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AMD launches AI chips to take on leader Nvidia; plans new chip every year

AMD launches AI chips to take on leader Nvidia; plans new chip every year

by | Jun 3, 2024 | Technology


3 min read Last Updated : Jun 03 2024 | 10:15 PM IST


Advanced Micro Devices unveiled its latest artificial intelligence processors on Monday and detailed its plan to develop AI chips over the next two years in a bid to challenge industry leader Nvidia .


At the Computex technology trade show in Taipei, AMD CEO Lisa Su introduced the MI325X accelerator, which is set to be made available in the fourth quarter of 2024.


The race to develop generative artificial intelligence programs has led to towering demand for the advanced chips used in AI data centers able to support these complex applications.


Santa Clara, California-based AMD has been vying to compete against Nvidia, which currently dominates the lucrative market for AI semiconductors and commands about 80% of its share.


Since last year, Nvidia has made it clear to investors that it plans to shorten its release cycle to annually, and now AMD has followed suit.


“AI is clearly our number one priority as a company and we have really harnessed all of the development capability within the company to do that,” Su told reporters.


“This annual cadence is something that is there because the market requires newer products and newer capabilities… Every year we have the next big thing such that we always have the most competitive portfolio.”


AMD also introduced an upcoming series of chips titled MI350, which is expected to be available in 2025 and will be based on new chip architecture.


Compared to the currently available MI300 series of AI chips, AMD said it expects the MI350 to perform 35 times better in inference – the process of computing generative AI responses.


Additionally, AMD revealed the MI400 series, which will arrive in 2026 and will be based on an architecture called “Next”.


Investors who have poured billions of dollars into Wall Street’s picks-and-shovels trade have been seeking longer-term updates from chip firms, as they evaluate the longevity of the booming genAI rally, which so far has shown no signs of slowing down.


AMD’s shares have more than doubled since the start of 2023.


This surge still pales in comparison to the more than seven-fold rise in Nvidia’s shares in the same time period.


AMD is aiming at an AI chip product cycle of one year.


Similarly, Nvidia said it plans to release a new family of AI chips every year.


AMD’s Su said in April that the company expects AI chip sales of roughly $4 billion for 2024, an increase of $500 million from its prior estimate.


At the Computex event, AMD also said its latest generation of central processor units (CPUs) will likely be available in the second half of 2024.


While businesses generally prioritize spending on AI chips in data centers, some of AMD’s CPUs are used in conjunction with graphics processor units, though the ratio is skewed in favor of GPUs.


AMD detailed architecture for its new neural processing units (NPUs), which are dedicated to handling on-device AI tasks in AI PCs.


Chipmakers have been banking on added AI capabilities to drive growth in the PC market as it emerges from a years-long slump.


PC providers such as HP and Lenovo will release devices which include AMD’s AI PC chips. AMD said its processors exceed Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC requirements.

First Published: Jun 03 2024 | 11:06 AM IST



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Tech giant Google's AI search leaves content publishers scrambling

Tech giant Google's AI search leaves content publishers scrambling

by | Jun 2, 2024 | Technology


4 min read Last Updated : Jun 02 2024 | 10:37 PM IST

By Nico Grant & Katie Robertson

When Frank Pine searched Google for a link to a news article two months ago, he encountered paragraphs generated by artificial intelligence (AI) about the topic at the top of his results. To see what he wanted, he had to scroll past them.


That experience annoyed Pine, the executive editor of Media News Group and Tribune Publishing, which own 68 daily newspapers. Now, those paragraphs scare him.

 


In May, Google announced that the AI-generated summaries, which compile content from news sites and blogs on the topic being searched, would be made available to everyone in the US. And that change has publishing executives worried that the paragraphs pose a big danger to their brittle business model, by sharply reducing the amount of traffic to their sites from Google. “It potentially chokes off the original creators of the content,”  Pine said.

 


Media executives have said they want their sites listed in Google’s search results, which for some outlets can generate over half of their traffic. But doing that means Google can use their content in AI Overviews summaries.

 


Publishers could also try to protect their content by forbidding Google’s web crawler from sharing any content snippets from their sites. But then their links would show up without any description, making people less likely to click.

 


Another alternative — refusing to be indexed by Google, and not appearing on its search engine at all — could be fatal to their business.

 


Google said its search engine continued to send billions of visits to websites, providing value to publishers. The firm has also said it has not showcased its AI summaries when it was clear that users were looking for current news.

 


Liz Reid, Google’s vice president of search, said  before the introduction of AI Overviews that there were hopeful signs for publishers during testing. “We do continue to see that people often do click on the links in AI Overviews and explore,” she said. “A website that appears in the AI Overview actually gets more traffic” than one with just a traditional blue link.

 


Reid wrote in a blog post Thursday that Google would limit AI Overviews to a smaller set of search results after it produced some high-profile errors, but added that the firm was still committed to improving the system.

 


The use of articles from news sites has also set off a legal fight over whether firms like OpenAI and Google violated copyright law by taking the content without permission to build their AI models. AI Overviews combines statements generated from AI models with snippets of content from live links across the web. The summaries contain excerpts from multiple websites while citing sources, giving comprehensive answers without the user having to click to another page. Since its debut, the tool has not always been able to differentiate between accurate articles and satirical posts. When it recommended that users put glue on pizza or eat rocks for a balanced diet, it caused a furore online.

 


Publishers said in interviews that it was too early to see a difference in traffic from Google since AI Overviews arrived.

 

Newspapers such as The Washington Post and The Texas Tribune have turned to a marketing start-up, Subtext, that helps firms connect with subscribers and audiences through text messaging. Then there’s the dispute over copyright. It took a turn when OpenAI, which scraped news sites to build ChatGPT, started cutting deals with publishers. It said it would pay firms, including The Associated Press, The Atlantic and News Corp, which owns WSJ, to access their content. But Google has not yet signed similar deals. The firm has long resisted calls to compensate media firms for their content, arguing that such payments would undermine the nature of the open web.


 


‘AI OVERVIEWS’ BOON OR BANE?

 


– Combines AI-generated statements with snippets from live web links. These summaries include excerpts from various sources, providing comprehensive answers without requiring users to navigate to another page

 


– The tool has not always been able to differentiate between accurate articles and satirical posts. When it recommended that users put glue on pizza or eat rocks for a balanced diet, it caused a furore online

 


– Publishers have noted no significant change in website traffic since the introduction of AI Overviews, raising questions about its effectiveness




– Some publishers are exploring alternatives like Subtext, bypassing reliance on search engines like Google


©2024 The New York Times News Service

First Published: Jun 02 2024 | 10:37 PM IST



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Airlines ride AI: Less work for agents, human-like responses for passengers

Airlines ride AI: Less work for agents, human-like responses for passengers

by | Jun 2, 2024 | Technology


Air India and other planes parked at the airport in Mumbai, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Photo: PTI)


From human-like responses to reduced workload for customer service agents to utilisation of trillions of parameters for answering air passengers’ queries, artificial intelligence is providing the technological tailwinds for Indian airlines as they cater to rising traffic.


For Air India, which has embarked on a five-year transformation plan, Artificial Intelligence (AI) use will be “pervasive” and its generative AI virtual agent AI.g handles over 1,300 topics.


And the country’s largest airline IndiGo has AI chatbot 6Eskai that has 1.7 trillion parameters, allowing it to answer questions with ease. Also, the bot can understand written, typed language, and verbal instructions using speech-to-text models.


Akasa Air, which describes itself as a “cloud-native and digital-native brand”, said it will continue to invest heavily in proven technology solutions across all business functions.


India, one of the world’s fastest growing civil aviation markets, is seeing rising domestic air traffic, and airlines are also expanding their fleet, including with wide-body aircraft.


Across industries, including aviation, the adoption of new-age technologies like AI and Machine Learning (ML) is on the rise.


Air India’s Chief Digital & Technology Officer Satya Ramaswamy told PTI that “AI-infused” is an integral part of the airline’s technology approach and that AI has enabled it to reduce the variance in responding to customer service requests.


“Once developed and trained, our AI agent AI.g delivers consistent responses. It has helped us streamline and sharpen our contact centre functions. It has helped our contact centre agents focus more on queries and requests that require complex and detailed interactions with customers and areas where a response cannot be pre-determined,” he said.


According to him, computer vision, which refers to analysis of images and videos using various algorithms, will be an integral part of the operations, be it in airports, maintenance bases or in airplanes.


An IndiGo spokesperson said that several enhancements are in the pipeline to elevate the capabilities of its AI chatbot 6Eskai. “These include the integration of Google’s Gemini, a tool which can easily engage in conversations across various formats such as pictures, text, speech, music, and even computer code. Additionally, we plan to incorporate the IndiGo Avatar and voice features to streamline the booking process seamlessly,” the spokesperson told PTI.


Besides, another feature is being planned to offer passengers more options in the event of operational issues.


“The AI chatbot efficiently addresses customer queries in 10 different languages and offers a first-of-a-kind platform for booking tickets across the entire network. The implementation of 6Eskai has led to a remarkable 75 per cent decrease in the workload for customer service agents,” the IndiGo spokesperson said.


Currently, 6Eskai — which boasts an impressive 1.7 trillion parameters, allowing it to answer a diverse range of commonly asked questions — is transferring only 2-9 per cent of chats to experts.


Akasa Air, which has been flying for less than two years now, said it will continue to invest in appropriate technologies such as optimisation and AI to help gain insights into its customer behaviour and operational parameters.


“We leverage these insights to make informed and data-backed decisions to serve our customers better. Additionally, we have also deployed AI-based cyber threat prevention capabilities that leverage the power of AI to identify and thwart cyber threats in real time,” Akasa Air Co-Founder and Chief Information Officer Anand Srinivasan told PTI.


He also noted that all operational and commercial decisions are backed by technologies that leverage data, mathematical models and, where appropriate, AI and Internet of Things (IoT).


“These include the pricing of our flights, choice of routes, deployment of aircraft, rostering of operating and ground crew, scheduling engine maintenance etc”.


According to Ramaswamy, the containment ratio of AI.g is 93 per cent, which means only 7 per cent of the queries are escalated to a human agent. It handles over 1,300 topics and provides human-like responses to the various ways in which customers ask questions related to these topics.


Citing an example, he said the airline had injected pet policy in the AI system. “When customers ask ‘can I take my labrador with me?’, AI.g reasons that labrador is a dog, a dog is a pet, and hence the laid down pet policy applies. This is a quantum jump from the earlier generation of technologies where one would have to train the AI model with every possible type of dog breed,” he noted.


At Air India, Ramaswamy said a generative AI agent has been deployed recently for answering employee queries.


“Our use of generative AI in CoPilots for a variety of use cases will grow as enterprise users are loving the ability to interact in natural language in dynamic ways. We anticipate a time when generative AI may front-end all of our data,” he added.


Going forward, Akasa Air’s Srinivasan said the airline will continue to utilise advanced technologies that will provide improved efficiency and passenger experience.


Ganesh Gopalan, CEO of conversational AI company Gyani.ai, said there are many opportunities for AI in the aviation sector. For instance, for rescheduling of tickets, generally the waiting time has been long and an AI application can help in reducing it, he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Jun 02 2024 | 11:18 AM IST



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BJP slams OpenAI for late report on 'dangerous threat' to Lok Sabha polls

BJP slams OpenAI for late report on 'dangerous threat' to Lok Sabha polls

by | Jun 1, 2024 | Technology


Union MoS IT Rajeev Chandrashekhar | Photo: X @PTI_News

3 min read Last Updated : Jun 01 2024 | 3:00 PM IST

A campaign nicknamed “Zero Zeno”, run by Israeli political campaign management firm STOIC, tried to influence the ongoing Lok Sabha elections in India, according to OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT.


Responding to OpenAI’s report, ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) labeled this a “dangerous threat” to democracy, stating that OpenAI should have informed the public when the threat was first detected in May.


“It is absolutely clear and obvious that BJP was and is the target of influence operations, misinformation, and foreign interference, being done by and/or on behalf of some Indian political parties,” said Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on X (formerly Twitter).


According to OpenAI’s report, the threat was detected in May, although the exact date remains unknown. Four of the seven phases of the Lok Sabha elections were conducted during this month.

“This is a very dangerous threat to our democracy. It is clear vested interests in India and outside are driving this and it needs to be deeply scrutinised, investigated, and exposed,” the minister said.

“My view is that these platforms could have released this much earlier, and not so late when elections are ending,” he added.


OpenAI’s report on deceptive uses of AI


OpenAI stated it acted within 24 hours to disrupt the “deceptive” use of artificial intelligence (AI) in this covert operation. The threat actors leveraged OpenAI’s language models to generate comments, articles, and social media profiles that criticised the ruling BJP and praised the Congress party.


“In May, the network began generating comments that focused on India, criticised the ruling BJP party, and praised the Opposition Congress party. We disrupted some activity focused on the Indian elections less than 24 hours after it began,” OpenAI said.


OpenAI banned a cluster of accounts operated from Israel that were used to generate and edit content across various platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, websites, and YouTube.

“This operation targeted audiences in Canada, the United States, and Israel with content in English and Hebrew. In early May, it began targeting audiences in India with English-language content,” the company stated.


Other target of deceptive AI practices


OpenAI highlighted that the content posted by these operations covered a wide range of issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, politics in Europe and the United States, and criticisms of the Chinese government by Chinese dissidents and foreign governments, along with the ongoing Indian elections.


“We’ve terminated accounts linked to covert influence operations; no significant audience increase due to our services,” OpenAI noted.


OpenAI disclosed that it has disrupted five covert operations in the last three months that sought to use their models for deceptive activities across the internet. “Our investigations into suspected covert influence operations (IO) are part of a broader strategy to meet our goal of safe AI deployment,” the company concluded.

 

First Published: Jun 01 2024 | 3:00 PM IST





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Meta's flagship app Facebook attracting most young adults in 3 years

Meta's flagship app Facebook attracting most young adults in 3 years

by | Jun 1, 2024 | Technology


3 min read Last Updated : Jun 01 2024 | 10:26 AM IST


Meta said on Friday its flagship app Facebook is attracting its highest number of young adults in three years, as it tries to shake the platform’s reputation as the bastion of an older generation.

 


More than 40 million US and Canadian adults aged 18 to 29 now check Facebook daily, the social media company said, in its first-ever release of such demographic information. Facebook, whose founder Mark Zuckerberg turned 40 last month, marked its 20th anniversary this year.

 


The growth reflects the company’s efforts in the last few years to recapture the attention of young adults who have been flocking to short video app TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance.

 


Meta charted “five quarters of healthy app usage growth” among young adults, a company spokesperson said.

 


At an event in New York aimed at highlighting how young people use the app, Meta’s head of Facebook Tom Alison said the anniversary prompted executives to realize Facebook needed to evolve to stay relevant for the next generation.

 


“Who is Facebook for? Is it for my parents?” Alison said, citing questions he said he had heard from young adults.

 


Alison told Reuters in an interview that young users appeared to be coming to Facebook initially to use sections like Marketplace, Groups and Dating at key moments in their lives, such as when they needed to furnish apartments for the first time.

 


While most of those sections do not feature ads, their usage was driving engagement broadly, he added.

 


“Once they’re on Facebook, they go and they check out stuff that’s going on in Feed or from Reels,” he said, referring to Meta’s TikTok-like short video product.

 


Facebook, founded in a Harvard University dorm in 2004, spread like wildfire across US college campuses after it launched and quickly became the default mass communications platform for a generation of internet users. The app amassed 50 million users within its first three years and now has 3.2 billion users globally.

 


Along the way, however, it became less attractive to the young users who drive consumer fads and are considered crucial by the advertisers responsible for most of Meta’s ad sales.

 


Only about a third of US teens say they use Facebook, according to a survey last year by research organization Pew, a sharp drop compared to previous surveys the group conducted in 2014 and 2015.

 


By comparison, the share of all US adults who say they use Facebook has remained relatively flat since 2016 at around 68 per cent, Pew has said.

First Published: Jun 01 2024 | 10:26 AM IST



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Tech wrap May 31: God of War Ragnarok coming to PCs, new IG features & more

Tech wrap May 31: God of War Ragnarok coming to PCs, new IG features & more

by | May 31, 2024 | Technology


5 min read Last Updated : May 31 2024 | 8:03 PM IST


Sony at its State of Play event on May 31 treated gaming enthusiasts with updates on various upcoming video game titles for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2 gaming consoles. However, the highlight remained the arrival of God of War: Ragnarok on Windows PC platform. Sony said that the videogame will arrive on PCs on September 19, joining the likes of God of War (2018), Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima and other PlayStation Exclusive games that debuted as PlayStation exclusive but later made it to the Steam platform for PCs.


Meta-owned social media platform Instagram has enhanced the “Notes” features with support for likes, mentions, and the ability to post prompts for others to respond. Essentially, Instagram now allows users to like notes, mention others using @handles in their notes, and use prompts to initiate a conversation directly within notes.




Instagram is expanding its “limit interaction” feature, which now allows restricting interactions with everyone apart from users that are on the “Close Friends” list. As spotted by The Verge, the “limit interaction” menu on the settings page in Instagram has a new “Everyone but your Close Friends” option. Earlier, the feature was limited to closing down interactions with “Recent followers” and “Accounts that don’t follow you”.


Samsung dominated the global generative AI-capable smartphone market in the Jan-March quarter of this year, reported market tracker Counterpoint Research. According to the report, all three models in the Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series secured top three spots in the top ten for best-selling smartphones with generative AI capabilities in the said quarter.


Semiconductors based on Arm architecture have traditionally been associated with smartphones and portable mobile devices. However, there is a notable trend where more laptops and desktop PCs are now being equipped with Arm chips. Traditionally, most of these computing devices have relied on x86 architecture-based processors. This brings up an important question: why is there a sudden shift towards Arm architecture, especially in PCs market? And what exactly are Arm chips, and how do they differ from x86 processors?


Google has announced a May feature drop for Android that brings several new features related to Messages, hotspot, Meet, Google Home, Wear OS, Gboard, and more. Among the notable ones is the new option in Messages that will let users edit sent messages. Other notable features include hotspot sharing and casting option in Google Meet for easy switching between devices while on video call.


AI Overviews were announced at the Google I/O event a few days ago exclusively to users in the US with the promise of higher satisfaction with its search results by suggesting info and webpages closest to the search query. This new feature was a result of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), launched last year.


Chinese smartphone brand POCO could soon launch the POCO M6 Plus in India. The smartphone, reportedly, has been spotted on India’s BIS (Bureau of Indian Standard) that hints at possible launch in the country soon. However, there has been no official confirmation yet on the launch from the brand.


Google has started rolling out the new Gmail app for Android that features a new design and an option for quick replies. The “Quick Reply” option on Gmail app for Android lets you reply to emails without necessitating the steps to open full-screen compose mail.


ASUS has scheduled the ROG Ally X’s launch for June 2. Ahead of the launch, however, most of the details of the upcoming handheld gaming console are out in public domain – thanks to a retailer in Taiwan that has listed the product on the web. Available details on the listing page corroborate with the information ASUS had shared earlier about the product while announcing the launch date. Moreover, the listing page confirms the key features and specifications of the ROG Ally X, leaving nothing to the imagination.


Chinese smartphone maker Honor’s India distributor HTech is set to introduce the Honor 200 series smartphones in the country. The Honor series encompasses the Honor 200 and the Honor 200 Pro, both of which were launched in the brand’s home country a few days back. HTech has not disclosed the Honor 200 series smartphones launch date, yet, but it has posted a teaser image on its official handle on X (formerly Twitter) confirming the arrival of the Honor 200 series in India soon.


Apple Inc. is planning to overhaul its Siri virtual assistant with more advanced artificial intelligence, a move that will let users control individual app functions with their voice, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

First Published: May 31 2024 | 8:03 PM IST



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