Artificial Intelligence – Power problem.

AI is the icing on the cake for nuclear and geothermal. The huge build-out of data centres to train and run AI algorithms is raising concerns about where the electricity to power these centres is going to come from and it is becoming clear that the only carbon-free sources that make sense for this use case are either nuclear or...

Artificial Intelligence – Reasoning Debate pt. III

Still no sign of reasoning. Apple has stuck the knife into the idea that large language models (LLMs) can reason with a research paper demonstrating LLMs making the sorts of mistakes that a small child or a pocket calculator would never make. The research paper (see here) and the X thread (see here) that summarises the findings in a more...

Tesla We Robot – Nothingburger!

Great visuals, no content. When the highlight of the show is wondering if it was a Cybercab malfunction that caused Mr Musk to start the show nearly an hour late, you know that not much happened. Tesla held its We, Robot event where Mr Musk spoke for about 20 minutes, said almost nothing that had not been said before, and...

OpenAI – Unpalatable Confection.

OpenAI wants to have its cake and eat it.    What was going to become a for-profit entity subject to all the forces that hone companies into efficient cash printing machines that benefit their shareholders and employees will now be a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) that will give OpenAI extra space to shield management from the consequences of its bad...

Google – The Long Game

Things might look very different in 3-4 years.  However the legal games play out, Google is not going to be broken up any time soon and with market share loss in digital advertising and dislocation in the search market, Google is going to have a strong case for an appeal. Google is under assault on all fronts with its search...

Samsung Q3 24 – A Note 7 Moment.

Problems look temporary and create an opportunity Samsung has reported good results but made a rare apology to investors for its continued inability to catch up with its competitors in high bandwidth memory (HBM) which is critical for training large language models raising concerns that its dominance of memory may finally be flagging. This weakness has caused an exodus from...

Google – The back foot

Google is on the defensive. E-marketer expects that Google’s market share in US search advertising will drop below 50% in 2025 mainly as others properly monetise their traffic, but this will fuel the debate over the impact of generative AI on an industry that Google has ruled for over 20 years. In 2018, Google’s market share stood at just over...

Microsoft Copilot – Risk adverse

A very cautious update. Microsoft has launched an updated version of Copilot and while Microsoft remains extremely risk-adverse, I think Microsoft has produced a better product than OpenAI even though both are using the same technology. Copilot exists in two forms (cloud and device) and this update makes it clear that the two iterations will increasingly be indistinguishable from one...

OpenAI – FOMO Party

A big hangover is yet to come. OpenAI has capitalised on investors’ desperation to invest by raising $6.6bn at a post-money valuation of $157bn and setting very unusual terms that are yet another indication that AI remains in the midst of its 4th and largest bubble. In a short press release, OpenAI announced its fundraising and also went on to...

AI Ecosystem – Voice part II

This time it should work properly. OpenAI is not launching a new model this year, but it is joining everyone else in declaring that voice assistants are the next big thing just as everyone did in 2018 but this time, there is a good chance that 2018’s hype becomes a reality. Crucially, OpenAI is also opening up GPT4o to developers...