Tag: Artificial Intelligence

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Zuckerberg announces chatbots with ‘personality.’ Wonder where the personality dynamic will come from? Charmed, I’m sure…

Creepy chatbot

Meta has announced a series of new chatbots to be used in its Messenger service.

Charming

The chatbots will have ‘personality’ and specialise in certain subjects, like holidays, and cooking. Let’s hope they haven’t been modelled on the company boss then.

It is the latest attempt in a chatbot ‘chat’ race between tech’ companies desperate to produce more accurate and personalised artificial intelligence. The chatbots are still a work in progress with ‘limitations’, said boss Mark Zuckerberg.

During Meta’s first in-person event since before the pandemic, Mr Zuckerberg said that it had been an ‘amazing year for AI’. The company is calling its main chatbot ‘Meta AI’ and can be used in messaging. For example, users can ask Meta AI questions in chat ‘to settle arguments’ or ask other questions.

It’s been touted as fun entertainment and not just question answering.

I wonder if these AI chatbots will be as good as the Metaverse rollout has been so far?

Zuckerberg’s ‘personality’ chatbots

Zuckerberg’s ‘personality’ chatbots are a new feature of Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook. They are artificial intelligence agents that can chat with users on Messenger, using the faces and voices of celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Kendall Jenner, and Tom Brady.

Chatbots
Chatbots with personality. God help us!

They are supposed to have different personalities and interests, such as sports, cooking, or music. Meta claims that they are for entertainment purposes only, and that they have limitations on what they can answer.

Critical

However, some critics have raised ethical and social concerns about these chatbots. They argue that they are creating “counterfeit people” that could deceive or manipulate users, especially young ones. They also question the consent and privacy of the celebrities whose identities are used by the chatbots. They warn that these chatbots could pose dangers to the authenticity and trustworthiness of online communication.

If you are curious about these chatbots, you can try them out on Messenger by searching for their names. But be aware that they are not real people, and that they may not give you accurate or reliable information. They are just products of Meta’s artificial intelligence technology, which is still a work in progress – a bit like the Metaverse.

Creepy chatbot
Chatbot with creepy personality

All this wonderful AI tech and what do we do? Play games with it!

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Luddites against BIG tech’ – a modern rebellion

Luddites

What are Luddites?

Luddites were a group of workers who protested against the use of machinery that threatened their livelihoods in the early 19th century in Britain. They were not opposed to technology in general, but to the specific machines that were ‘taking away their livelihoods’.

They attacked factories and smashed machines that were replacing their jobs with cheaper and less skilled labour.

BIG tech Luddite comparison – is AI the latest threat?

Some people have compared the Luddites to the modern movements that resist the effects of Big Tech and artificial intelligence (AI) on workers’ lives. They argue that these technologies are creating a new wave of automation that is displacing workers, eroding their rights, and increasing inequality. 

They also point out that the Luddites had the support of a majority of English people and eventually led to changes in the law that improved workers’ conditions.

Progress?

However, others have criticized this comparison as inaccurate or misleading. They claim that the Luddites were not successful in stopping technological progress, and that their actions were violent and destructive. 

Technology will create new jobs

They also suggest that the Luddite fallacy, which refers to the belief that technological progress causes mass unemployment, has been proven wrong by history. They contend that technology can create new opportunities and benefits for workers, as long as society adapts and regulates it properly.

The question of whether a new modern Luddite rebellion can rise against Big Tech is not a simple one. It depends on how we define Luddites, how we evaluate the impacts of technology, and how we respond to the challenges and opportunities it presents.

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OpenAI says ChatGPT can now ‘speak,’ listen and process images

ChatGPT

I can see and hear and speak…

OpenAI’s ChatGPT can now ‘see, hear and speak,’ or, at least, understand spoken words, respond with a synthetic voice and process images, the company announced Monday 25th September 2023.

The update to the chatbot OpenAI’s biggest since the introduction of GPT-4, allows users to opt into voice conversations on ChatGPT’s mobile app and choose from five different synthetic voices for the bot to respond with. Users will also be able to share images with ChatGPT and highlight areas of focus or analysis.

Roll out

The changes will be rolling out to paying users in the next two weeks, OpenAI said. ‘While voice functionality will be limited to the iOS and Android apps, the image processing capabilities will be available on all platforms’.

The big feature push comes alongside ever-rising stakes of the artificial intelligence (AI) race among chatbot leaders such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Anthropic. In an effort to encourage consumers to adopt generative AI into their daily lives, tech giants are racing to launch not only new chatbot apps, but also new features. Google has announced updates to its Bard chatbot, and Microsoft added visual search to Bing.

Investment expansion

Earlier this year, Microsoft’s expanded its investment in OpenAI, an additional $10 billion, it made it the biggest AI investment of the year. In April 2023, the startup reportedly structured a $300 million share sale at a valuation of between $27 billion and $29 billion, with investments from firms such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. 

Concerns

Experts have raised concerns about AI-generated synthetic voices, which in this case could allow users a more natural experience but also enable more convincing deepfakes. Cyber threat investigators and researchers have already begun to explore how deepfakes can be used to penetrate cybersecurity systems.

OpenAI says ChatGPT can now ‘speak,’ listen and process images

OpenAI acknowledged those concerns in its announcement, saying that synthetic voices were ‘created with voice actors we have directly worked with,’ rather than collected from strangers.

The release also provided little information about how OpenAI would use consumer voice inputs, or how the company would secure that data if it were used. OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment, and the company’s terms of service say that consumers own their inputs ‘to the extent permitted by applicable law.’

What does ‘ChatGPT’ actually mean?

ChatGPT is an acronym for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It is a name of an artificial intelligence model that can generate natural language text based on user input.

It was developed by OpenAI, a research organization dedicated to creating and ensuring the safe and beneficial use of artificial intelligence (AI). ChatGPT can be used for various purposes, such as answering questions, having conversations, and producing creative writing.

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AI pumped technology can surpass human intelligence ‘big time’ – according to SoftBank’s CEO

Arm AI chip

Masayoshi Son says AI to surpass human intelligence and that SoftBank will ‘rule the world’. Oh dear…!

Main points in brief

  • Masayoshi Son reportedly said AI is capable of helping solve the world’s biggest problems and could potentially surpass the intelligence of humans.
  • He said he was a ‘big believer’ in AI and that Arm, a chip design company owned by Softbank, was a ‘core’ beneficiary of the AI revolution.
  • He said AI would supercharge human ability and that Softbank would ‘rule the world’ and win the latest generative-AI race thanks to its heavy investment in startups and its majority stake in Arm.
  • He also acknowledged that AI posed some threats to humanity if mishandled and that society should regulate it to protect humankind.

Masayoshi Son and SoftBank

The 66-year-old founded SoftBank, which still controls about 90% of Arm Holdings after the IPO, back in 1981 after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley. Forbes estimates his net worth at more than $24 billion, making him the world’s 69th richest person.

Son made his early reputation as an investor in Japan’s mobile phone industry, and went on to become one of the first backers of Yahoo as well as Alibaba. Son continues to serve as the chairman of Arm’s board of directors.

AI does pose some threats to humanity if mishandled, Son said, likening its potential misuse to the dangers of speeding, or drinking alcohol while driving a car. But, more positively, AI can also help solve key world problems like diseases or help mitigate or recover from natural disasters, he reportedly said.

‘AI, society should regulate to protect humankind’, Son said. ‘However, it has more merit than the demerits. So, I think I’m a believer. I’m optimistic that AI is going to solve the issues that mankind couldn’t solve in the past‘.

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The Magnificent Seven Tech Stocks – STOCK WATCH

The Magnificent Seven

Top tech stocks

The Magnificent Seven is a term to describe seven tech’ stocks that have been surging in 2023.

  • Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), the social media giant that also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.
  • Apple, the maker of the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, and other popular devices and services including cloud and Apple TV streaming service.
  • Amazon, the e-commerce leader that also operates AWS, Prime Video, Alexa, and Whole Foods.
  • Alphabet, the parent company of Google, YouTube, Gmail, Google Cloud, and Waymo.
  • Microsoft, the software company that owns Windows, Office, Azure, LinkedIn, Xbox, and Teams.
  • Nvidia, the semiconductor company that produces graphics cards, gaming devices, data center solutions, and AI platforms.
  • Tesla, the electric vehicle maker that also develops solar panels, batteries, and autonomous driving technology.

Dominant

These seven stocks are considered to be dominant in their respective fields and have strong growth prospects driven by innovation and artificial intelligence (AI).

They have outperformed the broader market and attracted many investors who are looking for exposure to the tech’ sector. Some analysts believe that these stocks will continue to lead the market in the future, while others caution that they may face regulatory challenges, competition, or valuation issues.

Approximate combined market cap of the Magnificent Seven tech stocks

The approximate combined market cap value of the Magnificent Seven as of September 2023 is approximately $11.8 trillion.

  • Apple: $2.5 trillion
  • Microsoft: $2.3 trillion
  • Alphabet: $1.9 trillion
  • Amazon: $1.7 trillion
  • Nvidia: $0.8 trillion
  • Meta Platforms: $0.9 trillion
  • Tesla: $0.7 trillion

Note that these values will change over time as the stock prices fluctuate.

A way to trade the tech sector is through funds

There are many funds that can trade tech stocks, depending on your investment objectives, risk tolerance, and preferences.

Technology mutual funds: These are funds that invest in a diversified portfolio of technology companies across different industries, such as software, hardware, internet, cloud, biotech, and more. Technology mutual funds can offer exposure to the growth potential of the tech sector, as well as reduce the volatility and risk of investing in individual stocks. 

Some examples of technology mutual funds are Fidelity Select Technology Portfolio (FSELX), Columbia Global Technology Growth Fund (CGTYX), and Schwab U.S. Large-Cap Growth Index Fund (SCHG).

Which tech fund to invest in?

Technology exchange-traded funds (ETFs): These are funds that track an index of technology stocks and trade on an exchange like a stock. Technology ETFs can offer low-cost and convenient access to the tech sector, as well as allow investors to choose from different themes, such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and more. 

Some examples of technology ETFs are Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK), and VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH).

Technology index funds: These are funds that replicate the performance of a specific technology index, such as the Nasdaq 100, the S&P 500 Information Technology Index, or the Morningstar U.S. Technology Index. Technology index funds can offer broad and passive exposure to the tech sector, as well as low fees and high tax efficiency.

Some examples of technology index funds are Fidelity NASDAQ Composite Index Fund (FNCMX), Vanguard Information Technology Index Fund Admiral Shares (VITAX), and iShares Morningstar U.S. Technology ETF (IYW).

NOTE: These are not recommendations. Investments may go up or down. Your money is at risk!

Always do your own research…

REASEARCH! REASEARCH! RESEARCH!

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Baidu launches raft of AI applications after its Ernie chatbot receives massive public approval

AI chatbot

More than 6 million users already

Baidu also announced that more than 6 million users have used an AI powered tool that sits inside its Google drive-like cloud product.

At the 4th September event, Baidu also demonstrated ‘displayed generative’ AI-based products that could assist with traffic management, financial research and coal mine logistics.

ChatGPT, from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, is not officially available in China, where Google and Facebook are blocked.

10 new AI products announced by Baidu

Chinese tech giant Baidu announced more than 10 new AI-based applications on 4th September 2023, just days after its ChatGPT-like Ernie bot was released for public use.

Among the products revealed was a generative AI-integrated word processing app called WPS AI, created by Shanghai-listed Kingsoft Office. It was reported the company built the tool using the AI model on which Baidu’s Ernie bot is based, as well as Baidu’s ‘Qianfan’ cloud platform for AI models.

‘This AI malarchy is progressing at quite a rate’.

Nearly 10,000 businesses are actively using Baidu’s Qianfan cloud platform each month, the company claimed.

AI assistant

Baidu also announced that more than 6 million users have used an AI-powered tool that sits inside its Google drive-like cloud product. The AI assistant can search documents, summarize and translate text and create content, the company claimed.

It wasn’t immediately clear to what extent those products were available for public use.

On 31st August 2023, Baidu released its Ernie bot to the public, signaling government approval of the AI-powered chatbot. Other Chinese companies also released similar AI products around the same time.

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Arm looking for up to $52 billion valuation in U.S. IPO

Arm Holdings

Chip design firm Arm on 5th September 2023 submitted an updated filing for its upcoming initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, setting a price range between $47 and $51. Only 9.4% of Arm’s shares will be freely traded on the NYSE.

Arm was previously listed in London and New York, before SoftBank acquired it for $32 billion in 2016.

Chip design firm Arm on Tuesday is looking to acquire as much as $4.87 billion in its upcoming initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, according to the new filing.

The deal could value the company at as much as $52 billion

As a British company, Arm qualifies as a foreign private issuer in the U.S. and its shares will count as American depositary shares, or ADS’s. It is reported that the company will list some 95.5 million ADS’s at a price range of between $47 and $51. At the upper end of that range it is estimated that Arm will likely raise up to $4.87 billion. At the lower end, the IPO would fetch $4.49 billion of fresh capital for Arm. It could do even better.

Institutional funds

When the company floats in New York, it will look to enjoy a very deep pool of professional institutional funds. Arm seeks to ramp up its investments in research and development, particularly as it pursues growth in the artificial intelligence (AI) space with some of its newer chips. The company recently released new chips specifically targeted at AI and machine learning use cases.

Arm AI chip
Arm seeks up to $52 billion valuation in U.S. IPO

Upper end

At the upper end of the pricing range, Arm would also touch a total valuation of $52 billion or more. Only 9.4% of Arm’s shares will be freely traded on the New York Stock Exchange, with SoftBank expected to own roughly 90.6% of the company’s outstanding shares after the completion of the IPO.

Arm’s listing is set to be the biggest technology IPO of the year. Investors are hoping that the listing could breathe new life into an IPO market that has been ‘slack’ since 2022.

250 billion chips globally

Arm says its energy-efficient processor designs and software platforms are integrated into more than 250 billion chips globally, into products ranging from sensors and smartphones to supercomputers.

The company estimates it enjoys approximately 48.9% share of the market for semiconductor design. Other players, such as Intel and AMD, have raced to catch up on designing their own chip architectures, but have struggled so far.

U.K. misses out… again

The U.K. government had originally hoped Arm would list on the London Stock Exchange, but the company instead dealt a major blow to Britain’s ambitions to become the leading global tech hub by opting for New York. The U.S. financial center has a deep institutional investor base and analysts who have a close understanding of the technology sector.

BIG interest

Chip design firm Arm said in a Tuesday filing that Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Nvidia and other technology companies are interested in buying up to $735 million in its shares as it seeks to go public on Nasdaq.

The investments might not happen, but the fact that these companies are considering them underlines the importance of Arm, whose designs are used for processors in data center servers, consumer devices and industrial products.

ARM chip
Arm chip – some 250 billion chips globally

Chip makers Intel, Samsung and TSMC are interested in investing alongside the three trillion-dollar technology companies, along with AMD and MediaTek, which make chip designs based on Arm architectures. Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys, which make electronic design automation software for processor development, have also expressed interest, according to a revised prospectus for Arm’s shares sale. This IPO could easily be the biggest of the 2023!

As part of the deal, Arm could wind up with a $52 billion market capitalization and almost $5 billion in new cash.

This is likely to be the biggest IPO of 2023

It is estimated that there will be about 19 billion devices using the Arm processor in the world by the end of 2023.

Arm target

The market share of Arm across different technology markets worldwide, which was 90% for mobile application processors, 34% for embedded computing, and 5% for data center and cloud in 2019. 

Arm has a target of increasing its market share to more than 90%, 50%, and 25% respectively by 2028.

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AI – music to my ears… or not?

Ha Jiang

Ha Jiang, is a virtual online idol, and only exists online.

Ha Jiang signed a record deal with Whet Records, Warner Music Group’s pan-Asian dance label in China, in 2021. Ha Jiang is the first virtual idol to conduct a record deal with a major label. The virtual idol uses AI technology to create music and has become an online sensation in Asia.

Ha Jiang online music avatar. She is a virtual artist who uses artificial intelligence to create music

Virtual AI artist

Ha Jiang is a virtual artist who uses artificial intelligence to create music. She is the first virtual idol to sign a record deal with a major label, Whet Records, which is Warner Music Group’s pan-Asian dance label in China. My understanding is that the music was composed by humans, so not entirely AI generated then.

Would this also work in west – is it time to be concerned?

She already has more than 100,000 followers in China and is known for her sense of style and fashion. She is also a social influencer who has been hired by the city of Shanghai to promote safe driving. Ha Jiang is not a real person, but a computer-generated avatar who only exists online. She is part of a growing phenomenon of virtual idols in Asia, especially among Gen-Z fans.

Endel, is a sound startup company that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized audio tracks. Endel was the first to sign a record deal with Warner Music Group in 2019 to release 20 albums of ambient music.

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Nvidia blasts off into AI superstardom

AI rocket

Technology giant Nvidia reports its sales have hit a record after more than doubling as demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) chips take off!

It figures

The company says revenue jumped to above $13.5bn (£10.6bn) for the three months to the end of June. Nvidia also expects sales to perform very well in the current quarter and plans to buy back $25bn of its stock. The firm’s shares rose by more than 6.5% in extended trading in New York, adding to their huge gains this year. Nvidia also said it expects revenue of around $16bn for the three months to the end of September 2023.

That is substantially higher than Wall Street expected and would equate to a rise of around 170%, compared to the same time last year.

Even before 23rd August’s figures, Nvidia’s stock price had more than tripled for the year, making it the top performer in the S&P 500. It’s share price jumped to around $500 after hours, a level that would mark a record if it closes there on 24th August 2023. Its prior closing high was $474.94 on 18th July 2023.

‘A new computing era has begun’, Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, said in a statement. ‘Companies worldwide are transitioning from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI’, he reportedly added.

Strong performance

The strong performance was driven by Nvidia’s data centre business, which includes AI chips.

The power of Nvidia’s AI microchips

Revenue for that unit came in at more $10.3bn, a rise of more than 170% from year ago, as cloud computing service providers and large consumer internet companies snapped up its next-generation processors.

This year, Nvidia’s stock market value has jumped to more than $1 trillion as its shares more than tripled in value, mking it the fifth publicly traded U.S. company to join the so-called ‘Trillion dollar club’, along with Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft.

AI ‘mania’ helps Nvidia

Nvidia have been making micro chips for a long time and it’s only really been in the last couple of years that the market has caught on.

Nvidia was originally known for making the type of computer chips that process graphics, particularly for computer games. They have been making chips for a long time and have now become the leader in AI chip design and manufacture.

Now Nvidia’s hardware is the foundation for most AI applications, with one report suggesting it had cornered 95% of the market for machine learning.

ChatGPT which generates human-like responses to user queries within seconds was trained using 10,000 of Nvidia’s graphics processing units clustered together in a supercomputer belonging to Microsoft.

AI products are expected to dramatically change how we use computers and the role they play in our lives.

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Hundreds caught breaking the law on AI camera system in Cornwall UK

AI camera Surveillance

A new artificial intelligence (AI) road safety camera system has been deployed on the A30 near Launceston, Cornwall, by Devon and Cornwall Police.

The camera system uses AI to detect potential offences such as using mobile phones or not wearing seatbelts while driving. The camera system can capture ultra clear images of the car’s interior and send them to a human reviewer who can issue a warning letter or a notice of intended prosecution, depending on the severity of the offence. 

Hundreds caught

The camera system is the first of its kind to be used in the UK and it has caught almost 300 drivers breaking the law in the first three days of its operation. The camera system is part of the Vision Zero South West project, which aims to reduce road deaths and serious injuries in Devon and Cornwall. The project conducted a 15-day trial of a similar vehicle-based system last year and detected 590 seat belt and 45 mobile phone offences across various roads in the two counties. 

The police hope that the new technology will help deter drivers from using their phones or not wearing their seatbelts, which are both dangerous and illegal behaviours that put people’s lives at risk.

The road safety system is from tech’ firm Acusensus.

The police have reportedly said they are ‘disappointed’ by the number of people not wearing seatbelts orand using their mobile ‘phones when drving.

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Amazon – leading or competing?

The power of AI

Amazon is one of the leading companies in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and has been developing its own custom chips to power its AI applications and services.

Amazon’s AI chips are designed to perform tasks such as natural language processing, computer vision, speech recognition, and machine learning inference and training.

AI chips created by Amazon

  • AZ2: This is a processor built into the Echo Show 15 smart display and powers artificial intelligence tasks like understanding your voice commands and figuring out who is issuing those commands. The AZ2 chip also enables features such as visual ID, which can recognize faces and display personalized information on the screen.
  • Inferentia: This is a high-performance chip that Amazon launched to deliver low-cost and high-throughput inference for deep learning applications. Inferentia powers Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Inf1 instances, which are optimized for running inference workloads on AWS. Inferentia also powers some of Amazon’s own services, such as Alexa, Rekognition, and SageMaker Neo.
  • Trainium: This is a chip that Amazon designed to provide high-performance and low-cost training for machine learning models. Trainium will power Amazon EC2 Inf2 instances, which are designed to train increasingly complex models, such as large language models and vision transformers. Trainium will also support scale-out distributed training with ultra-high-speed connectivity between accelerators.

Despite advancements is Amazon chasing to keep up?

Amazon is racing to catch up with Microsoft and Google in the field of generative AI, which is a branch of AI that can create new content or data from existing data. Generative AI can be used for applications such as natural language generation, image and video synthesis, text summarization, and personalization.

AI models from Amazon

  • Titan: This is a family of large language models (LLMs). Titan models can generate natural language texts for various domains and tasks, such as conversational agents, document summarization, product reviews, and more. Titan models are trained on a large and diverse corpus of text data from various sources, such as books, news articles, social media posts, and product descriptions.
Power of AI
Powerful chips for artificial intelligence (AI)
  • Bedrock: This is a service that Amazon created to help developers enhance their software using generative AI. Bedrock provides access to pre-trained Titan models and tools to customize them for specific use cases. Bedrock also allows developers to deploy their generative AI applications on AWS using Inferentia or Trainium chips.

Generative AI

Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy in the past said he thought of generative AI as having three macro layers: the compute, the models, and the applications. He said that Amazon is investing heavily in all three layers and that its custom chips are a key part of its strategy to provide high-performance and low-cost compute for generative AI. He also said that Amazon is not used to chasing markets but creating them, and that he believes Amazon has the best platform for generative AI in the world.

Inferentia and Trainium, offer AWS customers an alternative to training their large language models on Nvidia GPUs, which have been getting difficult and expensive to procure. 

‘The entire world would like more chips for doing generative AI, whether that’s GPUs or whether that’s Amazon’s own chips that we’re designing’, Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky is reported to have said. ‘I think that we’re in a better position than anybody else on Earth to supply the capacity that our customers collectively are going to want’.

Fast actors

Yet others have acted faster, and invested more, to capture business from the generative AI boom. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, Microsoft gained widespread attention for hosting the chatbot, and investing a reportedly whopping $13 billion in OpenAI. It was quick to add the generative AI models to its own products, incorporating them into Bing in February 2023. 

That same month, Google launched its own large language model, Bard, followed by a $300 million investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic. 

Chat Bot
AI Chat Bot robot

It wasn’t until April 2023 that Amazon announced its own family of large language models, called Titan, along with a service called Bedrock to help developers enhance software using generative AI.

Amazon is not used to chasing markets. Amazon is used to creating markets. And for the first time for some time, they find themselves on the back foot and working to play catch up.

And Meta?

Meta also recently released its own LLM, Llama 2. The open-source ChatGPT rival is now available for people to test on Microsoft’s Azure public cloud.

The AI battle continues…

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AI race gathers momentum as China’s Baidu claims its Ernie Bot is Better than ChatGPT on key tests

AI Robots Chatting

Baidu said its AI system called Ernie 3.5 outperformed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT4 in several key areas.

  • The Chat Bot was revealed in March 2023 and has since been publicly testing it in China. The chatbot is based on Baidu’s foundational AI model called ERNIE.
  • Baidu’s advancements underscore the intense competition taking place in the area of generative AI with technology giants in the US and China rapidly advancing their AI models.

 ERNIE – Enhanced Language RepresentatioN with Informative Entities

US and China AI Bots go head to head

Ernie was first introduced in 2019, and since then, Baidu has been improving and upgrading it with new versions. The latest version, Ernie 3.5, was announced in June 2023, and it claims to outperform OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT 4 in several key areas

Baidu’s Ernie is an artificial intelligence (AI) model that powers the company’s chatbot service, Ernie Bot. Ernie stands for Enhanced Language RepresentatioN with Informative Entities, and it is a natural language processing (NLP) deep-learning model that can understand and generate natural language.

Trained on large data sets

Ernie 3.5 is based on Baidu’s foundational AI model, which is trained on huge amounts of data from various domains, such as news, social media, encyclopedias, books, and more. Ernie 3.5 can handle various NLP tasks, such as question answering, dialogue generation, text summarization, sentiment analysis, and more.

According to a test by the China Science Daily journal, Ernie 3.5 surpassed ChatGPT and GPT 4 in general abilities and outperformed the more advanced GPT 4 on several Chinese-language capabilities. 

ERNIE version 3.5 boosted its training and efficiency, making it faster and cheaper to upgrade to future versions. Baidu hopes that ERNIE Bot will become the next must-have app in China’s internet market, attracting users because of its natural and engaging conversations.

Intergration

Baidu has been integrating ERNIE Bot across multiple business applications, ranging from cloud computing to smart speakers. 

Chat Bot
AI Chatbot

ERNIE Bot is one of the examples of how Baidu is investing in AI technology and competing with other tech giants in the US and China. Baidu’s founder Robin Li, reportedly said that ‘foundation models are an engine driving global economic growth and represent a major strategic opportunity that cannot be missed‘.

The major BIG players, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft & META all have their own versions of AI. Hopefully it will be used ‘intelligently’.

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What is AI?

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. AI can involve various aspects of cognition, such as perceiving, reasoning, learning, problem-solving, and even creativity.

Types of AI

AI can be classified into different types based on the level of intelligence and the scope of tasks that machines can perform. One common way to categorise AI is by using the following four types:

  • Narrow AI: This is the most common and basic type of AI, which refers to machines that can perform specific tasks very well, but cannot generalize to other domains or situations. Examples of narrow AI include speech recognition, face recognition, web search engines, recommendation systems, self-driving cars, and chess-playing programs.
  • General AI: This is the type of AI that aims to achieve human-like intelligence across a wide range of domains and tasks. General AI would be able to understand and learn from any kind of data, reason and solve problems, communicate and interact with humans, and exhibit common sense and creativity. However, general AI does not exist yet, and it is considered a long-term goal of AI research.
  • Super AI: This is the type of AI that would surpass human intelligence in all aspects, including speed, memory, knowledge, creativity, and wisdom. Super AI would be able to outperform humans in any task and domain, and potentially pose existential risks to humanity. Super AI is also a hypothetical concept that has not been achieved or proven yet.
  • Artificial neural networks: This is a type of AI that mimics the structure and function of biological neural networks, which are the basis of human brain activity. Artificial neural networks consist of layers of interconnected nodes that process information and learn from data. Artificial neural networks are widely used for various applications of AI, such as computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning.

Applications of AI

AI has many applications in various fields and industries, such as:

  • Healthcare: AI can help diagnose diseases, analyze medical images, design drugs, assist surgeries, monitor patients, and provide personalized care.
  • Education: AI can help personalize learning, assess students’ progress, provide feedback, tutor students, grade assignments, and create educational content.
  • Business: AI can help optimize operations, enhance customer service, automate tasks, analyze data, generate insights, improve decision making, and increase productivity.
  • Entertainment: AI can help create music, art, games, movies, and other forms of entertainment.
  • AI can also help recommend content to users based on their preferences and behaviour.
  • Security: AI can help detect threats, prevent cyberattacks, enhance surveillance, identify frauds, enforce laws, and protect privacy.
  • Social: AI can help communicate with humans through natural language processing and speech synthesis. AI can also help understand human emotions and behavior through sentiment analysis and facial expression recognition.

Challenges and limitations of AI

AI also faces many challenges and limitations that need to be addressed by researchers and users. Some of these include:

  • Ethical: AI raises many ethical issues such as bias, fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy, human dignity, and social impact. How can we ensure that AI is aligned with human values and does not harm humans or society?
  • Technical: AI still faces many technical challenges such as scalability, robustness, explainability, interpretability, generalization, and adversarial attacks. How can we improve the performance, reliability, and security of AI systems?
  • Societal: AI also has many societal implications such as employment, education, regulation, governance, and collaboration. How can we adapt to the changes and opportunities that AI brings to our lives, work, and society?

AI is here to stay – it’s all about how we use it for the betterment of ‘humankind’. Please, let’s use it safely, responsibly and for the good!

Big tech companies heavily involved in the development of AI products

OpenAI

Microsoft

Alphabet/Google

Amazon

Nvidia

AMD

Arm

Meta