Weekly bulletin from AIport, issue #35
Walmart goes AI, Nobel prizes awarded to AI pioneers, Samsung apologizes for poor AI chip sales, and much more.
Hello and welcome to the 35th issue of the AI Bulletin! We hope you enjoy this week’s selection of the latest in machine learning and data science news. Have a pleasant weekend, and see you next Friday!
North America
Advanced Micro Devices debuts a new AI chip in an effort to capture market share from Nvidia.
The world’s largest company by revenue, supermarket chain Walmart, rolls out a retail-specific AI model accompanied by a customer care chatbot.
Databricks introduces a new solution for native app development tailored to data scientists and ML engineers. The next day, Hugging Face unveils Gradio 5, the latest version of its open-source tool for building AI-backed web apps.
Asia
In China, TikTok’s owner ByteDance launches AI earbuds. Meanwhile, TikTok is laying off hundreds of workers in Malaysia after switching to AI-powered content moderation.
A similar situation is unfolding in the Philippines, where workers at a chip factory that produces AI chips are planning to strike in response to automation-related layoffs.
In South Korea, Samsung, the world’s leading AI chipmaker, issues a rare apology to stakeholders for earning “only” $6.8 billion last quarter.
Europe
In Sweden, this year’s Nobel Prize is awarded to AI pioneers in two different subjects: in physics, John Hopfield (USA) and Geoffrey Hinton (Canada) are recognized for the development of neural network methods; in chemistry, David Baker (USA), John Jumper, and Demis Hassabis (both from Google DeepMind, UK) for their work on computational protein design.
In Belgium, the recently published State of Tech report reveals that AI companies accounted for over 70% of the total investment capital nationwide in the first half of the year.
Australia
An AI retina scanner developed at the Lions Eye Institute, part of the University of Western Australia, wins an Australian-first invention prize.
A new study, co-led by Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney, discovers over 160,000 new species of RNA virus using AI: read the paper here.
Africa
The Africa Centre of Competence for Digital and AI Skilling opens in Nairobi, Kenya.