnerabilities that may be exploited by ransomware
“…state-backed groups from Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China regularly leverage LinkedIn to connect with targets in an attempt to steal information through phishing scams or by using malware…”
- White House cybersec strategy document coming which aims to force large firms to take responsibility for designing secure products, and to redesign digital ecosystems to be more secure
- “…a recent study from Juniper Research clearly shows that online payment fraud will cost neobanks more than $206 billion between 2021 and 2025…”
- AWS European Defence Accelerator launches, building on UK edition, seeking startups using AWS services to develop solutions for defence organisation challenges
“The growing commercialization of deepfakes will bring new challenges to the Asia-Pacific’s information space.”
- Bayer and Microsoft formalize partnership to create cloud-based set of data tools and data-sci solutions for the food and agriculture industry
- Sweden University of Gothenberg institute report finds 72% of world population – 5.7BN people – live in autocracies, of which 28% – 2.2BN people – live in ‘closed autocracies’
- Digital assets – good for households but bad for banks : “Digital assets can reduce the difference between interest rates that banks charge for loans and the interest they pay to depositors…”
- 2 Bangladeshi startups selected for new cohort of Singapore’s Iterative accelerator – Nuport, working on full-stack supply chain automation, and PriyoShop B2B marketplace for neighborhood merchants
“CFTC is charging Binance with violating laws around futures offerings, illegal off-exchange commodity options, failing to register as a futures commissions merchant…” and more across KYC and AML activities
- Binance: A look at 7 key items in the CFTC lawsuit against the company
- Bluesky, Twitter alternative backed by Twitter co-founder Dorsey, launcehs on the App Store, aiming to provide decentralized form of social media
- Dubai launches new cryptocurrency licensing regime, defining requirements for digital asset issuers and service providers
- A brief look of Southeast Asia’s education-tech space, touching on 6 startups from across the region
ICYMI: Global Methane Tracker 2023 online now – “Methane is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution…”
- European Commission to publish a strategy for online virtual worlds, hoping to ensure healthy competition between metaverses
- Metaverse Universe Q1 2023 update, a visualisation of the virtual worlds sector from Metaversed
- “Dark Forest shows how advanced cryptography can be used in a game—and how blockchains might host decentralized digital worlds…”
- Redeem, allowing users to connect any blockchain wallet on any network to their phone number, facilitating NFT transfer via messaging services and more
- Meta is to scrap nonfungible token features across Facebook and Instagram, just 10 months after launch
“Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, related to Donald Trump have jumped over 30% in Ether-denominated value over the past week amid [news of] a possible indictment and arrest…”
- UK government drops plans for NFT made by the Royal Mint, likely in part due to concerns over Terra/UST collapse
- SEEQC, US quantum computer startup, announces chip that can operate at temperatures colder than outer space, allowing it to be used with quantum processors usually sited in cryogenic chambers
- ‘Why Technology Will Define the Future of Geopolitics’ by Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO
- An overview of major EU tech legislation – Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act – which aims to set a global gold standard for regulation around user-generated content
- Facebook parent Meta released potentially the most powerful large language AI models for use only by authorized researchers – which have leaked into the public domain, making it likely the tech may be misused
G7 economies to boost cooperation on ‘urban mining’, aiming to mine e-waste as a source of rare-earth elements and industrially-important metals as a limit on supply vulnerabilities
- A comprehensive round-up of startup funding in the global semiconductor space in February 2023 – 132 companies raised more than $4.5BN
- Utah lawmakers passed bills prohibiting social media companies from allowing under-18s to have accounts without parental permission, and banning the firms from serving any ads to minors
- Fujitsu opens $100,000 Quantum Simulator Challenge to applications from industry and academia to test the quantum simulator on novel problems and real-world applications
- Future Today Institute’s 2023 Future Trends Reports are now available, looking at AI, fintech, space, supply chains and more
- Meta is reportedly mulling build-out of new decentralized social media network, following the lead of others in the social media space
“Other platforms are building on the early success that seven-year-old Mastodon experienced last fall after Musk took over Twitter. Mastodon’s layout looks similar to Twitter, including the interface for responding to and sharing others’ comments in a news feed littered with hashtags. But Mastodon is a network of thousands of sites — called instances or servers — instead of a website controlled by a single company such as Twitter…”
- Google raises security with VPN service for Google One subscribers, following last month’s addition of client-side encryption for Gmail and Calendar
- An intro to 10 European space-tech startups, working in space traffic management, space debris tracking, satellite-driven agri-tech and more
- Amazon steps into direct competition with StarLink following approval for launch of Kuiper satellites, potentially tapping a market of hundreds of millions of internet users
- Nvidia chipmaker unveils DGX Cloud, allowing enterprize users access to supercomputing power via web browsers, remotely running workloads on Nvidia’s A100 and H100 chips
- More on the Pinduoduo Android hack of versions provided on third-party sites here. Why is non-Store downloading important? It’s the only way for many users to get the app.
- UN World Tourism Organisation launches Women in Tech Startup Competition Middle East edition, seeking startups in tourism & travel, future tech and more
ChatGPT & AI
- Conspiracy Theories Have a New Best Friend: “Generative AI programs like ChatGPT threaten to revolutionize how disinformation spreads online.”
- GPT-4, successor to ChatGPT: “…the model might be able to look at an image of a big group of people and offer…known information…a possible facial recognition use case that could be used for mass surveillance”
- GPT-4 Has Been Out For 1 Day. These New Projects Show Just How Much More Powerful It Is’
- GPT & AI: “A platform that can mimic humans’ writing with no commitment to the truth is a gift for those who benefit from disinformation. We need to regulate its use now.”
- High profile group of AI experts, including Elon Musk, issue open letter calling for 6-month pause in developing systems more powerful than GPT-4, citing risks around manageability and social impacts
- OpenAI CEO: “I’m particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation…Now that they’re getting better at writing computer code, [they] could be used for offensive cyberattacks.”
- “…80% of the US workforce could have at least 10% of their tasks affected by the introduction of GPTs…around 19% of workers will see at least 50% of their tasks impacted…”
- Runway AI Inc startup unveils Gen-2, artificial intelligence model that can generate brief video clips based on text prompts
- Adobe joins the generative AI stampede with beta launch of Firefly, integrating with Adobe Cloud products
AI risks making any crisis worse: “…when something goes gravely wrong, AI systems trained on older data from a relatively ‘peaceful’ world might be woefully [ill]equipped to handle a more chaotic one.”
- OpenAI releases ChatGPT plugins for web browsing, alongside allowing developers to deploy their own registered versions, enabling real-time querying of online sources
- Firefox browser developer, Mozilla, announces $30M MozillaAI startup with hopes it ‘will build a trustworthy and independent open-source AI ecosystem’
- Download: ‘Trust In Artificial Intelligence’, a global study which surveyed over 17,000 people, from KPMG and the University of Queensland
- “…value of some 100 major generative AI companies totaled $48 billion in January, a sixfold increase from the end of 2020. OpenAI alone is valued at an estimated $29 billion…”
- Download: ‘Trustworthy Use of Artificial Intelligence in Finance – Regulatory Perspectives from Asia Pacific’ via Deloitte
“If users don’t have to visit sites directly anymore, those sites’ business models, based on advertising and subscriptions, will collapse. But if those sites can no longer produce content then AI tools won’t have…material…”
Newsletters in March 2023
- Asia tech, weekly to March 28: AWS & New Zealand, Huawei’s domestic sourcing, Western Union & Vietnam, metaverse building in Malaysia, Indonesian startup boost, Amazon vs StarLink…
- Asia tech news, March 21st weekly: Nissan’s NFT moves, SVB’s Asia impacts, Foxconn in India, North Korea & LinkedIn, Thailand mulls crypto ban, Japan & quantum computing, India & semiconductors…
- Asia’s tech weekly, March 14th: SEA’s largest telco merger, Taiwan’s ‘net exposure, social free speech in India, HK crypto scams, South Korea space-tech, wind power in Laos…
- Asia’s tech, weekly to March 7: Japan’s semicon moves, India ups pressure on big tech, Singapore and autonomous shipping, Malaysia’s metaverse ecosystem, trustworthy AI, China versus StarLink…
- Asia’s tech, weekly to Feb 28th: India & semiconductors, Japan’s Digital Yen, China’s ChatGPT censorship, e-trucks for Australia, genomics in Indonesia, Hong Kong & stablecoins…
Quiet locations: March 2023
Cambodia in March 2023
Startup Cambodia / Events, ecosystem, resources
Asia’s tech news headlines
Our other news editions go out on a range of platforms and channels, and across a range of timeframes, highlighting key tech news from across Asia and the Indo-Pacific, and showcasing the region’s startups and technology developments:
- Asia’s tech news, daily on Twitter
- Startup News Asia, daily on Facebook
- Asia’s tech news, daily on LinkedIn
- Daily tech news mobile app
- Weekly: Substack email newsletter
- Weekly: LinkedIn email newsletter
Deloitte: 2023 Semiconductor Industry Outlook
