AI Top-of-Mind for 6.27.24 — I Want My GPU!
Top-of-mind is China, and continuing challenges with semiconductor manufacturing given US sanctions, ‘The Information’ reports on how Huawei is running into issues with its Ascend AI GPU program, to the disadvantage of Alibaba, Tencent, and others, who hope to standardize on the technology. From the article:
· The problems involving the Ascend 910B emerged in the past few weeks. Huawei and SMIC had projected they would soon be able to produce about 500,000 Ascend chips annually, said the people involved in the effort.
· But because the chip fabrication machines were developed for older generations of chips, repurposing them to make more-advanced ones, such as the Ascend 910B, causes components to break down faster.
And note that in any case:
The Ascend 910B relies on fab technology known as 7 nanometers, whereas Nvidia’s H100 is made with 4 nm technology, which is one generation — or years — ahead of 7 nm
Your daily dose of healthcare! Michael Spencer and Conrad Gray writing in ‘AI Supremacy’ on the quick evolution of robot surgeons and what’s next. Good background on what is termed ‘robotic-assisted surgery’ as well as laparoscopic, the latter vastly reducing in-patient time. The goal is to combine the two. They also address the question; are we close to autonomy?
And what seems to be a daily update on Apple Intelligence, views from Attila Vago in ‘Bricks n’ Brackets’ including a great diagram to put everything in perspective:
On the model front, a funny comparison by Andrew Best on how Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4o handle visual tasks. Read on to see how they did with this image and prompt:
Prompt:
My friend is blind. She needs your help. Tell me in as much detail as you can what is in this picture. Describe absolutely everything, including what is right or wrong with this picture. Be accurate and complete with your answer.
Lastly, we’ll need to start keeping a leaderboard of AI ad fails. ‘The Verge’ and others look at Toys-r-Us and their ‘origins’ ad. Doesn’t work on so many levels, not to mention…. Does anyone care about Toys-r-Us? Link to the video and the image below reminds me of Polar Express.
