[UPDATE 7/15/2024: A previous version of this article incorrectly suggested the Elon Musk is affiliated with Groq. The latter is an independent startup, while Musk’s own xAI firm offers an unrelated product called “Grok”, spelled with a “k”.]
Welcome to the newest edition of FindBiometrics’ AI update. Here’s the latest big news on the shifting landscape of AI and identity technology:
Apple and Microsoft have abandoned offers of observer seats on OpenAI’s board of directors, according to new reports. The companies are wary of antitrust scrutiny as the Federal Trade Commission reviews various arrangements between Big Tech companies.
Senior Republican lawmakers have asked the White House to conduct an intelligence community assessment of Microsoft’s $1.5 billion investment in the UAE-based AI firm G42. In a letter, the heads of the House foreign affairs panel and the House China committee expressed concern about links to China, and “the unprecedented transfer of highly sensitive US-origin technology.”
The European Union’s AI Act has been published in its Official Journal, setting off several countdowns with respect to its phased implementation. It will officially enter into force on August 1, 2024. By February 2, 2025, certain prohibitions, including restrictions on emotion recognition, will take effect. By mid-2026, all of its provisions will come into force.
Andreessen Horowitz is luring AI startups to investment deals with offers to rent out thousands of AI chips, including Nvidia H100 GPUs. In an initiative that the prominent Silicon Valley investment firm calls “Oxygen“, it has secured over 20,000 such GPUs, a scarce resource that is needed to train AI systems.
xAI and Oracle have given up on talks meant to extend a partnership in which Elon Musk’s AI company rents Nvidia AI chips from Oracle. Instead, xAI is opting to buy its own chips for a planned data center.
The startup Groq is finalizing a deal to bring in $300 million in a funding round led by BlackRock. There’s a catch, though: BlackRock will require Groq, which makes chips specifically for Large Language Models, to undergo a financial audit.
SoftBank has acquired Graphcore, a struggling British chipmaker that was once valued at $2.8 billion. Japan’s SoftBank has made AI its central focus area for investment, having recently committed millions to Perplexity AI. Terms of the Graphcore deal have not been disclosed.
AMD will acquire Silo AI in a $665 million deal. Based in Helsinki, Silo AI makes bespoke AI systems for enterprise customers. California-based AMD says Silo will use its software solutions to build new Large Language Models. The all-cash deal is expected to close in the second half of this year.
The threat of deepfakes will require “a multi-layered approach” to security and “liveness-proven and highly accurate biometric matching”, according to biometrics industry experts. Amid growing concern about deepfake-driven fraud, not to mention election interference, biometrics professionals are already responding to the threat, as detailed in our latest feature.
The chatbot’s take: This week we asked GPT-4o to explain some of the spy stuff.
–
July 12, 2024 – by Alex Perala
Follow Us