Top 5 stories of the week

We know you’re busy and may not have time to watch VentureBeat every day – although we think you should – so every week we offer this take on the hottest stories of the week.

To keep track of the money, contributor Louis Columbus explores what IT certifications offer the greatest reward for tech professionals. Staff Writer Sri Krishna reports on Hugging Face’s Inference Endpoints and how its AI-as-a-service offering is designed to handle the largest business workloads. Krishna also tells how Colossal Biosciences, the company that revived the woolly mammoth, is creating a new company to offer its life platform that bridges the gap between data and discovery to other companies.

Senior editor Sharon Goldman digs deep into fakes and how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology is spreading misinformation. Goldman also talks to LinkedIn’s vice president of engineering and head of data and AI about how she’s bringing in top talent in data science.

Here’s more of our top five tech stories of the week:

1. 15 Highest-Paying IT Certifications for 2022

Of the many certification types and focuses, security certifications are the most lucrative, with an average annual salary of $153,154. For cloud certifications, the median salary is $150,961. AWS certifications – despite having the highest paying certification as noted above – are slightly lower on average, with an annual salary of about $149,371.

Tech professionals with one or more certifications still see strong demand in the job market. LinkedIn’s job listings, for example, show a combined 117,000 open cybersecurity jobs today seeking candidates with at least one of the four security certifications in the top 15 list below. There are also 88,200 open positions on the platform for candidates with at least one cloud architect certification

2. Hugging Face takes step towards democratization of AI and ML

New York-based Hugging Face, which aims to democratize AI and ML through open source and open science, has launched the Inference Endpoints. The AI-as-a-service offering is designed as a solution to address large enterprise workloads, including in regulated industries that are many users of transformer models, such as financial services (e.g. air gapped environments), healthcare services (e.g. . , HIPAA compliance) and consumer technology (e.g., GDPR compliance).

The company claims that Inference Endpoints will enable more than 100,000 Hugging Face Hub users to go from experiment to production in just a few minutes.

3. Colossal Biosciences spins from Form Bio software, provides platform for advanced AI-based applications
   

Colossal Biosciences, the self-described de-extinction company behind the woolly mammoth and thylacine, just announced it is spun off from Form Bio, as an independent software company offering a computational life sciences platform that bridges the gap between data and discovery.

Powered by deep artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, Form Bio provides life scientists with a software platform to manage large data sets, run verified workflows, visualize results, and collaborate with their peers. The platform brings these capabilities together into one cohesive unit with a user experience designed to simplify computing and amplify life science breakthroughs in businesses, labs, and universities.

4. New deepfake threats loom, Microsoft chief science officer says

Deepfakes, or high-fidelity, synthetic, fictional depictions of people and events using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), have become a common tool of misinformation over the past five years. But according to Eric Horvitz, chief science officer at Microsoft, new deepfake threats are lurking.

A new research paper from Horvitz says that interactive and compositional deepfakes are two growing classes of threats. In a Twitter thread, MosaicML researcher Davis Blaloch described interactive deepfakes as “the illusion of talking to a real person. Imagine a scammer calling your grandma who looks and sounds exactly like you.”

Compositional deepfakes, he continued, continue with a bad actor creating a lot of deepfakes to put together a “synthetic history.”

5. LinkedIn Al Leader Shares 3 Traits of Top Data Science Talent

In a new interview with VentureBeat, Ya Xu, VP of engineering and head of data and artificial intelligence (AI) at LinkedIn, shares her thoughts on everything from her passion for bringing science and engineering together to the best qualities she looks for when interviewing of data science talent.

Xu said there are three main things she looks for in candidates. First, is the individual mission-driven and impact-driven? Next, Xu wants to hire people who – unsurprisingly – work together. In addition, she said it is a priority to hire people who are willing to learn, adapt and remain curious.