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- Earthquake rattles AI chip hub
Earthquake rattles AI chip hub
PLUS: Stability upgrade creates 3-minute AI songs
Rowan Cheung
April 04, 2024
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
Taiwan's chipmaking giants just narrowly escaped major damage after a powerful earthquake struck the country.
But with the world's tech giants heavily reliant on a few key players in the area, the tremors of concern are still being felt. Let’s investigate…
In today’s AI rundown:
Taiwan earthquake rattles AI chip hub
Stability launches Stable Audio 2.0
Try the fastest AI image generator
Apple explores home robots
6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
TAIWAN
Image source: Bloomberg
The Rundown: A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Taiwan, briefly disrupting production at the world's most important semiconductor manufacturing hub and threatening the global electronics supply chain.
The details:
Chipmakers TSMC and UMC halted some chipmaking machinery and evacuated staff at the facilities.
TSMC supplies chips to tech giants like Apple and Nvidia, representing over 60% of the semiconductor market share.
TSMC's main facilities near Taipei and southern Taiwan experienced lower shaking levels compared to the epicenter, minimizing damage.
The company expects to resume production overnight at affected facilities, with estimated production delays ranging from 6-10 hours.
Why it matters: As the leading producer of advanced chips, any disruption to Taiwan's chip manufacturing could have major repercussions for the global tech/AI industry. The quake reminds us of the massive vulnerability of a concentrated supply chain—an issue that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is looking to address with his global chip venture.
TOGETHER WITH OCTOAI
The Rundown: In this discussion between Fortune 500 AI advisor Allie K Miller and OctoAI CEO Luis Ceze, you’ll learn how to build your stack to maximize new open-source models with your data in a controlled environment.
What they cover:
Strategies for evaluating and managing multiple models
Best practices for fine-tuning and model asset management
Tips for smarter hardware utilization and lowering
TCO Crucial insights on data privacy and security
Watch this talk and then sign up for the next virtual technical deep-dive event covering GenAI in your private environment.
STABILITY AI
Image source: Stability AI
The Rundown: Stability AI just released Stable Audio 2.0, an updated AI audio generation model that can create high-quality songs up to three minutes long with a coherent structure from a single text prompt.
The details:
The new model introduces audio-to-audio generation, allowing users to upload and transform their own audio samples using prompts.
2.0 also offers expanded sound effect generation and style transfer capabilities, providing more creative control for artists and musicians.
The model was trained exclusively on a licensed dataset from AudioSparx, with opt-out requests honored to ensure fair creator compensation.
Why it matters: AI music generation continues to accelerate — and the increases we’ve seen in image quality are likely not far off in the audio realm. Check out Stability’s 24/7 ‘Stable Radio’ channel to listen to some of the AI-generated music as background music while you work.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: With the newest version of Freepik AI Image Generator, you can generate an infinite number of images at a near real-time speed.
Step-by-step:
Go to Freepik AI Image Generator page and log in. You’ll get 20 free credits to start.
Pick a prompt from the suggestions or type in your own prompt in the bar and hit “Create.”
Adjust the results by choosing specific styles, colors, framings, or lightning from the styling options.
That’s it! Scroll through the images and pick your favorite option or re-edit the image through the one-click adjustments on the left.
APPLE
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: Apple is reportedly exploring the development of personal home robots as a potential "next big thing" after the company's electric vehicle project fizzled out earlier this year.
The details:
Apple engineers are working on a mobile robot that can follow users around the home.
The tech giant scrapped its decade-long ‘Project Titan’ EV in February, with robotics work now shifting to home devices.
The company is currently advertising for robotics-related roles on its website, seeking ML researchers and engineers.
Why it matters: Apple’s home robot would tie together the company’s web of consumer products and entrench the company even deeper into users' daily lives. But the tech giant will face stiff competition from the wave of humanoid robotics startups and other rivals like Samsung and Amazon.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
🎵 Co-Manager- An AI music career co-manager
🧮 MathGPTPro: AI Math Tutor that benefits both students and teachers
📝 Jessica- Content creator assistant to create personalized content
🔎 Undermind- Search for incredibly complex topics and get research papers
🏡 HomeScore- An AI Sidekick for smarter home buying
🏗️ AIxBlock- Build, deploy, and monitor your AI models
💬 Direqt - Conversational AI Engineer
🖥️ Mistral AI - DevOps Engineer
🛡️ Shield AI - Senior Design Engineer, Ground Systems
🔍 C3 AI - Intern QA Engineer
QUICK HITS
Amazon is discontinuing it's ‘Just Walk Out’ technology, which was promoted as AI-powered and cashier-less but revealed to rely heavily on hundreds of workers in India manually reviewing sales transactions.
Microsoft’s 365 Copilot gained new access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo model for business subscribers, removing daily chat limits and improving image generation capabilities.
Billionaire investor Steve Cohen said the rise of AI will help bring about a four-day workweek, citing increased leisure time and decreased productivity on Fridays.
George Carlin’s estate reached a settlement over an AI-generated comedy special that allegedly infringed on the late comedian’s copyrights, with the podcasters agreeing to remove the content from all platforms.
Opera released a new browser feature allowing users to download and use over 150 LLMs locally on their computers.
Prenosis received FDA approval for its AI-driven diagnostic test that helps predict sepsis risk in hospital patients.
THAT’S A WRAP
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