MarketWatch (June 13)
Due to the difficulty of restricting all access by foreigners under “export-control restrictions issued by the U.S. government,” Anthropic has completely suspended access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, regardless of nationality. This unexpected twist “suggests that the biggest corporate developers may face even more roadblocks going forward.” The move could usher in more regulation “for political and geopolitical purposes” and drive “countries to develop their own AI models so that they’re not denied access to major private ones going forward.” Greater national urgency could be “good news for suppliers of AI infrastructure, which could see heightened demand for AI hardware and related products,” but that would also “make the market more competitive for big players like Anthropic and OpenAI that need to ramp up paid usage to solidify the economics of AI development.”
Tags: Access, AI models, Anthropic, Competitive, Developers, Export-control, Fable 5, Foreigners, Geopolitical, Hardware, Infrastructure, Mythos 5, Paid usage, Political, Regulation, Restrictions, Roadblocks, Suppliers, U.S.
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.
Jalopnik (January 15)
“American automakers have long feared Chinese competition, worrying that cheaper cars built just as well would knock the floor out of a profitable industry. Now, regulators have found a way to protect American brands by outright banning Chinese cars — or automotive hardware or software — used for communications or autonomous driving.”
Tags: Automakers, Autonomous driving, Banning, Brands, Cars, Cheaper, China, Communications, Competition, Hardware, Profitable, Protect, Regulators, Software, U.S.
Bloomberg (October 2)
For an entire trading day, a “piece of hardware took down Japan’s $6-trillion stock market,” marking the longest shutdown “since the exchange switched to a fully electronic trading system in 1999.” Besides drawing criticism, the malfunction “shone a spotlight on a lesser-discussed vulnerability in the world’s financial plumbing — not software or security risks but the danger when one of hundreds of pieces of hardware that make up a trading system decides to give up the ghost.”
Tags: Danger, Financial plumbing, Hardware, Japan, Malfunction, Security risks, Shutdown, Software, Stock market, Trading, TSE, Vulnerability
The Economist (March 12)
“Now after five decades, the end of Moore’s law is in sight.” This might not prove a bad thing as the quest for improvement will turn to more promising areas, such as the “deep learning” technology that recently beat Go legend Lee Sedol. “Huge performance gains can be achieved through new algorithms. Indeed, slowing progress in hardware will provide stronger incentives to develop cleverer software.”
Tags: Algorithms, Deep learning, Gains, Go, Hardware, Improvement, Moore’s Law, Performance, Progress, Promising, Software, Technology
The Economist (January 18, 2014)
“With a string of deals the internet giant has positioned itself to become a big inventor, and reinventor, of hardware.” Google is becoming “the next GE,” with recent acquisitions spanning Nest Labs, Motorola Mobility and Boston Dynamics even as Google’s in-house engineers are “busy working on driverless cars and wearable gadgets such as Google Glass.”
Tags: Acquisitions, Boston Dynamics, Driverless cars, Engineers, GE, Google, Google Glass, Hardware, Inventor, Motorola Mobility, Nest Labs, Wearable gadgets
