🎉 CHIPS Act Boom, OpenAI vs. Google & Perplexity, Twitter News, Future of AI, Mega Solar Farms
Chip Manufacturing Back to USA, Winner Take All: King of Search, Twitter Enters the Newsroom, Where Is AI Headed?, Microsoft Invests Big $$$ In Solar
Welcome to this week’s edition of AImpulse, a five point summary of the most significant advancements in the world of Artificial Intelligence.
Here’s the pulse on this week’s top stories:
What’s Happening: When President Biden signed off on the CHIPS Act in 2022, most economists thought of it as a long-term investment. It could help the US decades down the line, they’d figured, but it wasn’t going to change anything overnight. Why? Because Taiwan dominates in chip manufacturing — especially when it comes to the ones that can power AI — and the infrastructure needed to produce cutting-edge chips can take years to build.
Tech companies are building new chip manufacturing facilities inside the US at a rate 15 times higher than years prior thanks to incentives from the CHIPS Act, according to the Financial Times.
Nearly all the big players are onboard, including Samsung and TSMC. For its part, Intel has chosen the US as the site to build its most advanced chip yet.
The US produces virtually none of the world’s AI-oriented chips today, but by 2030, it could make as much as 20% of the world’s supply. That’s not enough to become entirely self-sufficient, but it’s a big step in the right direction.
Why does it matter? The US is concerned about foreign adversaries controlling high-tech semiconductors, i.e. the fuel that powers the world’s most advanced AI systems. It wants to control every step of manufacturing so that if something goes wrong — say China decides to invade Taiwan — it won’t be left in the lurch.
For now at least, it looks like that kind of security is in high demand. Apple, Nvidia, and other tech giants have already agreed to team up with TSMC as it expands production at a new chip plant in Arizona...and the US still has about half of its chip funding left to spend.
What’s Happening: OpenAI is delaying a planned showcase at its headquarters to Monday next week, when the company is expected to reveal a new search-related AI product to rival Google and Perplexity.
The details:
OpenAI had scheduled a Thursday (tomorrow) event to share product updates and demos but has reportedly moved it to Monday.
While the exact focus of the event is undisclosed, recent reports suggest OpenAI is developing a search offering to rival Google and Perplexity.
The report also noted the ‘stiffer competition’ from close partner Microsoft, which is also reportedly training its own large in-house AI model called MAI-1.
OpenAI has been active in the media of late, with Brad Lightcap saying current tech will be ‘laughably bad’ within a year and Sam Altman calling GPT-4 ‘mildly embarrassing'.
Why it matters: While the world waits for OpenAI’s next big reveal, it appears Sama and co. may keep us waiting at least a bit longer. While speculation turns to Microsoft and Apple announcements causing the delay, the confident commentary doesn’t come off as a company too concerned with competition.
What’s Happening: Elon Musk just shared his plan to use AI to summarize news events and social media reactions on X, also rolling out a new ‘Stories’ feature to provide users with real-time, accurate information.
The details:
X's AI chatbot, Grok, will analyze thousands of posts to generate news summaries that update as new information becomes available.
The summaries will rely solely on X posts and commentary, not the text of news articles themselves, making the approach distinct from other AI summarizers.
Grok's news summaries, called "Stories," are currently available only to X's premium subscribers — with a broader rollout expected later.
While Grok doesn't cite sources well yet, Musk says better citations are coming, allowing users to dive deeper into published stories.
Why it matters: Between Grok’s AI-curated news and OpenAI’s media deals, the way news is consumed and gathered is about to change. With X/Twitter acting as a primary news source for users across the world, managing issues like hallucination, bias, and misinformation will be key in the feature's early innings.
What’s Happening: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just participated in a Q&A at Stanford University, offering new insights on topics including GPT-5, AGI, the importance of compute power, and more.
The details:
Altman called GPT-4 "mildly embarrassing at best", saying it will be the "worst model" we will ever use as each new version gets smarter.
The CEO said he ‘doesn’t care’ whether the company burns 500M or 50B a year — as long as it stays on a trajectory for creating AGI, it will be worth it.
Altman also spoke about the importance of global access to compute, stating the mission to make ChatGPT free for ‘as many people that want to use it’.
Altman also revealed that during a separate talk at Harvard University, the mysterious gpt2-chatbot model that appeared on Lmsys earlier this week was not GPT 4.5.
Why it matters: Sama’s eye-opening comments on GPT-4’s ‘embarrassing’ capabilities only add more fuel to the hype surrounding OpenAI’s next model. As someone who has insider views of the AI progress being made, Altman’s optimism suggests the next leap will undoubtedly be a big one.
What’s Happening: Microsoft just signed the largest-ever corporate renewable energy purchase agreement, securing 10.5 gigawatts of new clean power capacity to fuel its rapidly growing AI operations.
The details:
The deal was with Brookfield Asset Management and was estimated to cost between $11.5 and $17B.
The 10.5 GW is nearly 8x larger than the previous record agreement, equalling almost half of California's total solar and wind capacity in 2022 alone.
Microsoft is looking to offset the surging power demand from its AI data centers while still meeting its goal of 100% carbon-free energy by 2030.
Why it matters: The AI revolution is coming with a side effect — a massive energy appetite that puts pressure on power grids globally. As the race to continue scaling hungry models continues, tech giants could spur new major transformative investments in renewable energy infrastructure across the globe.