On Monday this week, Intel debuted its Intel Tiber AI Cloud service, featuring its new Gaudi 3 accelerator chips instead of leveraging Nvidia's. The service targets large AI startups and enterprises to support production-level AI workloads for commercial use, offering Gaudi 3 instances alongside other Intel chip solutions. On top of that, Intel has shaken hands with Inflection AI to deliver an enterprise AI solution, named Inflection for Enterprise, that is designed to provide empathetic, conversational AI with the flexibility and scalability for large-scale deployments.
At an AI summit in Washington DC, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called for full investment in AI infrastructure, suggesting that climate goals set by the Biden administration are too ambitious to achieve. Schmidt argued that AI's growing energy demands would likely surpass any efforts to dampen environmental impacts, stating that "we are never going to meet our climate goals anyway." Schmidt, who believes conservation measures will not be able to keep up with AI's developments, believes it is wiser to bet on future AI solving the problem rather than limiting progress and having to find a solution to it ourselves.
Chinese chip manufacturers recently received informal endorsement from Chinese authorities as they urged domestic companies to prioritize local AI chips over the likes of Nvidia's. As the US-imposed AI chip export restrictions for China continue, China is looking to invest more into its own chip industry, such as those made by Huawei, encouraging local companies to buy into them. Though Nvidia has made Chinese-specific alternatives, such as the recent H20 which hasn't been officially banned as of August, to bypass restrictions, China's domestic industry looks to be on the rise.
In case your phone ever gets stolen, Google has recently introduced a trio of security features to help protect Android devices from being accessed. These include Theft Detection Lock, which uses AI to detect "common motion associated with theft" and lock the screen, and Offline Device Lock, which secures devices that have been offline for a while. The third and last feature, Remote Lock, lets users lock their phone via phone number when they can't access Find My Device. The features are rolling out gradually, with Android 10 and above required for the first two and Android 5 and above for Remote Lock.
A Walmart shopper filmed herself attempting to steal at self-checkout, just to be caught by AI-powered cameras that detected a missed scan. The video, posted to TikTok and amassing over 2 million views, shows the woman being confronted by staff after trying to avoid scanning a backpack. As part of a $3 million deal with Digimarc, Walmart has invested in AI technology like "Missed Scan Detection" to reduce theft, which costs the retailer an estimated $3 billion annually. After having a little laugh, the employees called the police, leading to a two-year ban for the shopper.
After having found one of the largest high-grade copper deposits to date earlier this year in Zambia, mineral discovery startup KoBold Metals recently already raised $491 million out of its $527 million goal, aiming for a valuation of $2 billion for this fundraiser. The company uses AI to sift through and parse large amounts of data to massively increase the company's "hit rate" of finding deposits containing copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt. KoBold currently has 60 other exploration projects underway, along with its $2.3 billion Mingomba project to develop the Zambia copper deposit.