ai_chips

Chinese companies are resorting to chips repurposed from standard PC gaming products to develop artificial intelligence tools, and Charles Michel’s run for European parliament is causing a scramble to replace him. Plus, a new TV show is firing Brits up over a decades-old post office scandal. 

Mentioned in this podcast:

Chinese companies resort to repurposing Nvidia gaming chips for AI

How Charles Michel’s parliament plan fires up the EU’s top job battle

How a Post Office drama galvanised Britain 

The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson, Kasia Broussalian and Marc Filippino. Additional help by Sam Giovinco, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The computer chipmaker Nvidia doubled its revenue from a year ago due to a surge in demand for special chips used to run AI systems like ChatGPT. We’ll get into the geopolitical backdrop of the current chip boom. And, half of today’s homebuyers are first-time purchasers despite a historically unaffordable housing market. We’ll unpack that paradox. Plus, have you played Tradle yet?

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• • “Nvidia Revenue Doubles on Demand for A.I. Chips, and Could Go Higher” from The New York Times

• • “Can I Afford a House: Higher Mortgage Rates Have Not Deterred Some Buyers” from Bloomberg

• • “The Housing Market Has Never Been This Unaffordable for New Buyers” from Business Insider

• • “Home-builder ETFs jump after data show new-home sales rose in July despite high mortgage rates” from MarketWatch

• • “Ford Confronts Strange, Ear-Piercing Static in F-150 Trucks” from The Wall Street Journal

• • Play the Observatory of Economic Complexity’s Tradle game

Got a question for the hosts? Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org.

Our 93nd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!

Outline:

• Intro
• Applications & Business
  • (01:10) Venture funding for chip startups has doubled in the last five years thanks to AI
  • (4:00) Google's multisearch feature lets you search with text and images at the same time 
  • (6:10) Lighting Round
    • Nurse-assisting robotics firm Diligent raises $30M - "We’ve seen robotics applied to just about every other field of late, so why not nursing — a field that will require one million new faces to keep up with demand in the U.S. alone?
    • Sorry, developers: Microsoft's new tool fixes the bugs in software code written by AI - "Microsoft's Jigsaw can automate the process of checking and editing code outputted by a machine."
• Research & Advancements
  • (7:50) Deep Learning Poised to ‘Blow Up’ Famed Fluid Equations - "For centuries, mathematicians have tried to prove that Euler’s fluid equations can produce nonsensical answers. A new approach to machine learning has researchers betting that “blowup” is near."
  • (11:20) Analog A.I.? It sounds crazy, but it might be the future - "Forget digital. The future of A.I. is … analog? At least, that’s the assertion of Mythic, an A.I. chip company that’s, its own words, taking “a leap forward in performance in power” by going back in time. Sort of."
  • (13:55) Lighting Round
    • AI and infrared spectroscopy identify the age and species of mosquitoes – Physics World
    • Deep Science: Combining vision and language could be the key to more capable AI
• Society & Ethics
  • (15:45) The Miserable Lives of Cyborg Truck Drivers - "How AI and automation can make a job worse than before"
  • (18:45) House lawmakers launch investigation of face-scan contractor ID.me - "The House probe marks an escalation of years of controversy over the government’s growing reliance on facial recognition, which boiled over earlier this year after the IRS said it would require Americans to scan their faces in order to access their IRS tax accounts."
  • (22:10) Lighting Round
  • Biden administration takes step forward on AI policy
  • FDA Issues Advisory on Use of AI and Machine Learning for Large Vessel Occlusion in the Brain
• Fun & Neat
  • (23:40) GM Cruise autonomous taxi pulled over by police in San Francisco without humans, ‘bolts’ off (U: Cruise responds) - "Last week, a GM Cruise-converted Chevy Bolt without a driver was pulled over by San Francisco Police. In an unexpected turn, the car “bolted” …to a safe spot. Cruise responded below."
  • (26:43) How artificial intelligence helps students learn
• Outro