This week, artificial intelligence continued to capture the attention of investors, from NVIDIA bringing its AI computing platform to cloud data company Snowflake, to OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, being sued for allegedly stealing private data in the "AI arms race." Let's delve into some of the most significant stories this week.
Nvidia Brings Its AI Computing Platform to Cloud Data Firm Snowflake
Snowflake, a cloud data analytics company, is partnering with computing company Nvidia to allow customers ranging from financial institutions to healthcare and retail to build AI models using their own data.
The two companies announced the partnership at Snowflake Summit 2023 on Monday.
"In the old days, in small data computing, you moved data to the computer," Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang told Reuters. "But when you have giant amounts of data like Snowflake does, and the pile of proprietary data ... data that's so valuable to a company, then you move the compute to the data."
Baidu Claims Its Ernie Bot Now Beats ChatGPT on Key Measures
Baidu Inc.'s ChatGPT-style service has outperformed OpenAI’s seminal product on several measures, China’s search leader said on Tuesday.
Ernie 3.5, the latest iteration of Baidu’s foundation model, has surpassed OpenAI’s chatbot built on GPT-3.5 in general abilities and outperformed the more advanced GPT-4 on several Chinese-language capabilities, the company said in a statement. It cited a test by the state newspaper China Science Daily, based on datasets including AGIEval and C-Eval, benchmarks designed for evaluating such AI models.
Baidu’s new model also boosted its training and inference efficiency, making it faster and cheaper to iterate and upgrade to future versions. The company’s ChatGPT rival has been in public beta testing for the past three months.
Unity Launches AI Marketplace and Tools
Unity is one step closer to building its own AI ecosystem. The company has now rolled out new tools and a dedicated marketplace to help game developers leverage artificial intelligence technologies.
Also on Tuesday, Brian Fitzgerald – a Wells Fargo analyst turned bullish on Unity shares and announced a price objective of $48.
ChatGPT Creator OpenAI Sued for Theft of Private Data in "AI Arms Race"
ChatGPT creator OpenAI Inc. is stealing “vast amounts” of personal information to train its artificial intelligence models in a heedless hunt for profits, a group of anonymous individuals claimed in a lawsuit seeking class action status.
OpenAI has violated privacy laws by secretly scraping 300 billion words from the internet, tapping “books, articles, websites and posts — including personal information obtained without consent,” according to the sprawling, 157-page lawsuit. It doesn’t shy from sweeping language, accusing the company of risking “civilizational collapse.”
The plaintiffs are described by their occupations or interests but identified only by initials for fear of a backlash against them, the Clarkson Law Firm said in the suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco. They cite $3 billion in potential damages, based on a category of harmed individuals they estimate to be in the millions.
Salesforce to Invest $4B in Its UK Business to Bolster AI Capability
Salesforce will invest $4B in its U.K. business over five years to strengthen artificial intelligence (AI) innovation.
The announcement comes amid Salesforce starting its World Tour London: AI Day, the company's largest-ever U.K. event with more than 14,000 customers, partners, employees and stakeholders expected to attend.
Salesforce will also unveil its latest AI product innovations at the event.
The $4B investment builds on a previous five-year investment of $2.5B which was announced in 2018, according to the company.
