Author: Beatriz Valle

Google Cloud and Hugging Face Enable GenAI Developers

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Google Cloud and open-source startup Hugging Face signed a deal to share hardware, cloud infrastructure, open data, and open-source models and libraries.

• The partnership meets growing enterprise demand for generative AI (GenAI) software that is optimized for specific tasks and reflects the increasing popularity of open-source applications.

Google Cloud and Hugging Face announced an agreement that will enable developers to access the Google Cloud infrastructure to fine-tune and operate Hugging Face’s open-source models without the need for a Google Cloud subscription. The partnership will also enable Google Cloud customers to train and deploy Hugging Face models within Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Vertex AI, the company’s ML platform offering Gemini, a multimodal platform from Google DeepMind. Vertex AI and GKE will be available on the Hugging Face platform during H1 2024.

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Generative AI Watch: European Startup Mistral is Not Afraid of OpenAI and has the Open-Source Goods to Prove It

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Startup Mistral AI was founded nine months ago in April 2023 and was the talk of Davos amid speculation about the future of AI.

• The French company recently released its most powerful model yet, Mixtral 8x7B, under the Apache 2.0 license.

The two-horse race between Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google for the GenAI crown may be a thing of the past. French startup Mistral AI seems poised to disrupt the status quo and was the center of generative AI talks at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) last week.

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Generative AI Watch: Amazon Q Will Have a Massive Impact for AWS Customers

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched Amazon Q, a generative AI (GenAI) assistant that can be customized using corporate proprietary data, code, and enterprise systems.

• Amazon Q is much more than AWS’ answer to Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Duet AI, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise; it will be massive for AWS customers.

Amazon has used AWS re:Invent to turbo charge its GenAI strategy with a slew of announcements at every layer of the technology stack, including a new partnership with Nvidia (for more, please see: AWS re:Invent: Amazon and NVIDIA Advance Relationship to Enable Generative AI in the Cloud, November 30, 2023) and new capabilities in its Bedrock portfolio of GenAI services (see AWS Says it Wants to Democratize Generative AI, but Will Amazon Bedrock Live up to Expectations?, April 17, 2023).

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Microsoft Releases First In-house Microprocessor Architecture Designed for GenAI Workloads

by Beatriz Valle, posted in IT Leader

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• The Azure Maia 100 and Cobalt 100 chips are the first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud infrastructure.

• Microsoft is looking for alternatives to expensive Nvidia chips, following the lead of cloud rivals Amazon and Google, which released their own chips years ago.

In the kerfuffle surrounding Microsoft’s involvement in OpenAI’s boardroom saga last week, some of the most salient news out of Microsoft’s Ignite event got a bit lost in the news cycle. However, the announcement that Microsoft is coming to market with its own proprietary microprocessor technology is a big deal for the industry. The company is the last of the big three US hyperscalers to launch bespoke AI chips. Google was the pioneer with its TPU architecture, in 2016. In 2018, Amazon followed with a slew of CPU chips, the Inferentia and Trainium architectures. The company also has the ARM-based Graviton series for AI workloads. Google, which released the fifth generation of its TPU chips during Google Next 2023, is also rumored to be working on the development of ARM-based processors. The company already supports virtual machines powered by ARM-based Altra chips, but doesn’t have its own proprietary technology like Amazon’s in-house ARM-based CPUs.

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Microsoft Hires Former OpenAI CEO to Head New AI Research Unit   

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, IT Leader, Network
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Sam Altman, former CEO of OpenAI, was ousted by the company’s board and now works for Microsoft, where he will head a new AI research unit.

• Emmett Shear, former CEO of game-streaming platform Twitch, has been appointed as CEO of OpenAI after the defection of swaths of employees.

It would be an understatement to say that the events surrounding Sam Altman’s dismissal as CEO of OpenAI during the weekend came as a surprise. The shocking news left Silicon Valley and the tech world at large reeling, and the timing (on a Friday evening) meant only mainstream outlets were covering the news on Saturday, with much of the specialist trade press caught unawares. By Monday morning, and in classical GenAI fashion, several light years had gone by: Sam Altman was employed again, only to head a new specialized AI research team at Microsoft, and CEO Satya Nadella had announced on X that Altman, together with other defecting colleagues at OpenAI, was joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI unit. Microsoft’s Nadella added: “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success”. No kidding.

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Generative AI Watch: Meta Challenges OpenAI’s Market Dominance with the Release of Llama 2

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Meta announced general availability of Llama 2, the next generation of its open source LLM, which is free for research and commercial use.

• Meta is challenging the market dominance of OpenAI, with a radically different business model based on the open-source availability of its technology.

Meta recently released Llama 2, the latest version of its open-source large language model (LLM), which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate text, images, and code. Llama was first released in February 2023 as a collection of foundation models, and it was made available exclusively to researchers. Now, Meta has just released the commercial version of the LLM, which will enable developers and businesses of all sizes to build applications. Because the technology is open source, access to Llama gives anyone the opportunity to improve the AI, accelerating technological innovation. By contrast, OpenAI’s GPT-4 is a so-called ‘black box’ in which the data and code used to build the model are not available to third parties.

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Italy’s Privacy Watchdog Temporarily Bans ChatGPT: Who Will be Next?

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, IT Leader

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• The Italian National Authority for Data Protection has temporarily banned ChatGPT after a leak exposed the personal data of users of the paid-for version of the service.

• OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot, has 20 days to respond to the privacy watchdog or risks a fine equivalent to 4% of its annual turnover.

The Italian National Authority for Data Protection became the first regulator to start an investigation into OpenAI’s ChatGPT last week. Debate turned to the inevitability of increased regulatory oversight to control the effects of the explosion in the use of generative AI, and the possibility that the measure could be followed by other Western democracies, as the conversation around AI and ethics becomes more urgent.

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The Pachyderm in the Room? HPE Leverages Reproducible AI for Enterprises

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has acquired Pachyderm, a software company that uses reproducible AI to help organizations implement machine learning (ML) projects at scale.

• Pachyderm’s software capabilities will add an important differentiator to HPE’s Machine Learning Development Environment through increased reliability and transparency of the data.

Until not so long ago, Pachyderm was just another independent firm in the crowded space of San Francisco, California’s (US) AI startup landscape. However, many industry players had been aware of Pachyderm for a while.

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Amazon SageMaker Launches Geospatial Tools for Multiple Use Cases

by Beatriz Valle, posted in IT Leader

B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• AWS has launched the preview release of new geospatial tools that will help SageMaker to compete in the market of geospatial and AI applications.

• Enterprises can now access and share geospatial data in more user-friendly formats, such as through APIs. This means that developers without a technical background in geospatial data can deploy applications in different industries.

AWS recently launched the preview release of Amazon SageMaker‘s new geospatial capabilities. The announcement is significant because it is the first time that the cloud computing giant adds geospatial tools to its ML platform, although last year saw the release of Amazon Location Service. That solution already helped developers add location functionality to their applications, visualize maps, search points of interest, optimize delivery routes, track assets, and use geofencing to detect entry and exit events in a defined geographical boundary.

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The Cold Tech War and the Semiconductor Industry: What Next?

by Beatriz Valle, posted in IT Leader
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Geopolitical dynamics are having a growing impact on the semiconductor market

• The EU and the US have passed legislation to improve their competitive position vis-à-vis Asian countries

The pandemic and its aftermath, and more recently the war in Ukraine, has created a world of rising inflation and supply-chain imbalances that is profoundly disrupting the semiconductor industry, giving way to worldwide shortages of chips and advanced microprocessors. The trend towards economic nationalism that predated the pandemic has also contributed to the increasingly geopolitical slant affecting the competitive dynamics in this technology market segment. Moreover, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has become a fundamental driver of the semiconductor industry, and China is fast becoming a leading power in AI applications. New US restrictions on the sale of AI chips to China demonstrate the strategic importance of AI for national economies to reach their digitization potential.

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