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Daily Digest #320

Hello folks, here’s what we have today;

PICKS

1. Nvidia has been having troubles with its business in China.¹⁷⁶ Due to US sanctions, it can’t sell its best chips to China. And its customers there don’t want its downgraded chips—they’d rather buy from Huawei.🍿Our Summary¹⁸ (also below)

2. It doesn't end here. Databricks found that LLM training and inference with Intel Gaudi 2 AI Accelerators³⁷⁰ gives the best performance per dollar (and 2nd best per chip, behind Nvidia’s H100).

3. Microsoft has appointed Deannah Templeton⁴⁰³ to its observing seat on OpenAI’s Board. OpenAI's board has also approached¹⁴⁶ Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman about potentially joining.🍿Our Summary¹⁶ (also below)

TOP TOOLS

• Diffblue Cover¹⁹⁷* - Empower dev teams to be wildly more productive with AI-powered automated unit test writing at scale for Java/Kotlin.

• LangCSS⁵²¹ - The AI assistant for Tailwind.

• Stripe your GPTs^757† - Monetize your GPT with Stripe using a simple one-click no-code template

• Gal by Bedrock^404† - A web-integrated, AI-augmented personal computer. Tweets and deets¹⁵¹

• Brewed⁶⁶⁸ - Create web interfaces for whole websites with just words.

• Invstr^594† - Analyze financial reports with AI-driven insights.

• Next AI news⁵⁷⁷ - An AI-generated hacker news clone. (Mistral and Vercel’s V0).

• Open Interpreter 0.2.0²⁹⁰ - Evolving the standard interface between language models and computers.

View more →²⁰⁸
*sponsored

NEWS

Happening now:

• Isomorphic inks deals with Eli Lilly and Novartis for drug discovery with AI.¹⁷²

• Nabla raises $24M²⁸⁰ for its AI copilot for doctors.

• Protecting open-source AI is a necessity¹⁷¹ - a16z sends evidence to the UK.

Thinking out loud:

• Is artificial knowledge creation⁴¹⁴ possible?

• Two types of AI copilot interfaces^579†.

• It’s OK to call it AI²⁶⁶ - what it can and can’t do.

• The accidental AI canvas²⁹⁸ - with Steve Ruiz of tldraw.

Try this:

• Visualising novels using Midjourney^631† v6 and GPT-4 - Part 1: Characters.

• Run Mistral models on Colab¹⁶⁹ or an iPhone Pro.²⁰³

A look ahead:

• Some hints about what the next year of AI^761† looks like.

• The great sobering of 2024⁵⁸⁰ - A look ahead for AI startups.

• AI’s future could hinge on one thorny legal question.^236†

View more →⁶⁴

Unclassifieds - short, sponsored links

• Kin, ⁴²⁸your ⁴²⁸Personal AI⁴²⁸ for your private life. Built with memory in mind, Kin evolves with you over time. Request early access⁴²⁸.

QUICK BITES

Nvidia can't export its best AI chips to China⁵⁴ anymore because of US rules. Now its Chinese customers like Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance aren't thrilled about buying the lower-powered chips Nvidia's offering instead.

What is going on here?

Nvidia’s Chinese customers are shifting some orders to domestic chipmakers like Huawei.

What does this mean?

Nvidia can't export its best AI chips to China anymore because of US rules added last year. To comply, Nvidia whipped up some downgraded chips. Its big Chinese customers in China planned to buy a bunch of these now-banned chips. So they're not too pumped about the lower-powered replacements. Fair I reckon.

As a result, China's big tech firms are taking their business elsewhere. WSJ reported that Huawei scored orders for at least 5,000 Ascend 910B chips (similar to Nvidia’s A100) AI chips from major Chinese internet companies in 2023. And Alibaba is also working on its own chips in case it can't get Nvidia's anymore.

Why should I care?

In the short term, Nvidia's downgraded chips don't have much alpha over China's homegrown options. In the long run, the unpredictable export controls are pushing Chinese companies to ditch Nvidia so their supply doesn't get disrupted.

It's a tricky spot for Nvidia - they wanna keep their Chinese customers happy but also follow the US rules. While Nvidia has short-term demand it can't meet, tightening U.S. export controls pose a major risk to the company's sales growth in China over the next 5 years.

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QUICK BITES

Microsoft has appointed Deannah Templeton⁴⁰³ to its observing seat on OpenAI’s Board. OpenAI's board has also approached¹⁴⁶ Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman about potentially joining.

What is going on here?

OpenAI's board is looking to add new members after CEO Sam Altman was fired and then reinstated in November 2022.

What does this mean?

Microsoft was granted a non-voting observer seat on OpenAI’s board after Sam Altman was reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO last month. Deannah Templeton was a likely pick for this board observer role. As per Bloomberg, she has started to attend the OpenAI board’s meetings representing Microsoft.

Templeton reports to Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, who has been the key person in making the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership possible. She was responsible for coordinating aspects of Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI over the past year.

OpenAI is also seeking board members from companies it partners with or that work with AI startups. Wang and Friedman were also considered to be interim CEOs when Sam was suddenly fired by OpenAI’s previous board. Both rejected the offer then and are likely to do the same now.

Why should I care?

OpenAI’s board now consists of former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo. The trio is also overseeing an independent review of the events leading to Altman’s ouster.

The new board appointments will shape OpenAI's future direction. Board chair Taylor has already clarified that he’ll depart after the new board has been formed.

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