The Chip Pact
AI data centres have become incredibly huge and expensive, even for multinationals with the ability to raise near-unlimited capital. Ergo, they are coming up with creative partnerships. Like the announcement that Nvidia, which makes most of the GPUs powering AI data centres, will be investing—in phases depending on milestone achievements—$100 billion into OpenAI, the leading player in the segment.
Other than the sum involved, what is interesting is the nature of the deal. For what Nvidia is putting in, it is also getting back. OpenAI will use the money to set up infrastructure and buy the most advanced GPUs from Nvidia. It will power OpenAI's new data centres and lead to newer and 'more intelligent' versions of its products like ChatGPT.
However, Nvidia is not getting any voting privileges in OpenAI despite the scale of its investment. Altogether, the partnership is designed to lead to 10 Gigawatts of AI infrastructure. The first tranche of $10 billion investment will lead to 1 Gigawatt by 2026 and then increase further on. For Nvidia, this would lock OpenAI as a client for the long term, and as the sector keeps expanding and competition arrives, it will be an advantage.
ALZHEIMER'S WATCH
Smartwatches today present wearers with a vast swathe of health data, from sleeping patterns to heart rates. Samsung has developed a new digital biomarker technology that can allow its watches to warn about early signs of Alzheimer's. It is said to be capable of tracking changes in cognitive function by analysing data from smartphones and wearables like app usage, typing speed, messaging patterns and call frequency.
NEURALINK TRIALS
Since Neuralink began human trials, the brain-implant firm has been testing the chip's safety and efficacy in around 12 people with severe paralysis. It will launch a new trial in October that aims at helping people with speech impairments translate their thoughts into text. "If you're imagining saying something, we would be able to pick that up," Neuralink's head Dongjin Seo recently said.
VIRAL BREAKTHROUGH
Researchers at Stanford, US, have created the world's first entirely AI-generated genome. AI models in the past have been used to generate DNA sequences, single proteins, and multi-component complexes. Here, the team used AI to design the viral genomes. Some of these viruses even successfully infected bacteria, demonstrating that generative AI models can produce functional genetic material.