NVIDIA Partners with Reliance and Tata to Boost AI Technology in India

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September 11, 2023

On September 8, NVIDIA announced partnerships with two enormous Indian conglomerates, Reliance Industries and Tata Group. This represents a significant effort to reskill and upskill a large portion of India’s tech workforce in addition to building India’s AI infrastructure.

NVIDIA said that it would work with Reliance Industries to create an India-specific large language model with training in a variety of languages. According to a statement from Jio Platforms, the new AI cloud infrastructure will give researchers, developers, startups, scientists, and other professionals access to accelerated computing and high-speed, secure cloud networking, so that workloads can be carried out in a secure and extremely energy-efficient manner throughout India.

Jio will manage and maintain the AI cloud infrastructure, while NVIDIA will give Jio end-to-end AI supercomputer technology, including CPU, GPU, networking, and AI operating systems and frameworks for constructing the AI models.

NVIDIA has a three-pronged strategy with the Tata Group. First is developing and processing generative AI applications, and upskilling the six lakh+ employees of India’s largest IT services company, TCS, in AI. Second, collaborating with Tata Motors to deploy AI across design, styling, engineering, simulation testing, and autonomous vehicle capabilities. And third is assisting Tata Communications in the development of AI infrastructure.

N Chandrasekharan, chairman of Tata Sons said, “Our partnership with NVIDIA will democratize access to AI infrastructure, speed up the development of AI solutions, and enable at-scale talent upgradation in AI. The extensive capabilities of NVIDIA and the presence of Tata Group across industries present multiple chances for cooperation to promote India’s AI ambition.”

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, underscoring the company’s expanding ties to the world’s budding technological superpower India. “Had an excellent meeting with Mr. Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA. We talked at length about the rich potential India offers in the world of AI,” Modi said in a Twitter post.

Tencent Introduces AI Large Language Model Hunyuan

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Sahil Pawar

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September 9, 2023

At the Global Digital Ecosystem Summit in Shenzhen on September 7, Chinese technology company Tencent introduced their Hunyuan artificial intelligence system, a multimodal large language model (LLM) akin to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Tencent’s foundation model enables a wide range of operations, including the generation of images, copywriting, text recognition, and customer service, to name a few. Hunyuan is designed to work as a comprehensive suite of AI tools. Key businesses like finance, public services, social media, e-commerce, transportation, games, and many more will benefit from it, according to the company.

Say hi to Hunyuan! Our large foundation model, unveiled at the Global Digital Ecosystem Summit. The platform is now available to enterprises in China, supporting a heap of functions, from image creation, copywriting, customer service and more. https://t.co/ifLfc9yCVQ #AI pic.twitter.com/wWhRfzl3km
— Tencent 腾讯 (@TencentGlobal) September 7, 2023

The AI system is connected to Tencent Games, Tencent Fintech Services, Tencent Meeting, Tencent Cloud, Tencent Marketing Solutions, Tencent Docs, Weixin Search, and QQ Browser as part of Tencent’s ecosystem of applications and services.

According to Tencent, Hunyuan is purportedly comparable to GPT3 (OpenAI’s main model, around 2022) in terms of raw numbers and capacity. The LLM is among the most potent LLMs in the world with 100 billion parameters and 2 trillion tokens.

According to the company, Hunyuan benefits from having received training on a big corpus of Chinese language text. Theoretically, when it comes to operations in the Chinese language environment, this would put it ahead of models trained primarily on non-Chinese texts.

The debut occurs at a time when ties between the United States and China are still tense following the Biden administration’s imposition of an export embargo on specific categories of computer chips, including gear frequently used to train and create AI systems, in October 2022.

TIME Notably Omits Schmidhuber and Bengio from List of 100 Most Influential Figures in AI

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Sahil Pawar

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September 8, 2023

TIME magazine recently published its first ever list of the 100 most influential figures in the growth of artificial intelligence. Titled ‘TIME 100 AI‘, the list includes prominent CEOs, researchers, scientists, activists, academics, politicians, musicians, and many more.

TIME's new cover: The 100 most influential people in AI https://t.co/I0yZ5V1gMu pic.twitter.com/ZrKIZq2veV
— TIME (@TIME) September 7, 2023

Some of the well known names in the artificial intelligence industry, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, founder of various AI initiatives Elon Musk, COO of Google DeepMind Lila Ibrahim, Chief AI Ethics Scientist at Hugging Face Margaret Mitchell, and various others are mentioned in the list.

One might think that the list has managed to include everyone who has made massive contributions or dedicated their life’s work to the lucrative field of artificial intelligence which is advancing by leaps and bounds every day. However, two prominent figures in the AI industry seem to be conspicuously missing from the list, viz. Jürgen Schmidhuber and Yoshua Bengio.

Jürgen Schmidhuber is a German computer scientist who is known for his foundational work on recurrent neural networks (RNNs), including backpropagation and long short-term memory (LSTM). Schmidhuber’s work on RNNs has had a major impact on the field of artificial intelligence. These technologies are now used in a wide variety of applications, including self-driving cars, virtual assistants, and spam filters.

Schmidhuber is also a co-founder of the company Nnaisense, which is developing artificial general intelligence (AGI). In addition to his work on RNNs, Schmidhuber has also made significant contributions to other areas of artificial intelligence, such as genetic programming, reinforcement learning, and artificial curiosity. He is a highly cited researcher and has won numerous awards for his work, which reinforces the argument of his name not being in the list.

Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian computer scientist and a professor at the University of Montreal, who is also known as one of the godfathers of AI. He earned the title along with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun after winning the Turing Award as a group. He is one of the pioneers of deep learning, a type of artificial intelligence that uses neural networks to learn from data. Bengio’s work has had a major impact on the field of artificial intelligence, and he is credited with helping to make deep learning the dominant approach to AI today.

Some of Bengio’s most important contributions to artificial intelligence include the backpropagation algorithm. He also showed that deep neural networks could be used to recognize images and speech, making him another deserving candidate for the list.

In an article titled ‘How We Chose the TIME 100 Most Influential People in AI’, the magazine said, “TIME’s most knowledgeable editors and reporters spent months fielding recommendations from dozens of sources, to put together hundreds of nominations that we whittled down to the group you see today. We interviewed nearly all of the individuals on this list to get their perspective on the path of AI today.” Despite this brief explanation from the magazine, the selection process for the TIME 100 AI list comes off as rather ambiguous.

Considering all this, it still remains unclear as to why TIME chose to exclude Schmidhuber and Bengio from the list. Either the list has been subjected to personal bias or there has been a serious lack of research on the part of “TIME’s most knowledgeable editors and reporters”. It remains for only time to tell whether objections will be raised as to the credibility of the list, and if so, whether TIME will entertain any of those objections.

TIME Reveals List of World’s Most Influential People in AI

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Sahil Pawar

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September 8, 2023

TIME magazine has revealed its first ever TIME100 AI list, a compilation honoring the 100 most significant individuals influencing the development of artificial intelligence. Some of the most well-known figures in the field of artificial intelligence are at the top of this list, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Demis Hassabis.

The global cover of the 2023 TIME100 AI edition, illustrated by Neil Jamieson, featured 28 remarkable members of the list. Among them are Demis Hassabis, the visionary founder of Google DeepMind, Dario and Daniela Amodei, the dynamic team behind Anthropic, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, a driving force behind AI breakthroughs.

TIME's new cover: The 100 most influential people in AI https://t.co/I0yZ5V1gMu pic.twitter.com/ZrKIZq2veV
— TIME (@TIME) September 7, 2023

Time said, “In order to compile the list, TIME’s editors and writers asked dozens of professional sources, including industry experts, for nominations and recommendations. The end result is a list of 100 leaders, innovators, thinkers, and pioneers who are reshaping the AI sphere today.”

TIME100 AI listed Rumman Chowdhury, CEO & Co-Founder of Humane Intelligence, Lila Ibrahim, COO of Google DeepMind, Sandra Rivera, General Manager of the Data Centre and AI Group at Intel, and Margaret Mitchell, Chief AI Ethics Scientist at Hugging Face as among the women and nonbinary business leaders who have made outstanding contributions to AI.

The list includes notable politicians and political figures in addition to tech titans. Representatives Anna Eshoo and Ted Lieu from the US, Ian Hogarth from the UK’s AI Foundation Model Taskforce, and Audrey Tang from Taiwan are important individuals who are influencing the regulatory environment for AI.

Additionally, the TIME100 AI list recognises academics, researchers, and activists who are profoundly committed to AI bias, ethics, and safety. Yoshua Bengio, Yoshua Tegmark, Emily M. Bender, Kate Crawford, and Timnit Gebru are a few of the other influential voices advancing critical discussions on AI’s effects.

AI Chip Startup d-Matrix Raises $110 Million in Series B Funding

By

Sahil Pawar

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September 8, 2023

d-Matrix raises $110 million Series B funding — Image Credits: d-Matrix

At a time when many chip startups are finding it difficult to secure capital, the Silicon Valley-based artificial intelligence semiconductor startup d-Matrix has raised $110 million from investors that include Microsoft Corp.

The news comes as Nvidia‘s monopoly on the AI chip market as a result of a formidable combination of hardware and software has scared off potential investors in certain companies. Microsoft and Palo Alto venture capital firm Playground Global were also a part of the Series B fundraising round, which was headed by Temasek of Singapore.

According to CEO Sid Sheth, the Santa Clara firm began its fundraising campaign about a year ago. The company has already raised $44 million, but did not disclose the valuation.

D-Matrix creates chips that are well-suited to power generative AI applications like ChatGPT. The business incorporates digital in-memory compute into the chips’ design so that AI computer programmes can operate more effectively. The company’s chip technology consumes less energy when processing the data needed to generate AI responses.

D-Matrix differentiates itself from Nvidia in part because it does not compete with Nvidia by developing technology that trains large AI models. Instead, it focuses on the “inference” portion of AI processing. According to Sheth, when the chip debuts early next year, Microsoft has committed to testing it for its own purposes.

D-Matrix forecasts sales of less than $10 million this year, primarily from customers that buy chips for testing. The company anticipates revenue of between $70 million and $75 million.

OpenAI to Host First-ever Developer Conference in San Francisco

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Sahil Pawar

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September 7, 2023

OpenAI first-ever developer conference San Francisco

OpenAI has announced that it will hold its inaugural developer conference in San Francisco on November 6. A keynote lecture and breakout sessions delivered by members of OpenAI’s technical staff will be part of the daylong OpenAI DevDay event.

During the event, the OpenAI team will be joined by hundreds of developers from around the world to showcase new tools and share ideas. “We’re looking forward to showing our latest work to enable developers to build new things,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

DevDay will primarily take place in person, however some events, including the keynote, will be streamed live. According to OpenAI, registration will start in the upcoming weeks and attendance is anticipated to be upto “hundreds” of engineers.

OpenAI argues in the blog post that its developer community is sizable enough to justify the developer conference. The startup’s wide range of generative AI tools, such as its large language model GPT-4, AI chatbot ChatGPT, text-to-image model DALL-E 2, and automatic speech recognition model Whisper, are used by over 2 million developers.

It is unlikely that OpenAI’s upcoming flagship generative AI model, GPT-5, will be revealed. CEO Sam Altman of OpenAI said in April that the company was not currently training GPT-5 and wouldn’t for some time. But there’s a chance one will find out more about what OpenAI has in store for Global Illumination, the AI design firm it acquired in August and get a status of the release of GPT-4’s image recognition features.

Zoom Introduces New AI Companion for Subscription Users

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Sahil Pawar

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September 7, 2023

The generative AI digital assistant Zoom AI Companion, formerly known as Zoom IQ, has been made available to users of Zoom’s subscription services at no extra cost, according to a blog from Zoom Video Communications.

The introduction of AI Companion supports Zoom‘s mission to enable limitless human interaction on a single platform, enabling individuals to be more productive, develop new skills, and work more effectively in teams. Zoom’s federated AI method reduces costs while producing high-quality results by dynamically combining its own large language models with those from outside language models with those from outside sources like Meta Llama 2, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Based on this exclusive approach, Zoom AI Companion offers strong, real-time digital assistant capabilities to aid users. Customers of Zoom can anticipate the presence of AI Companion across the entire platform, including Meetings, Team Chat, Phone, Email, and Whiteboard.

Users of Zoom Meetings can review summaries and next steps more quickly, watch recordings faster through highlights and smart chapters, and catch up on missed meetings with AI companion. Users can also save time by composing responses in Zoom Team discussion by using AI Companion, which enables them to quickly write answers based on the context of a discussion thread and to alter tone and length.

Users of Zoom Whiteboard will be able to use their whiteboard content to make visuals and fill in blank whiteboard templates, and AI Companion will assist them in producing and categorizing ideas. Additionally, Zoom Mail users will have access to additional email ideas starting in the early fall. They also will be able to add meeting summaries to Zoom Notes and summarize meetings by the spring of 2024.

Intel Signs Foundry Deal with Tower Semiconductors After Failed Acquisition

By

Sahil Pawar

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September 7, 2023

Intel foundry deal Tower Semiconductors — Image Credits: Tower Semiconductors

Two weeks after withdrawing its bid to purchase Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion owing to regulatory opposition, Intel has announced a contract to provide foundry services and manufacturing capacity to the firm.

In accordance with the new agreement, Tower will invest up to $300 million to purchase and own machinery and other assets that will be put in the US state of New Mexico-based Intel Foundry Services’ manufacturing facility.

As part of the agreement, Intel has agreed to produce Tower’s 65-nanometer power management BCD (bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) flows. Tower operates its own manufacturing plants in Israel (150mm and 200mm), the United States (200mm), Japan (200mm and 300mm), and shortly Italy, thanks to a partnership with STMicroelectronics.

According to Intel, this agreement would enable Tower to provide complex analogue processing for 300mm and meet anticipated client demand while increasing its monthly capacity by approximately 600,000 photo layers.

Due to difficulties in getting crucial regulatory licenses, particularly in China, Intel had to abandon the plan to buy Israel’s Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion last month. According to the terms of the contract, Tower would get a $353 million termination fee from Intel.

“We started Intel Foundry Services with the long-term goal of offering the first open system foundry in the world, combining the best of Intel and our ecosystem with a safe, sustainable, and resilient supply chain. We’re happy that Tower recognizes the special value we offer and chose us to launch their 300mm U.S. capacity corridor,” said Stuart Pann, senior vice president of Intel and general manager of Intel Foundry Services.

Meta and Central Government Launch ‘Education to Entrepreneurship’ Initiative

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Sahil Pawar

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September 6, 2023

Meta and Central Government Launch ‘Education to Entrepreneurship’ Initiative — Image Credits: Meta

Meta announced a three-year partnership with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to empower students, educators, and entrepreneurs across India. This partnership will bring together Meta’s work across education and skilling, mapping the journey of India’s students from the classroom to the workforce.

As part of the partnership, Meta signed three Letters of Intent (LoI), one with a national-level council for technical education; one with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE); and one with the National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD), which conducts training, consulting, and research to promote entrepreneurship and skill development in India.

One million entrepreneurs will have access to Meta’s digital marketing expertise over the course of the next three years as a part of collaboration with NIESBUD. Additionally, aspiring and established business owners will receive training in digital marketing techniques using Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram in 7 regional languages.

Moreover, 50 impact stories from regional languages will also be identified. The initiative’s implementation partners are Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI).

Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Education and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, “Education to Entrepreneurship’ partnership is a game-changer, which will take Digital Skilling to the grassroots. This will build capacities of our talent pool, seamlessly connect students, youth, workforce & micro-entrepreneurs, with futuristic technologies and transform our Amrit Peedhi into new-age problem solvers and entrepreneurs.”

G20 Summit to Feature AI-Generated Avatar to Welcome World Leaders

By

Sahil Pawar

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September 6, 2023

Image Credits: NDTV

According to reports cited by Press Trust of India, the G20 Summit would include a “Mother of Democracy” exhibition at Bharat Mandapam, where Heads of State and other senior officials will be greeted by an “avatar” generated by artificial intelligence.

The textual content, along with its audio, is offered in 16 worldwide languages, including English, French, Mandarin, Italian, Korean, and Japanese, authorities told PTI. The exhibition will highlight India’s democratic traditions from the “Vedic period to the modern era.”

According to PTI, the history of India’s democratic ethos will be summed up and retold through 26 interactive screens set up in various kiosks. The source added that the AI-generated avatar will give a brief synopsis of the display to the heads of state, delegates, and other guests that arrive in the exhibition area.

The exhibition will cover India’s election customs from their earliest times to the present. According to reports cited by PTI, it will span the period from the first general elections held after Independence in 1951–1952 up till the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

In the display area, a replica sculpture of the Harappan female will also be positioned in the middle of a revolving elevated podium, apart from the screens with AI-generated avatars. The bronze replica will be 5 feet tall and 120 kg in weight, however the actual item is only 10.5 cm in height.