BBC (October 15)
“Silicon Valley is on the hunt for new sources of power to drive enormous data centres and in particular, the high-power chips that have become the backbone of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.” Nuclear power is capturing Increasing attention, especially small modular reactors (SMRs), which “sound like the perfect solution to the growing energy AI demand.” Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. The SMRs being discussed would only produce a small fraction of AI’s needs. Moreover, SMRs generate more nuclear “waste than larger conventional reactors.” Nevertheless, “big tech is making a big bet on nuclear – Microsoft has even recently joined the industry’s lobbying group, the World Nuclear Association.”
Tags: AI, Chips, Conventional reactors, Data centers, Lobbying, Microsoft, Nuclear power, Power, Silicon Valley, SMRs, Solution, Sources, Waste
Investment Week (September 29)
“Which companies are actually ‘doing AI’ is the question that has to be answered.” Just as “a lot of fund houses are making a big show of talking about AI as it puts them ‘in’ this next big trend, the same is true for many of the companies they are looking to buy.” Hype abounds and the Financial Times “discovered a disparity between the AI leaps CEOs were buzzing about in their company’s investor calls and the actual investment the businesses were making into this space.” To keep “AI in check just from a risk management basis” and to separate “the winners from the churn,” active mangers are essential. “The value of active management cannot be underestimated, not just for the necessary diversification but to actually play a role in making this new era not be as ‘terrifying’ as people are predicting.”
Tags: Abounds, Active mangers, AI, Big trend, Buy, CEOs, Churn, Companies, Disparity, Diversification, Fund houses, Hype, New era, Predicting, Risk management, Terrifying, Winners
Wall Street Journal (September 26)
“Walmart executives aren’t sugarcoating the message: Artificial intelligence will wipe out jobs and reshape its workforce.” They are not alone. “Companies including Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon have bluntly predicted job losses associated with AI.” For the next three years at Walmart, head count is “expected to stay flat… despite growth plans, as AI eliminates or transforms roles.” Beyond that time frame, the outlook “remains murky” for the specifics of its labor force composition, but it will definitely be leaner.
Tags: AI, Amazon, Companies, Eliminates, Executives, Ford, Growth, Head count, Job losses, JPMorgan Chase, Murky, Reshape, Sugarcoating, Transforms, Walmart, Workforce
Futurism (September 14)
AI hallucinations are “a major problem plaguing the entire industry, greatly undercutting the usefulness of the tech.” The problem appears to be “getting worse as AI models get more capable.” Some experts argue there is no way around the problem as “hallucinations are intrinsic to the tech itself” and that large language models (LLMs) have hit their limits. However, OpenAI believes it has stumbled on the problem and a relatively easy fix. Its researchers posit that LLMs “hallucinate because when they’re being created, they’re incentivized to guess rather than admit they simply don’t know the answer,” as conventional scoring is binary, which rewards correct guesses and penalizes honest admissions of uncertainty. Instead, they believe you can “penalize confident errors more than you penalize uncertainty, and give partial credit for appropriate expressions of uncertainty.”
Tags: AI, AI models, Binary, Capable, Conventional, Experts, Guess, Hallucinations, Incentivized, Intrinsic, LLMs, Researchers, Rewards, Scoring, Tech, Undercutting, Usefulness
Fortune (August 2)
“Recent college graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years.” Some have attributed this to AI and automation, but others like Berkeley economist Brad DeLong believe “larger forces are at work.” He believes “the challenges confronting young job-seekers today are primarily driven by widespread policy uncertainty and a sluggish economy.” Basically, these unlucky “new entrants to the job market are bearing the brunt of the retreat to risk aversion.”
Tags: AI, Automation, Berkeley, Challenges, College graduates, DeLong, Economist, Job markets, Job seekers, Policy uncertainty, Sluggish economy, Toughest
Financial Times (July 28)
“The world was in striking agreement on one point: if Donald Trump went ahead with tariffs, it would strengthen the dollar and trigger stagflation.” It hasn’t, even though the “effective US tariff rate has already risen from 2.5 per cent to 15 per cent.” This outcome is unlikely to upturn conventional tariff wisdom. The U.S. is not “really enjoying a free lunch, taking in $300bn a year in tariff revenues with none of the expected heartburn.” It is much more probable that other factors, like AI’s explosive growth, have hidden the impact. The most likely culprit is “the timeworn mistake of employing simple models…. Complex economies are rarely shaped by just one factor, not even a shock as big as Trump’s tariffs.”
Tags: 15%, Agreement, AI, Complex economies, Conventional wisdom, Dollar, Free lunch, Hidden, Impact, Simple models, Stagflation, Tariffs, Trump, U.S.
WARC (June 13)
“Alphabet, Amazon and Meta dominate the advertising market outside China: they’re set to account for 54.7% of that total in 2025 – equivalent to $524.4bn – rising to 56.2% in 2026. The introduction of AI stands to disrupt some ad revenue models, particularly in search, but Google’s dominance of that market will likely persist in the near term,” according to WARC’s Global Ad Forecast Q2 2025.
Tags: $524.4bn, 2025, 2026, Ad revenue, Advertising market, AI, Alphabet, Amazon, China, Disrupt, Dominance, Dominate, Global Ad Forecast, Google, Market, Meta, Persist
The Economist (May 3)
“Relations between America and China are at a low ebb. Tariffs of well over 100% on both sides have severed trade. Each is striving to dominate 21st-century technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). A massive military build-up is under way. In the previous cold war such rivalries came to a head over flashpoints like the Berlin airlift and the Cuban missile crisis. Today American resolve is likely to be tested over Taiwan—and sooner than many think.”
Tags: AI, Berlin airlift, China, Cold war, Cuban missile crisis, Dominate, Flashpoints, Low ebb, Military build-up, Relations, Resolve, Rivalries, Severed trade, Tariffs, Technologies, Tested, U.S.
Barron’s (March 31)
“AI has yet to cure cancer or drive a car cross-country. But it has upended corporate strategy and spending plans, and opened the door to an age of rapid problem solving, enhanced productivity, and machine-driven creativity.” Still, it’s unclear where AI’s potential leads. “The AI hype cycle has entered a new phase, with investors looking for a payoff. As some of the early enthusiasm fades, tech stocks have entered a correction.”
Tags: AI, Cancer, Car, Corporate strategy, Correction, Creativity, Cure, Enhanced productivity, Enthusiasm, Hype, Investors, Payoff, Potential, Problem solving, Spending plans, Tech stocks, Unclear, Upended
Reuters (March 26)
“Thanks to advances in AI, chips and hardware, the United States and China are now racing to develop humanoid robots that can be deployed in factories, restaurants, hospitals and even households. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently declared that in less than five years, humanoid robots will be widely used in manufacturing.” At the moment, “China has shaky upper hand in battle of the robots” and tremendous motivation to succeed. The country faces a tremendous “labour crunch: in 2021 officials forecasted a shortage of nearly 30 million manufacturing workers by 2025” and this is projected to grow worse as China’s workforce continues to contract.
Tags: AI, Battle, China, Chips, Crunch, Factories, Hardware, Hospitals, Households, Huang, Humanoid, Labour, Manufacturing, Nvidia, Restaurants, Robots, Shortage, U.S.
