Category Archives: Ai
How Ukraine is using AI to fight Russia – The Economist
IN THE run-up to Ukraines rocket attacks on the Antonovsky Bridge, a vital road crossing from the occupied city of Kherson to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, security officials carefully studied a series of special reports. It was the summer of 2022 and Russia was relying heavily on the bridge to resupply its troops west of the Dnipro. The reports contained research into two things: would destroying the bridge lead the Russian soldiers, or their families back home, to panic? And, more importantly, how could Ukraines government maximise the blow to morale by creating a particular information environment?
This is how Sviatoslav Hnizdovsky, the founder of the Open Minds Institute (OMI) in Kyiv, describes the work his research outfit did by generating these assessments with artificial intelligence (AI). Algorithms sifted through oceans of Russian social-media content and socioeconomic data on things ranging from alcohol consumption and population movements to online searches and consumer behaviour. The AI correlated any changes with the evolving sentiments of Russian loyalists and liberals over the potential plight of their countrys soldiers.
This highly sensitive work continues to shape important Ukrainian decisions about the course of the war, says Mr Hnizdovsky. This includes potential future strikes on Russias Kerch Bridge, which is the only direct land link between Russia and Crimea.
Ukraine, outgunned by Russia, is increasingly seeking an edge with AI by employing the technology in diverse ways. A Ukrainian colonel involved in arms development says drone designers commonly query ChatGPT as a start point for engineering ideas, like novel techniques for reducing vulnerability to Russian jamming. Another military use for AI, says the colonel, who requested anonymity, is to identify targets.
As soldiers and military bloggers have wisely become more careful with their posts, simple searches for any clues about the location of forces have become less fruitful. By ingesting reams of images and text, however, AI models can find potential clues, stitch them together and then surmise the likely location of a weapons system or a troop formation. Using this puzzle-pieces approach with AI allows Molfar, an intelligence firm with offices in Dnipro and Kyiv, to typically find two to five valuable targets every day, says Maksym Zrazhevsky, an analyst with the firm. Once discovered, this intelligence is quickly passed along to Ukraines army, resulting in some of the targets being destroyed.
Targeting is being assisted by AI in other ways. SemanticForce, a firm with offices in Kyiv and Ternopil, a city in the west of Ukraine, develops models that in response to text prompts scrutinises online or uploaded text and images. Many of SemanticForces clients use the system commercially to monitor public sentiments about their brands. Molfar, however, uses the model to map areas where Russian forces are likely to be low on morale and supplies, which could make them a softer target. The AI finds clues in pictures, including those from drone footage, and from soldiers bellyaching in social media.
It also cobbles together clues about Russian military weaknesses using a sneaky proxy. For this, Molfar employs SemanticForces AI to generate reports on the activities of Russian volunteer groups that fundraise and prepare care packages for the sections of the front most in need. The algorithms, Molfar says, do a good job of discarding potentially misleading bot posts. (Accounts with jarring political flip-flops are one tipoff.) The firms analysts sometimes augment this intelligence by using software that disguises the origin of a phone call, so that Russian volunteer groups can be rung by staff pretending to be a Russian eager to contribute. Ten of the companys 45-odd analysts work on targeting, and do so free of charge for Ukrainian forces.
Then there is counter-intelligence. The use of AI helps Ukraines spycatchers identify people who Oleksiy Danilov, until recently secretary of the National Security and Defence Council (NSDC), describes as prone to betrayal. Offers to earn money by taking geolocated pictures of infrastructure and military assets are often sent to Ukrainian phones, says Dmytro Zolotukhin, a former Ukrainian deputy minister for information policy. He recently received one such text himself. People who give this market for intelligence services a shot, he adds, are regularly nabbed by Ukraines SBU intelligence agency.
Using AI from Palantir, an American firm, Ukrainian counter-intelligence fishes for illuminating linkages in disparate pools of data. Imagine, for instance, an indebted divorcee at risk of losing his flat and custody of his children who opens a foreign bank account and has been detected with his phone near a site that was later struck by missiles. In addition to such dot-connecting, the AI performs social-network analysis. If, say, the hypothetical divorcee has strong personal ties to Russia and has begun to take calls from someone whose phone use suggests a higher social status, then AI may increase his risk score.
The result of AI assessments of interactions among a networks nodes have been impressive for more than a decade. Kristian Gustafson, a former British intelligence officer who advised Afghanistans interior ministry in 2013, recounts the capture of a courier transporting wads of cash for Taliban bigwigs. Their ensuing phone calls, he says, lit up the whole diagram. Since then, algorithmic advances for calculating things like betweenness centrality, a measure of influence, make those days look, as another former intelligence officer puts it, pretty primitive.
In addition, network analysis helps Ukrainian investigators identify violators of sanctions on Russia. By connecting data in ship registries with financial records held elsewhere, the software can pierce the corporate veil, a source says. Mr Zolotukhin says hackers are providing absolutely enormous caches of stolen business data to Ukrainian agencies. This is a boon for combating sanctions-busting.
The use of AI has been developing for some time. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraines president, called for the development of a massive boost in the use of the technology for national security in November 2019. The result is a strategically minded model built and run by the NSDC that ingests text, statistics, photos and video. Called the Centre of Operations for Threats Assessment (COTA), it is fed a wide range of information, some obtained by hackers, says Andriy Ziuz, NSDCs head of staff. The model tracks prices, phone usage, migration, trade, energy, politics, diplomacy and military developments down to the weapons in repair shops.
Operators at COTA call this model a constructor. This is because it also ingests output from smaller models such as Palantirs software and Delta, which is battlefield software that supports the Ukrainian armys manoeuvre decisions. COTAs bigger picture output provides senior officials with guidance on sensitive matters, including mobilisation policy, says Mykola Dobysh, NSDCs chief technologist. Mr Danilov notes that Mr Zelensky has been briefed on COTAs assessments on more than 130 occasions, once at 10am on the day of Russias full invasion. Access to portions (or circuits) of COTA is provided to some other groups, including insurers, foreign ministries and Americas Department of Energy.
Ukraines AI effort benefits from its societys broad willingness to contribute data for the war effort. Citizens upload geotagged photos potentially relevant for the countrys defence into a government app called Diia (Ukrainian for action). Many businesses supply Mantis Analytics, a firm in Lviv, with operations data on things that range from late deliveries to call-centre activity and the setting off of burglar alarms. Recipients of the platforms assessments of societal functioning include the defence ministry and companies that seek to deploy their own security resources in better ways.
How much difference all this will ultimately make is still unclear. Evan Platt of Zero Line, an NGO in Kyiv that provides kit to troops and who spends time at the front studying fighting effectiveness, describes Ukraines use of AI as a bright spot. But there are concerns. One is that enthusiasm for certain AI security applications may divert resources that would provide more bang for the buck elsewhere. Excessive faith in AI is another risk, and some models on the market are certainly overhyped. More dramatically, might AI prove to be a net negative for Ukraines battlefield performance?
A few think so. One is John Arquilla, a professor emeritus at the Naval Postgraduate School in California who has written influential books on warfare and advised Pentagon leaders. Ukraines biggest successes came early in the war when decentralised networks of small units were encouraged to improvise. Today, Ukraines AI constructor process, he argues, is centralising decision-making, snuffing out creative sparks at the edges. His assessment is open to debate. But at a minimum, it underscores the importance of human judgment in how any technology is used.
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Intel Takes Aim at Nvidia’s AI Dominance With Launch of Gaudi 3 Chip – Investopedia
Key Takeaways
Intel (INTC) unveiled its latest artificial intelligence (AI) chip, the Gaudi 3 AI accelerator, which the chipmaker claims outperforms Nvidia's (NVDA)H100, during an event on Tuesday.
The Gaudi 3 accelerator delivers "50% on average better inferenceand 40% on average better power efficiency" than Nvidia's H100 at "a fraction of the cost," Intel said.
The latest Intel AI chip will be available to some original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)including Dell Technologies (DELL), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Lenovo, and Super Micro Computer (SMCI) in the second quarter of 2024.
The announcement comes as the chipmaker works to compete with other semiconductor companies leading the AI boom, including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
Intel compared its latest chip to Nvidia's H100, which was first announced in 2022. Nvidia has since unveiledthe Blackwell platform, the latest version of its AI-powering tech, whichanalysts called the "most ambitious project in Silicon Valley," in March.
Nvidia's latest chip, the GB200, "provides up to a 30x performance increase compared to the same number of NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs for LLM inference workloads, and reduces cost and energy consumption by up to 25x," the company said.
Intel shares were up 0.4% at $38.12 as of about 12:45 p.m. ET Tuesday. The stock has lost about one-fifth of its value year to date.
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Intel Takes Aim at Nvidia's AI Dominance With Launch of Gaudi 3 Chip - Investopedia
We now have a better look at what’s inside the Humane AI pin – The Verge
The Humane AI pin promises to give users a way to use generative AI in the physical world. You can clip the pin to your shirt, talk to it, and project answers from chatbots onto any surface, most often your palm. We know a little bit about what powers the tiny square pin, and thanks to a new report, we have a much better view of what goes on under the hood.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) included a photographic teardown of the AI pin in a new report. The photos show the clearest look so far into what comprises the Humane AI pin, as well as a close-up of the Snapdragon processor it uses.
The FCC must certify devices that use wireless communications to ensure they follow regulations before they are released to the public. They then get a nifty FCC mark on the product. This review process often includes a teardown of the gadget so the commission can inspect whats on the inside.
We already knew the AI pin runs on Snapdragon, though the company did not indicate what version. From the photos, it looks like the pin uses a Snapdragon 720G processor, which Qualcomm says on its website can run on-device AI with low power on mobile devices. The Snapdragon 720G is one of the smaller chips available that can also handle an AI compute load.
While certainly there are still questions as to why the Humane AI pin exists, at least we now know its using a chip powerful enough to project ChatGPT results onto your palm.
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We now have a better look at what's inside the Humane AI pin - The Verge
NRO eyes diverse satellite fleet and AI-powered ground systems in modernization push – SpaceNews
COLORADO SPRINGS The National Reconnaissance Office, the secretive U.S. intelligence agency responsible for operating the countrys spy satellites, is developing a more diverse fleet of satellites alongside an overhaul of its ground systems.
Troy Meink, principal deputy director of the NRO, said the agency is looking to develop a more diverse satellite architecture, including smaller and more maneuverable models, to improve its intelligence gathering across a wider range of orbits and mission profiles.
We are pushing the boundaries to ensure we stay on the leading edge of innovation, Meink said April 9 in a keynote speech at the 39th Space Symposium. Over the next decade, we will continue to increase the number of satellites operating across multiple orbits, not just large systems that are the traditional hallmark of the NRO, but also smaller proliferated systems.
In parallel with the changes to its space-based systems, the NRO is also overhauling its satellite ground architecture, investing heavily in new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to help process the flood of data coming from its expanding satellite network.
Expanding our overhead architecture will provide greater revisit rates, increased coverage, and more timely delivery of information, Meink said. This will make our collection more agile, eliminate single points of failure and will make our constellations more resilient.
Ground systems
A more diverse space architecture will allow the NRO to collect an order of magnitude more data, he said. So this means ground operations must evolve as well. I think this is actually one of the biggest challenges we face. Its not the bits that matter. Its how the bits get organized into useful information thats important.
The NROs push to modernize its ground systems started several years ago, said Joshua Perrius, senior vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton. The company is a support contractor to the NRO for ground systems modernization.
The goal is more automated tasking and collection based on data models and less on human planned activities, Perrius told SpaceNews.
The NRO is seeking more advanced data processing and exploitation capabilities on the ground to make sense of all the data its collecting, he said. They have to be able to rapidly task, re-task, and exploit data from a more diverse and resilient constellation, while also leveraging the latest AI and automation tools, said Perrius.
He said AI and machine learning algorithms can help to identify critical information and generate actionable intelligence much faster than traditional methods.
While the specific details of the NROs plans are classified, Perrius noted, this shift towards a more diverse satellite fleet and AI-powered ground systems signifies a major transformation for the intelligence agency.
The NROs fleet includes imaging satellites that take high-resolution pictures of the Earths surface, signals intelligence satellites that intercept and collect electronic communications, and others that gather information about objects by analyzing radio frequencies and other emissions.
Access to hostile territory
Millions of people count on us everyday, Meink said at the Space Symposium. Civilian customers depend on space collection to assist them with natural disasters, help predict climate change, and help relief agencies determine how and where to deliver humanitarian aid.
The Department of Defense and the intelligence community, he added, depend on the NRO capabilities, for example, for geolocation data and high-resolution imagery. The NRO systems are often the only tools able to access hostile territory or rugged terrain so we can collect critical information.
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NRO eyes diverse satellite fleet and AI-powered ground systems in modernization push - SpaceNews
Google is building its own AI chipsand it’s a warning shot at Nvidia and Intel – Fortune
Google announced a proprietary chip Tuesday that could help the company cut back its reliance on heavyweight chipmakers and gain a foothold in the increasingly competitive AI race.
The new chip, dubbed Axion, will help handle the massive amount of data used by AI applications, Google said in a Tuesday statement. Its designed to be grouped into clusters of thousands of chips to improve performance, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The new chipswhich are central processing units, or CPUsare reportedly 30% better than already available general-purpose chips that use similar circuitry made by the U.K.-based semiconductor and software company Arm, the company said in a statement. Although Google had previously made other chips for its different business segments, this is its first meant to support AI in data centers.
Customers of the Alphabet subsidiary will be able to access Axion through Googles cloud business later this year, but will not be able to buy them directly, according to the Journal. The companys vice president overseeing proprietary chips, Amin Vahdat, told the outlet that it wants to take a different approach.
Becoming a great hardware company is very different from becoming a great cloud company or a great organizer of the worlds information, Vahdat said.
By not selling directly to customers, Google is avoiding direct competition with its longtime partnersand dominant chipmakersIntel and Nvidia. Instead, Vahdat said, the company sees its entry into the chip market as a positive for everyone in the industry.
I see this as a basis for growing the size of the pie, Vahdat said.
As the hypercompetitive race to enable AI heats up, Googles rivals likely dont share that vision. On Tuesday, Santa Clara, Calif.based semiconductor company Intel released the artificial-intelligence-focused chip Gaudi 3. Intel says the new chips will be available by the third quarter, and can be used to train large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. The company claims the Gaudi 3 chips have an edge over Nvidias competing chip, the H100.
Nvidia, meanwhile, announced the new generation of its popular H100 chip in November and plans to release it later this year. Still, shares of Nvidia closed down 2% on Tuesday following the news. The company has seen its stock skyrocket about 75% since the start of the year on outsize demand for its powerful H100 chips, but is facing increasing competition.
Shares of Google parent company Alphabet jumped as much as 2.4% on the day following news of the new chip before paring back gains. The stock closed up 1.28% at about $158.
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Google is building its own AI chipsand it's a warning shot at Nvidia and Intel - Fortune
Aboards AI-powered bookmarking and project app is a new spin on a chatbot – The Verge
Aboard is not an easy app to explain. It used to be easier: at first, it was a way to collect and organize information Trello meets Pinterest meets that spreadsheet full of links you use to plan your vacation. The companys founders, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade, are two longtime web developers and app creators (and, in Fords case, also an influential writer about the web) who previously ran a well-liked agency called Postlight. They did a bunch of interesting work on parsing websites to pull out helpful information, and they built a handy visual tool for displaying it all. People love to save links, Ziade says, and we love to make those links beautiful when they come in. Simple!
But now Im sitting here in a co-working space in New York City, a few minutes after an earthquake hit and a few days before Aboards biggest launch yet, and Ziade is showing me something very different. He opens up a beta version of the app and clicks a button, and after a second, the page begins to change. A database appears out of nowhere, with a bunch of categories Year, Title, Genre, and more that start to populate with a number of well-known movie titles. The board, as Aboard calls it, titles itself Movie Night. With one click, Ziade just built and populated a way to track your viewing habits.
Maybe the best way to explain the new Aboard is not as a Pinterest competitor but as a radical redesign of ChatGPT. When Ziade made that board, all he was really doing was querying OpenAIs GPT-3.5. The companys chatbot might have returned some of the same movies, but it would have done so with a series of paragraphs and bullet points. Aboard has built a more attractive, more visual AI app and has made it so you can turn that app into anything you want.
Ziade and Ford imagine three main things you might do with Aboard. The first, Organize, is closest to the original vision: ask the tool for a bunch of things to do in Montreal this summer, and itll populate a board with some popular attractions and restaurants. Ask Aboard to meal plan your week, and itll create a board segmented by day and by meal with nicely formatted recipes. The second, Research, is similar but a little more exploratory: ask Aboard to grab the most interesting links about African bird species, and itll dump them all into place for you to peruse at your leisure.
Like any AI product right now, this is sometimes cooler in theory than in reality. When I ask Ziade to make a board with important tech moments from 2004, it pulls a bunch of them into separate cards: Googles IPO, the launch of Gmail, the iPod Mini launch. And then the iPod Mini launch again and then another time and then three more times after that. Ziade and Ford both laugh and say this is the stuff they see all the time. A few times, a demo just fails, and each time, Ford says something to the effect of Yeah, that just happens when you ping the models. But he says its also getting better fast.
The third use case, which Aboard calls Workflow, is where Aboard figures its true business lies. Ziade does another demo: he enters a prompt into Aboard, asking it to set up a claims tracker for an insurance company. After a few seconds, he has a fairly straightforward but useful-looking board for processing claims, along with a bunch of sample cards to show how it works. Is this going to be perfect and powerful enough for an insurance company to start using as is? No. But its a start. Ford tells me that Aboards job is to build something good enough but also not quite good enough if the app can work just well enough to get you to customize it the rest of the way to fit your needs, thats the goal.
An Aboard board can be a table, a list, a gallery, and more
This is ultimately a very business-y use case and puts Aboard in loose competition with the Airtables and Salesforces of the world. Ziade and Ford are upfront about this. We want to be in professional settings, Ford says, thats a real thing were aiming for. Doesnt have to be for big enterprise, but definitely small teams, nonprofits, things like that. He figures Aboard can sell to companies by saving them a bunch of time and meetings spent figuring out how to organize data and just get them started right away. An Aboard board can be a table, a list, a gallery, and more; its a pretty flexible tool for managing most kinds of data.
I have no particular business use for Aboard, but Ive been testing the app for a while, and its a really clever way to redesign the output of a large language model. Particularly when its combined with Aboards ability to parse URLs, it can quickly put together some really useful information. Ive been saving links for months as I plan a vacation, and I had Aboard build me a project planner for managing a big renovation of my bathroom. (Its all very exciting stuff.)
Just before Aboards AI launch, I tried building another board: I prompted the AI to create a board of Oscar-winning movies, with stacks for each movie genre and tags for Rotten Tomatoes scores, and Aboard went to work. It came back with stacks (Aboards parlance for sub-lists) for six different movie genres, tags for various score ranges, plus runtimes, posters, and Rotten Tomatoes links for each flick. Were all the movies it selected Best Picture winners? Nope! Did it get the ratings right, like, ever? Nope! But it still felt like a good start and Aboard always gives you the option to delete the sample cards it generates and just start from scratch.
Aboard is just one of a new class of AI companies, the ones that wont try to build Yet Another Large Language Model but will instead try to build new things to do with those models and new ways to interact with them. The Aboard founders say they ultimately plan to connect to lots of models as those models become, in some cases, more specialized and, in others, more commoditized. In Aboards case, they want to use AI not as an answer machine but as something like a software generator. We still want you to go to the web, Ford says. We want to guide you a bit and maybe kickstart you, but were software people and we think the ability to get going really quickly is really, really interesting. The Aboard founders want AI to do the work about the work, so you can just get to work.
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Aboards AI-powered bookmarking and project app is a new spin on a chatbot - The Verge
How to Protect Yourself (and Your Loved Ones) From AI Scam Calls – WIRED
You answer a random call from a family member, and they breathlessly explain how theres been a horrible car accident. They need you to send money right now, or theyll go to jail. You can hear the desperation in their voice as they plead for an immediate cash transfer. While it sure sounds like them, and the call came from their number, you feel like somethings off. So, you decide to hang up and call them right back. When your family member picks up your call, they say there hasnt been a car crash, and that they have no idea what youre talking about.
Congratulations, you just successfully avoided an artificial intelligence scam call.
As generative AI tools get more capable, it is becoming easier and cheaper for scammers to create fakebut convincingaudio of peoples voices. These AI voice clones are trained on existing audio clips of human speech, and can be adjusted to imitate almost anyone. The latest models can even speak in numerous languages. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, recently announced a new text-to-speech model that could further improve voice cloning and make it more widely accessible.
Of course, bad actors are using these AI cloning tools to trick victims into thinking they are speaking to a loved one over the phone, even though theyre talking to a computer. While the threat of AI-powered scams can be frightening, you can stay safe by keeping these expert tips in mind the next time you receive an urgent, unexpected call.
Its not just OpenAI; many tech startups are working on replicating near perfect-sounding human speech, and the recent progress is rapid. If it were a few months ago, we would have given you tips on what to look for, like pregnant pauses or showing some kind of latency, says Ben Colman, cofounder and CEO of Reality Defender. Like many aspects of generative AI over the past year, AI audio is now a more convincing imitation of the real thing. Any safety strategies that rely on you audibly detecting weird quirks over the phone are outdated.
Security experts warn that its quite easy for scammers to make it appear as if the call were coming from a legitimate phone number. A lot of times scammers will spoof the number that they're calling you from, make it look like it's calling you from that government agency or the bank, says Michael Jabbara, global head of fraud services at Visa. You have to be proactive. Whether its from your bank or from a loved one, any time you receive a call asking for money or personal information, go ahead and ask to call them back. Look up the number online or in your contacts, and initiate a follow-up conversation. You can also try sending them a message through a different, verified line of communication like video chat or email.
A popular security tip that multiple sources suggested was to craft a safe word that only you and your loved ones know about, and which you can ask for over the phone. You can even prenegotiate with your loved ones a word or a phrase that they could use in order to prove who they really are, if in a duress situation, says Steve Grobman, chief technology officer at McAfee. Although calling back or verifying via another means of communication is best, a safe word can be especially helpful for young ones or elderly relatives who may be difficult to contact otherwise.
What if you dont have a safe word decided on and are trying to suss out whether a distressing call is real? Pause for a second and ask a personal question. It could even be as simple as asking a question that only a loved one would know the answer to, says Grobman. It could be, Hey, I want to make sure this is really you. Can you remind me what we had for dinner last night? Make sure the question is specific enough that a scammer couldnt answer correctly with an educated guess.
Deepfake audio clones arent just reserved for celebrities and politicians, like the calls in New Hampshire that used AI tools to sound like Joe Biden and to discourage people from going to the polls. One misunderstanding is, It cannot happen to me. No one can clone my voice, says Rahul Sood, chief product officer at Pindrop, a security company that discovered the likely origins of the AI Biden audio. What people dont realize is that with as little as five to 10 seconds of your voice, on a TikTok you might have created or a YouTube video from your professional life, that content can be easily used to create your clone. Using AI tools, the outgoing voicemail message on your smartphone might even be enough to replicate your voice.
Whether its a pig butchering scam or an AI phone call, experienced scammers are able to build your trust in them, create a sense of urgency, and find your weak points. Be wary of any engagement where youre experiencing a heightened sense of emotion, because the best scammers arent necessarily the most adept technical hackers, says Jabbara. But they have a really good understanding of human behavior. If you take a moment to reflect on a situation and refrain from acting on impulse, that could be the moment you avoid getting scammed.
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How to Protect Yourself (and Your Loved Ones) From AI Scam Calls - WIRED
Announcing new Microsoft AI Hub in London – The Official Microsoft Blog – Microsoft
Microsoft recently announced the creation of Microsoft AI, a newly formed organization to help advance our consumer AI products and research, including Copilot. Building on that news, Im thrilled to share that Microsoft AI is opening a new AI hub in the heart of London. Microsoft AI London will drive pioneering work to advance state-of-the-art language models and their supporting infrastructure, and to create world-class tooling for foundation models, collaborating closely with our AI teams across Microsoft and with our partners, including OpenAI.
The new AI hub will be led by Jordan Hoffmann, an exceptional AI scientist and engineer. Prior to joining Microsoft AI, Hoffmann distinguished himself as an AI pioneer at Inflection and DeepMind, based in London. Hoffmann will be joined by a talented group of Microsoft AI team members based in our London Paddington office.
There is an enormous pool of AI talent and expertise in the U.K., and Microsoft AI plans to make a significant, long-term investment in the region as we begin hiring the best AI scientists and engineers into this new AI hub.
In the coming weeks and months, we will be posting job openings and actively hiring exceptional individuals who want to work on the most interesting and challenging AI questions of our time. Were looking for new team members who are driven by impact at scale, and who are passionate innovators eager to contribute to a team culture where continuous learning is the norm.
This is great news for Microsoft AI and for the U.K. As a British citizen, born and raised in London, Im proud to have co-founded and built a cutting-edge AI business here. Im deeply aware of the extraordinary talent pool and AI ecosystem in the U.K., and Im excited to make this commitment to the U.K. on behalf of Microsoft AI. I know through my close work with thought leaders in the U.K. government, business community and academia that the country is committed to advancing AI responsibly and with a safety-first commitment to drive investment, innovation and economic growth. Our decision to open this hub in the U.K. reflects this ambition.
The Microsoft AI London hub adds to Microsofts existing presence in the U.K., including the Microsoft Research Cambridge lab, home to some of the foremost researchers in the areas of AI, cloud and productivity. At the same time, it builds off Microsofts recently announced 2.5 billion investment to upskill the U.K. workforce for the AI era and to build the infrastructure to power the AI economy, including our commitment to bring 20,000 of the most advanced GPUs to the country by 2026.
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to push the boundaries of whats possible with AI and extend the benefits to every person and organization across the U.K.
Tags: AI, Microsoft AI
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Announcing new Microsoft AI Hub in London - The Official Microsoft Blog - Microsoft
The A.I. Boom Makes Millions for an Unlikely Industry Player: Anguilla – The New York Times
Artificial intelligences integration into everyday life has stirred up doubts and unsettling questions for many about humanitys path forward. But in Anguilla, a tiny Caribbean island to the east of Puerto Rico, the A.I. boom has made the country a fortune.
The British territory collects a fee from every registration for internet addresses that end in .ai, which happens to be the domain name assigned to the island, like .fr for France and .jp for Japan. With companies wanting internet addresses that communicate they are at the forefront of the A.I. boom like Elon Musks X.ai website for his artificial intelligence company Anguilla has recently received a huge influx in requests for domain names.
For each domain registration, Anguillas government gets anywhere from $140 to thousands of dollars from website names sold at auctions, according government data. Last year, Anguillas government made about $32 million from those fees. That amounted to more than 10 percent of gross domestic product for the territory of almost 16,000 people and 35 square miles.
Some people call it a windfall, Anguillas premier, Ellis Webster, said. We just call it God smiling down on us.
Mr. Webster said the government used the money to provide free health care for citizens 70 and older, and it has committed millions of dollars to finish building a school and a vocational training center. The government has also allocated funds to improve its airport; doubled its budget for sports activities, events and facilities; and increased the budget for citizens seeking medical treatment overseas, he said.
The island, which relies heavily on tourism, had been hard hit by the pandemics restrictions on travel and a devastating hurricane in 2017. The .ai domain income was the boost the country needed.
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The A.I. Boom Makes Millions for an Unlikely Industry Player: Anguilla - The New York Times
3 Under-the-Radar AI Stocks That Could Outshine Nvidia – InvestorPlace
Artificial intelligence (AI) has gained massive popularity over the past year. There is huge interest in AI stocks and every investor is looking for an opportunity to double their money. Nvidia(NASDAQ:NVDA) is a leader in the space and has already made investors rich but many under-the-radar AI stocks can outshine Nvidia.
The global AI market is expected to grow at a 15.83% compound annual growth rate by 2030 and reach amarket volume of $738.80 billion. This means investors have a massive opportunity to benefit from the rising adoption of AI. Nvidia is an expensive stock today, but if you are looking for reasonably priced under-the-radar AI stocks, here are the emerging leaders who could become hot property in the coming months.
Source: Ascannio / Shutterstock.com
At one time, Palantir(NYSE:PLTR) wasnt an investor favorite due to its secrecy. However, the company has gained massive popularity with its AI prowess and artificial intelligence platform (AIP), which is a big hit among companies.
It held boot camps to enable firms to understand how AIP works and there is a massive backlog of boot camps, showing the growing popularity of Palantirs AI product. Up 190% in the year and 48% year-to-date, PLTR stock is trading at $24 and looks undervalued to me.
The U.S. army has chosen Palantir to builda next-generation targeting systemwith a $178 million deal. It already has a strong presence in the defense industry, and Palantirs solid history of exceptional performance makes it an obvious choice for government contracts. However, it has also grown the commercial business by32% year-over-yearin the fourth quarter.
The AI industry is growing, and Palantir could be the next Nvidia. Analysts love the stock and have a positive rating. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has a price target of $35 and calls it the Lionel Messi of AI. Further,Brian Stutland, a portfolio manager with Equity Armor Investments, considers Palantir a promising AI investment with a price target of $37, a 57% rise from the current level.
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Investors have constantly compared Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices(NASDAQ:AMD). Nvidia has moved ahead in the race, but AMD isnt the one to sit back and watch. The stock has been on a tear since 2023 but is still up 29% YTD and 87% in the year.
Trading at $179, the stock is a solid buy before it starts to soar higher. While you might not see a rally or explosive gains, it will steadily progress. Investors have begun to give up on the stock, but it is too soon. AMD has the potential to bounce back.
The company has launched MI300X, which it believes is the worlds fastest AI hardware, and some of the biggest organizations in the world use its GPUs. Its fourth-quarter results were proof that the company is gaining strength. It saw a 10% YOY rise in sales and a 62% surge in personal computer sales in the quarter.
Several companies in the industry are looking for low-cost alternatives, and this is where AMD chips can win over Nvidia. The PC market is anticipated to improve in the coming months as the demand for AI-enabled PCs will rise. This could work as a catalyst for AMD stock.
KeyBanc analysthas an overweight rating for the stock with a price target of $270, while Melius Researchanalyst has a price target of $265 with a buy rating.
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ServiceNow(NYSE:NOW) stock is unstoppable, soaring 71% in the year and 11% YTD. Trading at $767, the stock isnt cheap, but it is on its way to becoming the next Nvidia. The company offers solutions to organizations to handle their workforce and customer experience.
It uses AI and workflow management tools that help identify bottlenecks that are impacting the completion of tasks. The company has already signed a partnership with Nvidia to develop AI solutions.
ServiceNow will adopt the latest AI systems of Nvidia to enhance its platform, and Nvidia will expand the services offered by ServiceNow. This means the company will continue to benefit as long as Nvidia keeps growing.
Fundamentally, the company has impressed investors and reported an EPS of $3.11 in the fourth quarter. It beat analyst expectations with a revenue of $2.4 million, up 26% YOY. One of the most important metrics, the subscription revenue, was up 27% in the quarter to hit $2.3 billion, and it closed 168 deals worth $1 million or more in the quarter. This is higher than the 103 deals closed by Palantir.
ServiceNow is trading at a premium, but I believe the first-quarter results will be impressive and could drive the stock higher. There is no stopping the stocks rally.
On the date of publication, Vandita Jadeja did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
Vandita Jadeja is a CPA and a freelance financial copywriter who loves to read and write about stocks. She believes in buying and holding for long term gains. Her knowledge of words and numbers helps her write clear stock analysis.
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3 Under-the-Radar AI Stocks That Could Outshine Nvidia - InvestorPlace