Posts in category: nVidia AI

NVIDIA is collaborating with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to equip governments and developer communities in 10 nations with data science training and technology to support more informed policymaking and accelerate how resources are allocated.

The initiative will empower the countries’ national statistical offices — agencies that handle population censuses data, economic policies, healthcare and more — by providing AI hardware, training for data scientists and ecosystem support.

Known as the United AI Alliance, the initiative is led by the UNECA, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (the Global Partnership), which facilitates data partnerships for public good, and NVIDIA. Future Tech, a Long Island, New York-based IT solution provider and member of the NVIDIA Partner Network, is the Alliance’s inaugural funding and global distribution partner.

“Population data is critical information for policy decisions, whether it’s for urban planning, climate action or monitoring the spread of COVID-19,” said Oliver Chinganya, Director of the African Centre for Statistics at UNECA. “Without a strong digital infrastructure, many of these nations struggled to collect and report data during the pandemic.”

Better public health data can help countries track real-time COVID infection rates, detect hotspots and target their response efforts. And beyond the pandemic, strengthening data systems will allow local experts to connect population statistics to agricultural data, climate trends and economic indicators.

Laying the Groundwork for Long-Term Benefits

Future Tech is covering the cost of procurement and overseeing the distribution and deployment of NVIDIA-Certified Systems and data science workstations powered by NVIDIA RTX and NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs for each country — starting with Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal and Sierra Leone. Up next will be Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia and Togo.

“Public-sector institutions play a critical role in providing the data used for policymaking at all levels. But often they face huge gaps in infrastructure and expertise required to tap the benefits of the data revolution,” said Future Tech founder and CEO Bob Venero.

To further support the countries’ data science capabilities, NVIDIA is teaming up with local universities, research institutes and data science communities to build a pipeline of developers that can extract insights from census information and other data sources.

“This is the first time many of these countries will be digitizing their census efforts, which represents a potential goldmine of data,” said Keith Strier, VP of AI Nations at NVIDIA. “By connecting these efforts with the local developer ecosystem, we can help more organizations harness this for the benefit of society.”

NVIDIA is putting together a curriculum of free Deep Learning Institute courses — starting with fundamentals such as accelerated computing with CUDA Python and accelerated data science workflows — tailored to the needs of each country’s national statistical office. It’s also providing access to workshops and data science teaching kits for each of the nations.

This work extends the company’s support of AI and data science in Africa through the NVIDIA Inception startup program and the NVIDIA Emerging Chapters initiative, which bolsters developer communities in emerging markets with education and technical resources.

Using Data to Drive Environmental and Social Progress

Around the world, the pandemic has accelerated the transition to digitization. The United AI Alliance is supporting this transformation by working with grassroots groups at the core of AI development in Africa, with the goal of enabling data practitioners in every region to build meaningful solutions to local challenges.

Many of the continent’s developers are part of local technology communities, including groups like the Kenya-based AI Center of Excellence or nonprofit organization Data Science Africa. United AI Alliance is pairing many of these developers with governments to drive new data analysis projects.

“Many countries are still excluded from using big data, AI and digital technologies to improve the quality of information for making decisions,” said Claire Melamed, CEO of the Global Partnership. “Together we can change that and collaborate to support data-driven progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.”

While the project’s initial focus is in Africa, the collaborators plan to roll out the same model in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

To learn more about this initiative, watch the replay session of “Democratizing AI in Emerging Markets through the United AI Alliance” from NVIDIA GTC and visit the United AI Alliance site.

Learn more about the NVIDIA Emerging Chapters, NVIDIA Developer and NVIDIA Inception programs, and register free for NVIDIA GTC, running online Sept. 19-22.

Main image shows (L to R) Jean Paul Ngom and Ibrahima Diop, of Senegal’s national statistical office, working with an NVIDIA GPU-powered mobile workstation.

Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology accelerates creative workflows. 

In the NVIDIA Studio celebrates the Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Studio’s 10th anniversary and its 28.0 software release. Plus, popular streamer WATCHHOLLIE shares how she uses OBS and a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU in a single-PC setup to elevate her livestreams.

The OBS release, available starting later today, offers livestreamers new features, including native integration of the AI-powered NVIDIA Broadcast virtual background and room echo removal effects, along with support for high-efficiency video coding (HEVC or H.265) and high-dynamic range (HDR).

NVIDIA also worked with Google to enable live streaming of HEVC and HDR content to YouTube using the NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) — dedicated hardware on GeForce RTX GPUs that handles video encoding without taking resources away from the game.

OBS Bliss

OBS 28.0 has launched with a host of updates and improvements — including two NVIDIA Broadcast features exclusive to GeForce RTX streamers.

AI-powered virtual background enables streamers to remove or replace their backgrounds without the need for a physical green screen. Room echo removal eliminates unwanted echoes during streaming sessions. This can come handy when using a desktop mic or if in a room with a bit of echo. Both effects — as well as noise removal — are available within OBS as filters, giving users more flexibility to apply them per source.

HEVC support in OBS 28.0 improves video compression by 15%. The implementation, built specifically for hardware-based HEVC encoders, enables users to record content and stream to supported platforms like YouTube with better quality.

The update also enables recording and streaming in HDR, which offers a greater range of bright and dark colors on a display, adding a stunning vibrance and dramatic improvement in visual quality.

Previously, users had to turn HDR off, since 10- or 12-bit HDR content would look washed out if it was recorded at 8-bit. With this update, users can keep HDR on and decide whether they want to capture or stream in SDR, or full HDR.

As HDR displays become more popular, and with Windows 11’s new Auto HDR tool — which enables many games to be displayed in a virtual HDR mode — more users can benefit from this OBS update.

YouTube Live is one of the first platforms to support HEVC and HDR streaming. Streamers on the platform can give their audience higher quality streams, with only a few clicks.

Setup is quick and easy. Open this NVENC OBS guide and navigate to the “Recording and Streaming with HEVC and HDR” section to find directions.

Go Live With WATCHHOLLIE

When WATCHHOLLIE started her channel, she had to learn a whole new way of creating content. Now, she’s teaching the next generation of streamers and showcasing how NVIDIA broadcasting tech helps her workflow.

Trained as a video editor, WATCHHOLLIE experimented with a YouTube channel before discovering Twitch as a way to get back into gaming. During the pandemic, Hollie used streaming as a way to stay in touch with friends.

“I was trapped in an 800-square-foot apartment, and I wanted to hang out with friends,” she said. “So I started streaming every day.”

Her streams promote mental health awareness and inclusivity, establishing a safe place for members of the LGBTQ+ community like herself.

Hollie’s first streams were simple, using OBS on a Mac with an external capture card to share console gameplay.

“I thought, ‘I hope someone shows up,’ and few people did,” she said.

She kept at it between video-editing freelance work, asking friends to tune into her streams and provide advice.

To support her daily streaming schedule, Hollie built her first PC — initially with a GeForce RTX 2070 GPU and later upgrading to a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. GeForce GPUs include NVENC as a discrete encoder that enables seamless gaming and streaming with maximum performance, even on a single-PC setup like WATCHOLLIE’s. NVENC’s advanced GPU encoding adds higher video quality for recorded videos, as well.

Soon, Hollie’s channel reached Affiliate status, which opened up monetization opportunities. She began accepting fewer freelance-editing gigs, and even turned down a full-time job offer. “I asked my mom what I should do, and she said, ‘This is your chance, you should take it,’” WATCHHOLLIE said.

Since achieving Partner status, she’s worked on her channel full time. “I’m very happy, and I feel like I’m making a difference with how I stream,” she said.

WATCHHOLLIE’s now turned her attention to helping new streamers get started. She founded WatchUs, a diversity-focused team that teaches aspiring creators how to grow their business, develop brand partnerships and improve their streaming setup.

“With WatchUs, I can help people and guide them through something that I didn’t have or was too scared to ask about,” she said.

More than 20 streamers were selected to join the team from 200+ applicants. They receive mentorship from coaches from all walks of life, about every facet of streaming. The group focuses on “education, not ego,” in WATCHHOLLIE’s words, and the team plans to reopen applications soon.

When asked what it takes to be a successful streamer, Hollie didn’t hesitate to answer: “Stick to a schedule and play what you love. Don’t wait for people to talk to you to be entertaining — be the entertainment first, and then people will want to talk to you.”

Follow and subscribe to WATCHHOLLIE’s social media channels.

Step Into the NVIDIA Studio

Just as WATCHHOLLIE has grown in her creative journey, the NVIDIA Studio team wants to see all artists’ personal growth. Amaze, or be amazed, as creatives share old and new works for the #CreatorJourneyChallenge across social media. Many extraordinary pieces have been shared so far.

It’s time to show how you’ve grown as an artist (just like @lowpolycurls)!

Join our #CreatorJourney challenge by sharing something old you created next to something new you’ve made for a chance to be featured on our channels.

Tag #CreatorJourney so we can see your post. pic.twitter.com/PmkgOvhcBW

— NVIDIA Studio (@NVIDIACreators) August 15, 2022

To get in on the fun, simply provide an older piece of artwork alongside a more recent one to highlight your growth as an artist. Follow and tag NVIDIA Studio on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, and use the #CreatorsJourneyChallenge tag for a chance to be showcased on NVIDIA Studio social media channels.

Access tutorials on the Studio YouTube channel and get updates directly in your inbox by subscribing to the NVIDIA Studio newsletter.

Data is the fuel that makes artificial intelligence run.

Training machine learning and AI systems requires data. And the quality of datasets has a big impact on the systems’ results.

But compiling quality real-world data for AI and ML can be difficult and expensive.

That’s where synthetic data comes in.

The guest for this week’s AI Podcast episode, Nathan Kundtz, is founder and CEO of Rendered.ai, a platform as a service for creating synthetic data to train AI models. The company is also a member of NVIDIA Inception, a free, global program that nurtures cutting-edge startups.

Kundtz is a physicist by training, holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and previously founded Cometa, a hybrid satellite cellular network company.

Our host, Noah Kravitz, spoke to Kundtz about how AI can be used to generate the data needed to create better AI.

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It may seem intuitive that AI and deep learning can speed up workflows — including novel drug discovery, a typically years-long and several-billion-dollar endeavor. However, there is a dearth of recent research reviewing how accelerated computing can impact the process. Professors Artem Cherkasov and Olexandr Isayev discuss how GPUs can help democratize drug discovery.

Lending a Helping Hand: Jules Anh Tuan Nguyen on Building a Neuroprosthetic

Is it possible to manipulate things with your mind? Possibly. University of Minnesota postdoctoral researcher Jules Anh Tuan Nguyen discusses allowing amputees to control their prosthetic limbs with their thoughts, using neural decoders and deep learning.

Wild Things: 3D Reconstructions of Endangered Species With NVIDIA’s Sifei Liu

Studying endangered species can be difficult, as they’re elusive, and the act of observing them can disrupt their lives. Sifei Liu, a senior research scientist at NVIDIA, discusses how scientists can avoid these pitfalls by studying AI-generated 3D representations of these endangered species.

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Reinventing enterprise computing for the modern era, VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram Tuesday announced the availability of the VMware vSphere 8 enterprise workload platform running on NVIDIA DPUs, or data processing units, an initiative formerly known as Project Monterey.

Placing the announcement in context, Raghuram and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang discussed how running VMware vSphere 8 for BlueField is a huge moment for enterprise computing and how this reinvents the data center altogether.

“Today, we’ve got customers that are deploying NVIDIA AI in the enterprise, in the data center,” Raghuram said. “Together, we are changing the world for enterprise computing.”

Both agreed AI plays a central role for every company and discussed the growing importance of multi-tenant data centers, hybrid-cloud development, and accelerated infrastructure deployment in a 20-minute conversation at the VMware Explore 2022 conference.

To address this, the companies announced a partnership two years ago to deliver an end-to-end enterprise platform for AI as well as a new architecture for data center, cloud and edge that uses NVIDIA DPUs to support existing and next-generation applications.

The stakes for partners and customers are high: AI has become “mission critical” for every enterprise, Raghuram explained. Yet studies show half of AI projects fail to make it to production, with infrastructure complexity a leading cause, he added.

For example, VMware and NVIDIA are working with healthcare providers to accelerate medical image processing using AI to offer a better quality of service to their patients.

Together with Carilion Clinic, NVIDIA will discuss at VMware Explore how the largest healthcare organization in Virginia is future-proofing their hospitals.

AI for Every Enterprise

New AI-enabled applications include recommender systems, speech and vision analytics, and natural language processing.

This will run on the NVIDIA and VMware AI-Ready Enterprise Platform, which is accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs and DPUs, and optimized and delivered across the breadth of VMware products, Huang said.

Many industries are now embracing VMware and NVIDIA’s joint solutions, Huang said.

In telecom, for example, NTT Communications is deploying multi-tenant services based on the platform. (Watch the breakout session at VMware Explore on “NTTcom Enabling AI Applications for Enterprises in the Cloud.”)

VMware vSphere 8 With NVIDIA DPUs

VMware vSphere 8 with NVIDIA DPUs will be vital to bringing cloud and multi-tenant cloud, hybrid cloud and zero-trust security to enterprises.

Modern organizations continue to generate and process large amounts of data, Raghuram said.

New waves of workloads are starting to emerge that are highly distributed across the data center, network edge and multi-cloud, he added. ​

Raghuram said that customers need better performance and security in this new era.

DPUs will play a crucial role in the new infrastructure architecture to accelerate performance, free up CPU cycles and provide better security.

“We have rearchitected vSphere to run on DPUs,” Raghuram said. This offloads software-defined infrastructure tasks like network and storage processing, he added.

“And now you get accelerated I/O, and you can have agility for developers, because all of that storage and network processing is now running in the DPU,” he said.

NVIDIA BlueField DPUs

Huang explained that cloud computing and AI are driving a reinvention of data center architecture, ​and that data centers are the new unit of compute.

The DPU is a new type of processor to reduce the processing burden on CPUs and provide a zero-trust security model, Huang explained. ​

The NVIDIA BlueField DPU, an accelerated computing platform, is designed for all enterprise workloads and optimized for NVIDIA AI​, Huang explained. The BlueField DPU offloads, accelerates and isolates the software-defined infrastructure of the data center — networking, security, storage and virtualization​.

“The return on investment — the benefits that DPU-enabled vSphere 8 with NVIDIA BlueField deliver — will be so fast because it frees up so many resources for computing that the payback is going to be instantaneous,” Huang said. “It’s going to be a really fantastic return.”

Security Isolation

This approach is ideal for today’s security challenges. The traditional approach, Raghuram explained, is based on firewalls that focus on the network perimeter.

With the vSphere platform, VMware NSX and advancements in silicon, “we can now bring intrinsic security to life,” Raghuram said.

This new approach, with the NSX distributed firewall running on BlueField DPUs, enables every node to be more secure at virtually every touch point, Huang explained, and the zero-trust security model is finally realized.

“And this is where BlueField and vSphere 8, with NSX running on BlueField, is such an incredible revolution,” Huang said. “We’re essentially going to have a firewall in every single computer.”

vSphere on DPU

Enterprises can get started now. Raghuram announced the first release of vSphere on DPU is available with the vSphere 8 release​, with ESXi and NSX support on BlueField DPU​.

It lets users improve infrastructure performance by offloading and accelerating functions on the DPU​, providing more host resources to business applications​, Raghuram said.

Certain latency- and bandwidth-sensitive workloads that previously used virtualization “pass-thru” can now run fully virtualized with similar performance in this new architecture, without losing key vSphere capabilities like vMotion and DRS, Raghuram said.

​Infrastructure admins can rely on vSphere to also manage the DPU lifecycle, thereby reducing operational overhead​, Raghuram added. And enterprises can boost infrastructure security by isolating infrastructure domains on a DPU.

“The beauty of what the vSphere engineers have done is they have not changed the management model,” Raghuram said. “And so, it can fit seamlessly into the data center architecture of today, while enabling the future to come about.”

Showcasing the vSphere on BlueField DPU solution, Dell and NVIDIA are announcing an enterprise AI platform that uses VMware. It includes AI acceleration by NVIDIA GPUs, infrastructure acceleration by BlueField DPUs, advanced AI frameworks from NVIDIA, and management by vSphere.

All of this will be available soon running on Dell servers and Dell VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure. It allows customers to use familiar VMware vSphere tools to deploy and manage AI infrastructure.

NVIDIA LaunchPad

VMware vSphere users are able to freely experience these workloads today on NVIDIA LaunchPad​, Huang said, adding that “it’s available worldwide.”

With LaunchPad, a free program that gives users access to hands-on AI labs, there’s no need to procure and stand up infrastructure to offload, accelerate and isolate vSphere on a DPU before experiencing the lab, Huang explained​.

“I can’t wait to try it out myself,” Raghuram said, adding that “this is just the start.”

Sign up now to try the VMware vSphere platform running on NVIDIA BlueField DPUs​.

Watch the fireside chat with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram, below. 

Editor’s note: This post is a part of our Meet the Omnivore series, which features individual creators and developers who use NVIDIA Omniverse to accelerate their 3D workflows and create virtual worlds.

Vanessa Rosa’s art transcends time: it merges traditional and contemporary techniques, gives new life to ancient tales and imagines possible futures.

The U.S.-based 3D artist got her start creating street art in Rio de Janeiro, where she grew up. She’s since undertaken artistic tasks like painting murals for Le Centre in Cotonou, Benin, and publishing children’s books.

Now, her focus is on using NVIDIA Omniverse — a platform for connecting and building custom 3D pipelines — to create what she calls Little Martians, a sci-fi universe in which ceramic humanoids discuss theories related to the past, present and future of humanity.

To kick-start the project, Rosa created the most primitive artwork that she could think of: mask-like ceramics, created with local clay and baked with traditional in-ground kilns.

Then, in a sharply modern twist, she 3D scanned them with applications like Polycam and Regard3D. And to animate them, she recorded herself narrating stories with the motion-capture app Face Cap — as well as generated AI voices from text and used the Omniverse Audio2Face app to create facial animations.

An Accessible, Streamlined Platform for 3D Animation

Prior to the Little Martians project, Rosa seldom relied on technology for her artwork. Only recently did she switch from her laptop to a desktop computer powered by an NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPU, which significantly cut her animation render times.

Omniverse quickly became the springboard for Rosa’s digital workflow.

“I’m new to 3D animation, so NVIDIA applications made it much easier for me to get started rather than having to learn how to rig and animate characters solely in software,” she said. “The power of Omniverse is that it makes 3D simulations accessible to a much larger audience of creators, rather than just 3D professionals.”

After generating animations and voice-overs with Omniverse, she employed an add-on for Blender called Faceit that accepts .json files from Audio2Face.

“This has greatly improved my workflow, as I can continue to develop my projects on Blender after generating animations with Omniverse,” she said.

At the core of Omniverse is Universal Scene Description — an open-source, extensible 3D framework and common language for creating virtual worlds. With USD, creators like Rosa can work with multiple applications and extensions all on a centralized platform, further streamlining workflows.

Considering herself a beginner in 3D animation, Rosa feels she’s “only scratched the surface of what’s possible with Omniverse.” In the future, she plans to use the platform to create more interactive media.

“I love that with this technology, pieces can exist in the physical world, but gain new life in the digital world,” she said. “I’d like to use it to create avatars out of my ceramics, so that a person could interact with it and talk to it using an interface.”

With Little Martians, Rosa hopes to inspire her audience to think about the long processes of history — and empower artists that use traditional techniques to explore the possibilities of design and simulation technology like Omniverse.

“I am always exploring new techniques and sharing my process,” she said. “I believe my work can help other people who love the traditional fine arts to adapt to the digital world.”

Join In on the Creation

Creators and developers across the world can download NVIDIA Omniverse for free, and enterprise teams can use the platform for their 3D projects.

Learn more about NVIDIA’s latest AI breakthroughs powering graphics and virtual worlds at GTC, running online Sept. 19-22. Attend the top sessions for 3D creators and developers to learn more about how Omniverse can accelerate workflows, and join the NVIDIA Omniverse User Group to connect with other artists. Register free now.

Check out artwork from other “Omnivores” and submit projects in the gallery. Connect your workflows to Omniverse with software from Adobe, Autodesk, Epic Games, Maxon, Reallusion and more.

Follow NVIDIA Omniverse on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Medium for additional resources and inspiration. Check out the Omniverse forums, and join our Discord server and Twitch channel to chat with the community.

Looking for a change of art? Try using AI — that’s what 3D artist Nikola Damjanov is doing.

Based in Serbia, Damjanov has over 15 years of experience in the graphics industry, from making 3D models and animations to creating high-quality visual effects for music videos and movies. Now an artist at game developer company Nordeus, Damajanov’s hobbies include dabbling in creative projects using the latest technologies, like NVIDIA RTX and AI.

Recently, Damjanov has been experimenting with generative art, which is the process of using algorithms to create new ideas, forms, shapes, colors or patterns. And when Damjanov was invited to participate in his country’s Art Biennale, an exhibit that features creative pieces from local artists, he decided to design something new — a 3D-printed sculpture.

With the help of NVIDIA RTX and AI, Damjanov accelerated his creative workflows and produced a physical 3D sculpture of a flower with intricate details and designs.

An AI for Art 

To bring his sculpture to life, Damjanov started with the 3D digital design. His floral sculpture was inspired by the aesthetics of microfossils and radiolaria, which are intricate mineral skeletons.

To capture such elaborate details, Damjanov used the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 GPU, and tapped into the power of NVIDIA RTX rendering and AI denoising. These capabilities helped him easily create the 3D model and achieve the complex details of the flower for the sculpture.

“NVIDIA RTX-powered AI denoising just makes look development way easier, because the feedback loop is much shorter now,” he said. “You can quickly get a very decent approximation of what the final render will look like.”

Damjanov then accomplished most of the RTX rendering and generative modeling in SideFX Houdini, a 3D animation application software, and the OTOY OctaneRender engine.

In generative art, it’s important to set up rules that provide boundaries for the creative process, so the computer can follow those rules to create the new artwork.

For Damjanov, setting up these rules and relationships in the system helped with iterations and design changes. With the rules in place, he could change minor details and aspects, and immediately see how the rest of the design would be affected by the tweaks. For example, Damjanov could alter a petal on the flower to be twice the current size, and everything else connected to the petal would react to the new size.

Once he finalized the design, the most challenging part of the project was testing all the physical parts of the sculpture, the artist said.

“Because it was a very intricate design, we had to test out and print specific parts to see what comes out,” he said. “I ran simulations to try to find an approximate center of mass. I also had to print specific parts to find a design that would be structurally sound when printed.”

After three weeks of printing, Damjanov reached a 3D design that would produce the flower sculpture he envisioned for the Art Biennale.

Damjanov uses RTX-powered AI denoising and rendering in most of his projects. He’s also experimenting with using game engines for his work, and implementing NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling for increased graphics performance.

“I remember when most of my time was spent on waiting for something to finish, such as renders completed, maps baked, mesh processed — it was always a pain,” he said. “But with the sheer power and speed of RTX, artists have more time to spend on creative tasks.”

Check out Damjanov’s work on ArtStation and learn more about NVIDIA RTX.

E-commerce sales have skyrocketed as more people shop remotely, spurred by the pandemic. But this surge has also led fraudsters to use the opportunity to scam retailers and customers, according to David Sutton, director of analytical technology at fintech company Featurespace.

The company, headquartered in the U.K., has developed AI-powered technology to increase the speed and accuracy of fraud detection and prevention. Called ARIC Risk Hub, the platform uses deep learning models trained using NVIDIA GPUs to distinguish between valid and fraudulent transactional behavior.

“Online transactions are a prime target for criminals, as they don’t need to have the physical card to transact,” Sutton said. “With compromised card details readily available through the dark web, fraudsters can target large volumes of cards to commit fraud with very little effort.”

ARIC Risk Hub builds complex behavioral profiles of what it calls “genuine” customers by converging transaction and third-party data from across their lifecycle within a financial institution.

Fraud prevention has traditionally been limited by delays in detection — with customers being notified only after money had already left their bank accounts. But ARIC Risk Hub in less than 30 milliseconds determines anomalies in even the slightest changes in a customer’s behavior. It compares each financial event of a customer to their profile using AI-powered adaptive behavioral analytics.

The technology is deployed across 70 major financial institutions globally — and some have reported that it’s blocked 75% of its fraud attacks, Sutton said.

ARIC Risk Hub helps these institutions identify criminal behavior in near-real time — reducing their financial losses and operational costs, and protecting more than 500 million consumers from fraud and financial crime.

Featurespace is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a free, global program that nurtures cutting-edge startups.

100x Model Training Acceleration With NVIDIA GPUs

Featurespace got its start over a decade ago as a machine learning consultancy. It was rooted in the research of University of Cambridge professor Bill Fitzgerald, who was looking to make a commercial impact with adaptive behavioral analytics, a technology he created.

Applied to the financial services industry, the technology quickly took flight.

“With this technology, you could build a deep learning model that learns from and understands what sorts of actions a person normally takes so that it can look for changes in those actions,” said Sutton.

In the past, it would take weeks for Featurespace to set up and train different deep learning models. With NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs, the company has seen up to a 100x speedup in model training, Sutton said.

“Compared to when we used CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs give us a really quick research-to-impact loop,” he added. “It’s electrifying to work with something that can have an impact that quickly.”

In the time that they used to run just 10 trials, Featurespace’s researchers and data scientists can now run thousands of tests, which bolsters the statistical confidence of their results, enabling them to deploy only the best, tried-and-tested models.

Sutton said even a 1% increase in fraud detection discovered using the deep learning model could save large enterprises $20 million a year.

Featurespace typically uses recurrent neural-network architectures on data from streams of transactions. This model pipeline allows an individual’s new actions to be assessed via behavioral context learned from their past actions.

Financial Fortifications for All

Featurespace’s deep learning models have prevented all sorts of fraud, including those that involve credit cards, payments, applications and money laundering.

The ARIC Risk Hub interface is customizable, so customers can select the most suitable subset of components for their specific needs. Users can then change analytics settings or review suspicious cases. If upon review a case is deemed to be a false positive, the deep learning model learns from its errors, increasing future accuracy.

Featurespace technology has been making a splash for payment processing companies like TSYS and Worldpay — as well as large banks including Danske Bank, HSBC and NatWest.

As Sutton put it, “Featurespace is using AI to make the world a safer place to transact.”

“Our work is what brings a lot of people at Featurespace into the office every morning,” he said. “If you’re able to reduce the amount of money laundering in the world, for example, you can turn crime into something that doesn’t pay as much, making it a less profitable industry to be in.”

Featurespace will host sessions on preventing fraud, money laundering and cryptocrime at Money 20/20, a fintech conference running Oct. 23-26 in Las Vegas.

Register free for NVIDIA GTC, running online Sept. 19-22, to learn more about the latest technology breakthroughs for the era of AI and the metaverse.

Subscribe to NVIDIA financial services news.

Some weeks, GFN Thursday reveals new or unique features. Other weeks, it’s a cool reward. And every week, it offers its members new games.

This week, it’s all of the above.

First, Saints Row marches into GeForce NOW. Be your own boss in the new reboot of the classic open-world criminal adventure series, now available to stream from nearly any device.

Plus, members asked, and we listened: Genshin Impact is now streaming to iOS, iPadOS and Android mobile devices with touch controls. It’s part of the big Genshin Impact Version 3.0 update, adding a brand-new nation, characters and more.

But that’s not all. Guild Wars 2 comes to Steam, and GeForce NOW members can celebrate with a free in-game reward. Dragons, anyone?

And don’t forget about the 13 new games joining the GeForce NOW library, because the action never stops.

It’s Good to Be the King(pin)

Build a criminal empire and rise up from “Newbie” to “Boss” in Saints Row, streaming today for all GeForce NOW members.

The highly anticipated reboot of the Saints Row franchise follows the Saints, a group of three gang members turned friends who combine forces to take on three warring criminal gangs in the vibrant new city of Santo Ileso. Players can become whoever they want with the all-new “Boss Factory.” Customize characters, their weapons, vehicles and more in true Saints Row fashion.

Stream every side hustle, criminal venture and blockbuster mission across PCs, Macs, SHIELD TVs, iOS Safari and Android mobile devices and more. Recruiting a friend on a low-powered device into your crew has never been easier.

Plus, without any wait times for game downloads, members can jump right into Santo Ileso and spend more time being a boss. The game runs on AMD Threadripper Pro CPUs for GeForce NOW, allowing members to enjoy high-quality graphics. And RTX 3080 members get the added benefits of ultra-low latency, higher streaming frame rates, maximized eight-hour sessions and dedicated RTX 3080 servers.

Tap Into Tevyat With ‘Genshin Impact’ Version 3.0

Travelers rejoice: Genshin Impact is now streaming to iOS, iPadOS and Android mobile devices with touch controls.

The launch of game developer HoYoverse’s free-to-play, open-world, action role-playing game on GeForce NOW has been hugely successful, and members can now continue their journeys with their PCs, Macs or Chromebooks.

Mobile touch controls for Genshin Impact are now available for all GeForce NOW members who prefer gaming on their phones and tablets or only have time to play on the go. Jump in to start playing at PC quality. No downloads or accessories needed – just fingers!

The timing for touch controls couldn’t be better, as HoYoverse just released Genshin Impact’s biggest update of the year, “The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings.” It adds Sumeru, the fourth of the game’s seven major nations, and Dendro, the last of the game’s seven-element system. A new nation to explore and Dendro playable characters to recruit for the first time ever — it’s all available to stream on GeForce NOW from nearly any device.

Learn more about how to use touch controls for Genshin Impact on GeForce NOW.

Dragons Are Coming

Guild War 2 comes to Steam this week, and for a limited time members can redeem the “Emblazoned Dragon Throne” in-game reward for free. It’s a heroic seat fit for an adventurer and another perk of being a GeForce NOW member.

Getting membership rewards for streaming games on the cloud is easy. Log in to your NVIDIA account and select “GEFORCE NOW” from the header. Then, scroll down to “REWARDS” and click the “UPDATE REWARDS SETTINGS” button. Check the box in the dialogue window that shows up to start receiving special offers and in-game goodies.

Sign up for the GeForce NOW newsletter, including notifications for when rewards are available, by logging into your NVIDIA account and selecting “PREFERENCES” from the header. Check the “Gaming & Entertainment” box and “GeForce NOW” under topic preferences.

Non-Stop Action

Check out the 13 new games available to stream on GeForce NOW this week:

• Destiny 2 (New release on Epic Games Store)
• Fallen Legion Revenants (New release on Steam) 
• Guild Wars 2 (New release on Steam)
• Saints Row (New release on Epic Games Store)
• Ultimate Fishing Simulator 2 (New release on Steam)
• The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation (New release on Steam, Aug. 25)
• Century: Age of Ashes (Epic Games Store)
• Coromon (Epic Games Store)
• Dark Deity (Steam)
• HYPERCHARGE: Unboxed (Epic Games Store)
• Last Call BBS (Steam)
• Plague Inc: Evolved (Steam)
• Rebel Inc: Escalation (Steam)

With all of these new games to choose from, there’s an option for everyone. Speaking of options, we’ve got a question for you. Let us know your pick on Twitter or in the comments below.

Three doors appear in front of you.
Left: You become a crime boss
Center: Everything you touch becomes a cloud
Right: You get a pet dragon

Which door do you open?

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) August 24, 2022

AI Centers of Excellence are organizational units dedicated to implementing a company-wide AI vision. They help identify business use cases, create an implementation roadmap, accelerate adoption, assess impact and more.

NVIDIA GTC, a global conference on AI and the metaverse, brings together the world’s top business and technology leaders who’ve embraced artificial intelligence to transform their organizations.

The virtual conference, running Sept. 19-22, will feature talks from visionary leaders at companies including ByteDance, Deutsche Bank and Johnson & Johnson. Attend to explore real-world AI use cases, discover implementation strategies and get business tips from subject-matter experts across industries.

Register free for GTC and view the agenda for sessions on building AI Centers of Excellence.

Accelerating AI Adoption in Businesses

About 86% of business and tech executives expect AI to become a mainstream technology in their companies, according to a PwC survey. Such results show that advanced data analytics and AI software will be necessary for businesses to remain competitive across industries.

Industry leaders who take a holistic approach to data science and AI have experienced substantially greater benefits from AI initiatives compared with those who take a piecemeal approach. Reported advantages include about a 40% improvement in decision making, productivity through automation and customer experience, as well as the creation of more innovative products and services.

Accelerated computing platforms and frameworks now allow AI to be deployed quickly and at scale.

Check out the following GTC sessions for an inside look at how executives are driving AI adoption in the world’s most successful companies:

• The Journey to Redefine Banking, featuring Bernd Leukert, chief technology, data and innovation officer at Deutsche Bank.

• How U.S. Bank Is Driving Rapid Advancements Across Business Units, featuring Soumitri Kolavennu, senior vice president and head of AI research, and Srini Nallasivan, executive vice president, chief analytics officer and head of AI at U.S. Bank.

• How AT&T Supercharged Its Data Science Efforts, featuring Mark Austin, vice president of data science, and Jeremy Fix, assistant vice president of data science and AI at AT&T.

• 5G Killer App: Making Augmented and Virtual Reality a Reality, featuring Bill Vass, vice president of engineering at AWS; Brian Mecum, vice president of device technology at Verizon; Peter Linder, head of 5G marketing for North America at Ericsson; and Veronica Yip, product manager and product marketing manager at NVIDIA.

• Maximizing GPU Utilization in Large-Scale Machine Learning Infrastructure, featuring Yibo Zhu, director of machine learning systems at ByteDance.

• Digitally Transforming Boeing for the Future, featuring Linda Hapgood, vice president and program manager of digital transformation for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Watch NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s GTC keynote on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 8 a.m. PT, and browse the catalog of more than 250 sessions on using AI to build a future-ready business.

Floods in Kentucky and wildfires in California are the kinds of disasters companies of all sorts are trying to address with AI.

Tom Rikert, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based startup Masterful AI, is one of many experts helping them manage catastrophe risk.

In the U.S. alone, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners estimates that natural disasters cost $232 billion in 2019. In the face of such costs, regulators worldwide are pressing banks and corporations to be proactive.

“Institutions are expected to understand the impact of climate-related and environmental risks … in order to be able to make informed strategic and business decisions,” Europe’s central bank said in guidelines published in late 2020.

How AI Turns Data Into Insights

The good news is companies can access petabytes of geospatial images from daily satellite and drone feeds to detect and assess these risks.

“Humans can’t review all that data, so they need computer vision to find the patterns,” said Rikert. “That’s why AI’s now essential for managing catastrophe risk.”

Masterful AI uses semi-supervised machine learning, so companies only need to manually label a small fraction of the images they want to use to train AI models. It also supplies software to automate the job of quickly training models that sift through data for actionable insights.

More Flexible, Accurate Models

An analytics company recently used Masterful AI’s tools to detect and classify damaged or rusted transformers that could spark a wildfire, critical insights for utilities.

The software reduced error rates in AI models by over half and cut by two-thirds the time to build new models. Because Masterful can efficiently tap large volumes of unlabeled data for training, it also helped models detect more kinds of component defects across a wider range of background terrains.

“That’s a very high ROI for this field,” said Rikert, who earned a master’s degree from MIT in machine learning and an MBA from Harvard.

Growing Demand and Domains

The startup has worked with several customers and analysis firms that evaluate disasters, pollution and land-use plans. For example, it helped an insurance company improve damage assessments after disasters like hurricanes and hailstorms.

“We see a lot of demand from people who have data and models they’re trying to make more accurate and apply to more domains,” Rikert said.

Masterful AI builds and tests its models on PCs using a mix of NVIDIA GPUs, then runs its largest benchmarks on NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs in the cloud. Likewise, its customers use the tools locally and in the cloud.

From Laptops to the Cloud

“NVIDIA AI is very portable, so it’s easy to go from local development to a cloud deployment — that’s not the case for some platforms,” Rikert said.

Masterful AI also helps customers maximize their use of the memory packed in NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate training time.

“Without NVIDIA GPUs, we would not be able to accomplish our work,” he said. “It’s not feasible to train our models on CPUs, and we found NVIDIA GPUs have the best combination of operator support, performance and price compared to other accelerators.”

Synthetic Data Fills Gaps

Masterful AI is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a free, global program that helps startups access new technologies, expertise and investors. Thanks to Inception, Rikert’s team aims to test Omniverse Replicator to generate synthetic data that could further improve AI training.

Synthetic data is increasingly used to augment real-world datasets. It can improve AI performance on edge cases and situations where users lack real-world data.

“We see opportunities to improve AI model quality by helping optimize the mix of synthetic, labeled and unlabeled data customers use,” he said.

Broad Ecosystem for Risk Modeling

NVIDIA supports catastrophe-risk products from established software vendors and dozens of startups that are also members of Inception.

For example, Riskthinking.AI, in Toronto, uses probability models, augmented by AI, to create estimates of the financial impact of climate change. In addition, Heavy.ai in San Francisco provides GPU-accelerated analytics and visualization tools to help identify opportunities and risks hidden in massive geospatial and time-series datasets.

Lockheed Martin uses NVIDIA AI to help U.S. agencies fight wildfires. The UN Satellite Centre works with NVIDIA to manage climate risks and train data scientists on how to respond to floods.

Global solution integrators including Accenture, Deloitte and Ernst & Young also deliver NVIDIA-accelerated catastrophe risk products.

It’s a broad ecosystem fighting a growing set of disasters exacerbated by climate change.

“Catastrophes are unfortunately becoming more prevalent, so we’re using our experience working with customers and partners to help others get insights faster by automating their model development,” said Rikert.

Learn more about NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform for financial services.