Hashtag Trends Podcast, September 14, 2023 – This week: Apple spends millions every day on AI, Chrome’s new look for its 15th anniversary, Nvidia launches software to accelerate its AI chips and unveils the iPhone 15 .
Apple spends millions on AI every day
A new report from The Information shows how hard Apple has been working to cement its position as a serious player in AI for fear of falling behind its competitors.
According to the report, Apple now spends “millions of dollars per day” of its research and development budget solely on researching AI products. According to sources interviewed by The Information, the company has set an ambitious goal that would allow users to simply ask Siri to “automate multi-step tasks.”
For example, the technology could allow someone to ask their phone’s Siri voice assistant to create a GIF from the last five photos taken and text it to a friend. Nowadays an iPhone user has to program individual actions manually.
Apple has also reportedly launched a new “Fundamental Models” group focused on conversational AI research, the report said. The team only employs 16 people and is led by Ruoming Pang. The report adds that most of the company’s multi-million dollar daily budget goes toward training its language models, which requires a lot of expensive hardware.
Apple’s AI teams – including a Visual Intelligence group – are actively developing software to generate 3D videos and images, as well as multimodal AI systems that can efficiently process images, videos and text. The in-house chatbot “Apple GPT” apparently has greater capabilities than OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 model and was trained on a huge data set of 200 billion parameters. However, the latest GPT-4 model surpasses Apple’s in terms of intelligence.
Chrome’s new look for its 15th anniversary
It’s Chrome’s 15th anniversary and the browser is getting a major overhaul. Google’s “Material You” design language is finally coming to Chrome, and that means lots of rounded corners and pastel colors.
The new tab page has long had a Customize Chrome button, but when you open it now you’re presented with a selection of Material You swatches that look like they were copied straight from Android. There’s still a white theme if you want to skip all that, although the default color now appears to be reverted to blue instead of gray, just like in previous versions of Chrome.
The SSL lock icon in the address bar has been replaced with a settings toggle, the down arrow tab menu has been moved to the left side of the browser, all text and line icons have been changed, and some items such as: B. Bookmarks folders have been changed to completely new icons.
In addition to the look, Google also promises a “more extensive menu”, which means it is now significantly longer. New entries include a profile switcher, a full drop-down menu for “Passwords and Autofill”, a link to clear browsing data, a “Search this site with Google” button, a translation list, and a drop-down menu for “Search and”. . Edit” and a new “Save and Share” list.
A new Google “G” button in the toolbar opens Google Search in the sidebar. This is also available from the context menu. Of course, in the age of artificial intelligence, you can also launch Google Bard in the sidebar and get a summary of the page.
Google also announced that it is updating the safe browsing blacklist in Chrome. It used to update every 30 to 60 minutes, but now it scans all your websites in real time.
Nvidia is launching software to accelerate its AI chips
Nvidia has announced plans to release new open source software that will significantly speed up the execution of live applications on large language models powered by its GPUs, including the flagship H100 accelerator.
The company announced Friday that the TensorRT-LLM software library, when released next month, will double the performance of the H100 to run inference on large large language models (GML). Nvidia plans to integrate the early access software into its Nvidia NeMo LLM repository as part of the Nvidia AI Enterprise software suite.
The chip designer makes the announcement as it looks to assert its dominance in the fast-growing artificial intelligence market, which helped it double its year-over-year revenue in the last quarter.
The company said TensorRT-LLM will support multiple Nvidia GPUs beyond the H100, including its previous flagship data center accelerator, the A100, as well as the L4, L40, L40S and the upcoming superchip Grace Hopper.
Nvidia said it has worked closely with several major players in the AI ecosystem, including Facebook parent company Meta and Mosaic, the generative AI platform provider recently acquired by Databricks, on optimizing GML inference tools built into the open source -TensorRT-LLM are integrated.
iPhone 15 unveiling
Apple has unveiled its much-rumored iPhone 15 series. The new devices not only feature USB-C for the first time, but also Dynamic Island, which was initially only used in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models.
The new iPhone 15 also features the A16 chip that powers the iPhone 14 Pro. While the iPhone 15 will have a 6.1-inch screen, the iPhone 15 Plus will be 6.7 inches. Both come with a 48MP main camera, “all-day battery life” and a second-generation ultra-wideband chip.
The price of the iPhone 15 starts at $799 and the iPhone 15 Plus starts at $899. You can pre-order the devices tomorrow, with shipping starting September 22nd.
For the iPhone Pro and Pro Max, Apple has given a more efficient A17 Pro processor and faster USB-C charging compared to the basic iPhone 15. In addition to a 48 MP main camera, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 5x Telephoto lens.
Pricing for the 6.1-inch iPhone 15 Pro starts at $999, while the 6.7-inch iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1,199. They can also be pre-ordered starting tomorrow and will be delivered on September 22nd.
Also listen:
Hashtag Trends, September 7, 2023 – The growth of OpenAI, Samsung Food, Meta-LG partnership and a cheap MacBook
Hashtag Trends, August 31, 2023 – Ransomware attack, TikTok and e-commerce, Code Llama and an AI chip from IBM
Hashtag Trends, August 24, 2023 – AI and Life Advice, Cleaning Google Accounts, Python in Excel and Faster Charging for iPhone 15
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