Digitalisation in education and its influence on teaching methods is the focus of this study, which examines the use of ChatGPT in a role-playing game used in the Cloud Computing Engineering Master's programme at the University of Applied Sciences Burgenland. The aim of the study was to analyse the impact of AI-based simulations on students' learning experience. Based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, ChatGPT was used to give students a deeper understanding of strategic decision-making processes in simulated business scenarios. The methodological approach included role-playing and qualitative content analysis of 20 student reflections. The findings suggest that ChatGPT enhances students' engagement, critical thinking, and communication skills, in addition to contributing to the effective application of theoretical knowledge. Furthermore, simulations can contribute to the effective application of theoretical knowledge. The results underscore the significance of adaptive teaching approaches in promoting digital literacy and equipping learners for the digital workplace. The integration of AI into curricula and the need for ongoing innovation in higher education are also emphasised as a means of guaranteeing excellent, future-focused instruction. The findings highlight the potential of AI and ChatGPT in particular, as an innovative cutting-edge educational tool that can both enhance the learning experience and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through education.
The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and cloud computing have precipitated an unprecedented demand for computational resources. However, the current landscape of computational resource allocation is characterized by significant inefficiencies, including underutilization and price volatility. This paper addresses these challenges by introducing a novel global platform for the commodification of compute hours, termed the Global Compute Exchange (GCX) (Patent Pending). The GCX leverages blockchain technology and smart contracts to create a secure, transparent, and efficient marketplace for buying and selling computational power. The GCX is built in a layered fashion, comprising Market, App, Clearing, Risk Management, Exchange (Offchain), and Blockchain (Onchain) layers, each ensuring a robust and efficient operation. This platform aims to revolutionize the computational resource market by fostering a decentralized, efficient, and transparent ecosystem that ensures equitable access to computing power, stimulates innovation, and supports diverse user needs on a global scale. By transforming compute hours into a tradable commodity, the GCX seeks to optimize resource utilization, stabilize pricing, and democratize access to computational resources. This paper explores the technological infrastructure, market potential, and societal impact of the GCX, positioning it as a pioneering solution poised to drive the next wave of innovation in commodities and compute.
Machine learning provides a data-driven approach for creating a digital twin of a system - a digital model used to predict the system behavior. Having an accurate digital twin can drive many applications, such as controlling autonomous systems. Often the size, weight, and power consumption of the digital twin or related controller must be minimized, ideally realized on embedded computing hardware that can operate without a cloud-computing connection. Here, we show that a nonlinear controller based on next-generation reservoir computing can tackle a difficult control problem: controlling a chaotic system to an arbitrary time-dependent state. The model is accurate, yet it is small enough to be evaluated on a field-programmable gate array typically found in embedded devices. Furthermore, the model only requires 25.0 $\pm$ 7.0 nJ per evaluation, well below other algorithms, even without systematic power optimization. Our work represents the first step in deploying efficient machine learning algorithms to the computing "edge."
Transformers have excelled in many tasks including vision. However, efficient deployment of transformer models in low-latency or high-throughput applications is hindered by the computation in the attention mechanism which involves expensive operations such as matrix multiplication and Softmax. To address this, we introduce ReduceFormer, a family of models optimized for efficiency with the spirit of attention. ReduceFormer leverages only simple operations such as reduction and element-wise multiplication, leading to greatly simplified architecture and improved inference performance, with up to 37% reduction in latency and 44% improvement in throughput, while maintaining competitive accuracy comparable to other recent methods. The proposed model family is suitable for edge devices where compute resource and memory bandwidth are limited, as well as for cloud computing where high throughput is sought after.
The Bhutanese government is increasing its utilization of technological approaches such as including Remote Sensing-based knowledge in their decision-making process. This study focuses on crop type and crop extent in Paro, one of the top rice-yielding districts in Bhutan, and employs publicly available NICFI high-resolution satellite imagery from Planet. Two Deep Learning (DL) approaches, point-based (DNN) and patch-based (U-Net), models were used in conjunction with cloud-computing platforms. Three different models per DL approaches (DNN and U-Net) were trained: 1) RGBN channels from Planet; 2) RGBN and elevation data (RGBNE); 3) RGBN and Sentinel-1 (S1) data (RGBNS), and RGBN with E and S1 data (RGBNES). From this comprehensive analysis, the U-Net displayed higher performance metrics across both model training and model validation efforts. Among the U-Net model sets, the RGBN, RGBNE, RGBNS, and RGBNES models had an F1-score of 0.8546, 0.8563, 0.8467, and 0.8500 respectively. An independent model evaluation was performed and found a high level of performance variation across all the metrics. For this independent model evaluation, the U-Net RGBN, RGBNE, RGBNES, and RGBN models displayed the F1-scores of 0.5935, 0.6154, 0.5882, and 0.6582, suggesting U-Net RGBNES as the best model. The study shows that the DL approaches can predict rice. Also, DL methods can be used with the survey-based approaches currently utilized by the Bhutan Department of Agriculture. Further, this study demonstrated the usage of regional land cover products such as SERVIR's RLCMS as a weak label approach to capture different strata addressing the class imbalance problem and improving the sampling design for DL application. Finally, through preliminary model testing and comparisons outlined it was shown that using additional features such as NDVI, EVI, and NDWI did not drastically improve model performance.
As privacy-preserving becomes a pivotal aspect of deep learning (DL) development, multi-party computation (MPC) has gained prominence for its efficiency and strong security. However, the practice of current MPC frameworks is limited, especially when dealing with large neural networks, exemplified by the prolonged execution time of 25.8 seconds for secure inference on ResNet-152. The primary challenge lies in the reliance of current MPC approaches on additive secret sharing, which incurs significant communication overhead with non-linear operations such as comparisons. Furthermore, additive sharing suffers from poor scalability on party size. In contrast, the evolving landscape of MPC necessitates accommodating a larger number of compute parties and ensuring robust performance against malicious activities or computational failures. In light of these challenges, we propose SSNet, which for the first time, employs Shamir's secret sharing (SSS) as the backbone of MPC-based ML framework. We meticulously develop all framework primitives and operations for secure DL models tailored to seamlessly integrate with the SSS scheme. SSNet demonstrates the ability to scale up party numbers straightforwardly and embeds strategies to authenticate the computation correctness without incurring significant performance overhead. Additionally, SSNet introduces masking strategies designed to reduce communication overhead associated with non-linear operations. We conduct comprehensive experimental evaluations on commercial cloud computing infrastructure from Amazon AWS, as well as across diverse prevalent DNN models and datasets. SSNet demonstrates a substantial performance boost, achieving speed-ups ranging from 3x to 14x compared to SOTA MPC frameworks. Moreover, SSNet also represents the first framework that is evaluated on a five-party computation setup, in the context of secure DL inference.
The Internet of Things has experienced significant growth and has become an integral part of various industries. This expansion has given rise to the Industrial IoT initiative where industries are utilizing IoT technology to enhance communication and connectivity through innovative solutions such as data analytics and cloud computing. However this widespread adoption of IoT is demanding of algorithms that provide better efficiency for the same training environment without speed being a factor. In this paper we present a novel approach called G Federated Proximity. Building upon the existing FedProx technique our implementation introduces slight modifications to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness. By leveraging FTL our proposed system aims to improve the accuracy of model obtained after the training dataset with the help of normalization techniques such that it performs better on real time devices and heterogeneous networks Our results indicate a significant increase in the throughput of approximately 90% better convergence compared to existing model performance.
Efficient resource utilization and perfect user experience usually conflict with each other in cloud computing platforms. Great efforts have been invested in increasing resource utilization but trying not to affect users' experience for cloud computing platforms. In order to better utilize the remaining pieces of computing resources spread over the whole platform, deferrable jobs are provided with a discounted price to users. For this type of deferrable jobs, users are allowed to submit jobs that will run for a specific uninterrupted duration in a flexible range of time in the future with a great discount. With these deferrable jobs to be scheduled under the remaining capacity after deploying those on-demand jobs, it remains a challenge to achieve high resource utilization and meanwhile shorten the waiting time for users as much as possible in an online manner. In this paper, we propose an online deferrable job scheduling method called \textit{Online Scheduling for DEferrable jobs in Cloud} (\OSDEC{}), where a deep reinforcement learning model is adopted to learn the scheduling policy, and several auxiliary tasks are utilized to provide better state representations and improve the performance of the model. With the integrated reinforcement learning framework, the proposed method can well plan the deployment schedule and achieve a short waiting time for users while maintaining a high resource utilization for the platform. The proposed method is validated on a public dataset and shows superior performance.
The proliferation of cloud computing technologies has paved the way for deploying networked encrypted control systems, offering high performance, remote accessibility and privacy. However, in scenarios where the control algorithms run on third-party cloud service providers, the control logic might be changed by a malicious agent on the cloud. Consequently, it is imperative to verify the correctness of the control signals received from the cloud. Traditional verification methods, like zero-knowledge proof techniques, are computationally demanding in both proof generation and verification, may require several rounds of interactions between the prover and verifier and, consequently, are inapplicable in realtime control system applications. In this paper, we present a novel computationally inexpensive verifiable computing solution inspired by the probabilistic cut-and-choose approach. The proposed scheme allows the plant's actuator to validate the computations accomplished by the encrypted cloud-based networked controller without compromising the control scheme's performance. We showcase the effectiveness and real-time applicability of the proposed verifiable computation scheme using a remotely controlled Khepera IV differential-drive robot.
In response to the social issue of the increasing number of elderly vulnerable groups going missing due to the aggravating aging population in China, our team has developed a wearable anti-loss device and intelligent early warning system for elderly individuals with intermittent dementia using artificial intelligence and IoT technology. This system comprises an anti-loss smart helmet, a cloud computing module, and an intelligent early warning application on the caregiver's mobile device. The smart helmet integrates a miniature camera module, a GPS module, and a 5G communication module to collect first-person images and location information of the elderly. Data is transmitted remotely via 5G, FTP, and TCP protocols. In the cloud computing module, our team has proposed for the first time a multimodal dangerous state recognition network based on scene and location information to accurately assess the risk of elderly individuals going missing. Finally, the application software interface designed for the caregiver's mobile device implements multi-level early warnings. The system developed by our team requires no operation or response from the elderly, achieving fully automatic environmental perception, risk assessment, and proactive alarming. This overcomes the limitations of traditional monitoring devices, which require active operation and response, thus avoiding the issue of the digital divide for the elderly. It effectively prevents accidental loss and potential dangers for elderly individuals with dementia.
Public data ecosystems (PDEs) represent complex socio-technical systems crucial for optimizing data use in the public sector and outside it. Recognizing their multifaceted nature, previous research pro-posed a six-generation Evolutionary Model of Public Data Ecosystems (EMPDE). Designed as a result of a systematic literature review on the topic spanning three decade, this model, while theoretically robust, necessitates empirical validation to enhance its practical applicability. This study addresses this gap by validating the theoretical model through a real-life examination in five European countries - Latvia, Serbia, Czech Republic, Spain, and Poland. This empirical validation provides insights into PDEs dynamics and variations of implementations across contexts, particularly focusing on the 6th generation of forward-looking PDE generation named "Intelligent Public Data Generation" that represents a paradigm shift driven by emerging technologies such as cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing tools, Generative AI, and Large Language Models (LLM) with potential to contribute to both automation and augmentation of business processes within these ecosystems. By transcending their traditional status as a mere component, evolving into both an actor and a stakeholder simultaneously, these technologies catalyze innovation and progress, enhancing PDE management strategies to align with societal, regulatory, and technical imperatives in the digital era.
IoT edge computing positions computing resources closer to the data sources to reduce the latency, relieve the bandwidth pressure on the cloud, and enhance data security. Nevertheless, data security in IoT edge computing still faces critical threats (e.g., data breaches). Access control is fundamental for mitigating these threats. However, IoT edge computing introduces notable challenges for achieving resource-conserving, low-latency, flexible, and scalable access control. To review recent access control measures, we novelly organize them according to different data lifecycles--data collection, storage, and usage--and, meanwhile, review blockchain technology in this novel organization. In this way, we provide novel insights and envisage several potential research directions. This survey can help readers find gaps systematically and prompt the development of access control techniques in IoT edge computing under the intricacy of innovations in access control.
The field of web and mobile software frameworks is relatively mature, with a large variety of tools in different languages that facilitate traditional app development where data in a relational database is displayed and modified. Our position is that many current frameworks became popular during single server deployment of MVC architecture apps, and do not facilitate modern aspects of app development such as cloud computing and the incorporation of emerging technologies such as AI. We present a novel framework which accomplishes these purposes, Skeet, which was recently released to general use, alongside an initial evaluation. Skeet provides an app structure that reflects current trends in architecture, and tool suites that allow developers with minimal knowledge of AI internals to easily incorporate such technologies into their apps and deploy them.
An advantage of Large Language Models (LLMs) is their contextualization capability - providing different responses based on student inputs like solution strategy or prior discussion, to potentially better engage students than standard feedback. We present a design and evaluation of a proof-of-concept LLM application to offer students dynamic and contextualized feedback. Specifically, we augment an Online Programming Exercise bot for a college-level Cloud Computing course with ChatGPT, which offers students contextualized reflection triggers during a collaborative query optimization task in database design. We demonstrate that LLMs can be used to generate highly situated reflection triggers that incorporate details of the collaborative discussion happening in context. We discuss in depth the exploration of the design space of the triggers and their correspondence with the learning objectives as well as the impact on student learning in a pilot study with 34 students.
Deep learning (DL) techniques have recently found success in anomaly detection (AD) across various fields such as finance, medical services, and cloud computing. However, most of the current research tends to view deep AD algorithms as a whole, without dissecting the contributions of individual design choices like loss functions and network architectures. This view tends to diminish the value of preliminary steps like data preprocessing, as more attention is given to newly designed loss functions, network architectures, and learning paradigms. In this paper, we aim to bridge this gap by asking two key questions: (i) Which design choices in deep AD methods are crucial for detecting anomalies? (ii) How can we automatically select the optimal design choices for a given AD dataset, instead of relying on generic, pre-existing solutions? To address these questions, we introduce ADGym, a platform specifically crafted for comprehensive evaluation and automatic selection of AD design elements in deep methods. Our extensive experiments reveal that relying solely on existing leading methods is not sufficient. In contrast, models developed using ADGym significantly surpass current state-of-the-art techniques.
Benefiting from cloud computing, today's early-stage quantum computers can be remotely accessed via the cloud services, known as Quantum-as-a-Service (QaaS). However, it poses a high risk of data leakage in quantum machine learning (QML). To run a QML model with QaaS, users need to locally compile their quantum circuits including the subcircuit of data encoding first and then send the compiled circuit to the QaaS provider for execution. If the QaaS provider is untrustworthy, the subcircuit to encode the raw data can be easily stolen. Therefore, we propose a co-design framework for preserving the data security of QML with the QaaS paradigm, namely PristiQ. By introducing an encryption subcircuit with extra secure qubits associated with a user-defined security key, the security of data can be greatly enhanced. And an automatic search algorithm is proposed to optimize the model to maintain its performance on the encrypted quantum data. Experimental results on simulation and the actual IBM quantum computer both prove the ability of PristiQ to provide high security for the quantum data while maintaining the model performance in QML.
The cloud computing landscape has evolved significantly in recent years, embracing various sandboxes to meet the diverse demands of modern cloud applications. These sandboxes encompass container-based technologies like Docker and gVisor, microVM-based solutions like Firecracker, and security-centric sandboxes relying on Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) such as Intel SGX and AMD SEV. However, the practice of placing multiple tenants on shared physical hardware raises security and privacy concerns, most notably side-channel attacks. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of fingerprinting containers through CPU frequency reporting sensors in Intel and AMD CPUs. One key enabler of our attack is that the current CPU frequency information can be accessed by user-space attackers. We demonstrate that Docker images exhibit a unique frequency signature, enabling the distinction of different containers with up to 84.5% accuracy even when multiple containers are running simultaneously in different cores. Additionally, we assess the effectiveness of our attack when performed against several sandboxes deployed in cloud environments, including Google's gVisor, AWS' Firecracker, and TEE-based platforms like Gramine (utilizing Intel SGX) and AMD SEV. Our empirical results show that these attacks can also be carried out successfully against all of these sandboxes in less than 40 seconds, with an accuracy of over 70% in all cases. Finally, we propose a noise injection-based countermeasure to mitigate the proposed attack on cloud environments.
Cloud computing (cloud computing) is a kind of distributed computing, referring to the network "cloud" will be a huge data calculation and processing program into countless small programs, and then, through the system composed of multiple servers to process and analyze these small programs to get the results and return to the user. This report explores the intersection of cloud computing and financial information processing, identifying risks and challenges faced by financial institutions in adopting cloud technology. It discusses the need for intelligent solutions to enhance data processing efficiency and accuracy while addressing security and privacy concerns. Drawing on regulatory frameworks, the report proposes policy recommendations to mitigate concentration risks associated with cloud computing in the financial industry. By combining intelligent forecasting and evaluation technologies with cloud computing models, the study aims to provide effective solutions for financial data processing and management, facilitating the industry's transition towards digital transformation.
In a nutshell, "the cloud" refers to a collection of interconnected computing resources made possible by an extensive, real-time communication network like the internet. Because of its potential to reduce processing costs, the emerging paradigm of cloud computing has recently attracted a large number of academics. The exponential expansion of cloud computing has made the rapid expansion of cloud services very remarkable. Ensuring the security of personal information in today's interconnected world is no easy task. These days, security is really crucial. Models of security that are relevant to cloud computing include confidentiality, authenticity, accessibility, data integrity, and recovery. Using the Hybrid Encryption this study, we cover all the security issues and leaks in cloud infrastructure.
In the era of cloud computing and data-driven applications, it is crucial to protect sensitive information to maintain data privacy, ensuring truly reliable systems. As a result, preserving privacy in deep learning systems has become a critical concern. Existing methods for privacy preservation rely on image encryption or perceptual transformation approaches. However, they often suffer from reduced task performance and high computational costs. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Privacy-Preserving framework that uses a set of deformable operators for secure task learning. Our method involves shuffling pixels during the analog-to-digital conversion process to generate visually protected data. Those are then fed into a well-known network enhanced with deformable operators. Using our approach, users can achieve equivalent performance to original images without additional training using a secret key. Moreover, our method enables access control against unauthorized users. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our approach, showcasing its potential in cloud-based scenarios and privacy-sensitive applications.