"Jensen Huang Wants to Make AI the New World Infrastructure" (NVDA)

This sovereign AI you speak of, I have heard of it.  

I have heard wondrous tales of immense wealth,

Of amazing deeds performed as if by magic.
Yes I have heard of all of this...*

From Wired, December 3:

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a plan to bring AI infrastructure to countries around the world, and he’s pitching it in person.

In a world where people are increasingly doubting the potential of AI, you can count on Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, to be the last one hyping up how AI will be the fundamental force that changes society.

Talking to WIRED senior writer Lauren Goode at The Big Interview event on Tuesday in San Francisco, Huang called the trend of AI “a reset of computing as we know of [it] over the last 60 years.” The force of AI is, he said, “so incredible, it’s not as if you can compete against it. You are either on this wave, or you missed that wave.”

That means, Jensen said, “people are starting to realize that AI is like the energy and communications infrastructure—and now there’s going to be a digital intelligence infrastructure.”

The task for Huang now, however, is whether he can get others, especially governments around the world, to agree on his vision.

Huang was the only interviewee at the event who phoned in from outside the country. He was in Thailand, where Huang said he lived for five years as a kid and where, just today, he met with Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thailand’s prime minister to talk about building “world-class AI infrastructure” in the country together.

It’s the latest stop of Huang’s whirlwind tour this year to pitch governments on the idea that they should forge their individual paths to the future by building their own AI infrastructure, processing their own national data, having their own AI systems, and, obviously, buying Nvidia chips for that purpose.

The pitch seems to have worked pretty well. Thailand is the new addition to a list of at least 10 countries, according to data compiled by Sherwood News, that have signed up for AI infrastructure projects with Nvidia. Huang himself said during the interview that he was in Denmark, Japan, Indonesia, and India this year; the countries all decided to build their own national AI systems—using Nvidia chips.

The success of Huang’s pitch to global governments reflects both a fundamental recognition of the potential of AI systems and an increasingly splintering internet where geographical boundaries are being rebuilt online. AI is the latest tech product where the invisible flow of chips and data are being obstructed by nation-state borders....

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*Previously: 

December 2023 - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says AI to See ‘Major Second Wave (NVDA)

February 2024 -  "Nvidia chief sees rise of ‘sovereign AI’ infrastructure across nations, driving demand for company’s advanced chips"

March 2024 - Here's Nvidia's "Sovereign AI" Pitch (NVDA)

.... This is terrible. I now have Jensen Huang speaking in Dr. Martin Luther King's cadences as he repurposes the penultimate paragraph of "I have a Dream":

Let AI ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let AI ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let AI ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let AI ring. 

I may have to go lie down.

March 2024 -...Every, town, every village, every hamlet, every wide spot in the road, should have their own (NVDA-powered) supercomputer. 

May 2024 - NVIDIA Earnings Call And Transcript Q1 2025 - May 22, 2024 (NVDA)
....One out-the-door note, Nvidia has basically created a brand-new multi-billion dollar business:

$NVDA CFO on SovereignAI:

"From nothing the previous year, we believe SovereignAI revenue can approach the high single-digit billions this year. The importance of AI has caught the attention of every nation"

— The Transcript (@TheTranscript_) May 22, 2024

October 2024 - "Parlez-vous AI? Francophone scholars warn against English language dominating AI"  

November 2024 - Singapore: "Chinese Group Accused of Hacking Singtel in Telecom Attacks"

....Our last couple mentions of Singtel were in reference to Nvidia's roll-out of the Blackwell chip for their sovereign AI program:

....Nvidia said AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will be among early cloud service providers to offer Blackwell instances, as will Applied Digital, CoreWeave, Crusoe, IBM Cloud and Lambda. Sovereign AI clouds will also provide Blackwell-based cloud services and infrastructure, including Indosat Ooredoo Hutchinson, Nebius, Nexgen Cloud, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud, Oracle US, UK, and Australian Government Clouds, Scaleway, Singtel, Northern Data Group’s Taiga Cloud, Yotta Data Services’ Shakti Cloud and YTL Power International.

— "Nvidia CEO Becomes Kingmaker by Name-Dropping Stocks" (NVDA+++++++)

...For example, Japan plans to invest more than $740 million in key digital infrastructure providers, including KDDI, Sakura Internet, and SoftBank to build out the nation's Sovereign AI infrastructure. France-based, Scaleway, a subsidiary of the Iliad Group, is building Europe's most powerful cloud native AI supercomputer. In Italy, Swisscom Group will build the nation's first and most powerful NVIDIA DGX-powered supercomputer to develop the first LLM natively trained in the Italian language. And in Singapore, the National Supercomputer Center is getting upgraded with NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, while Singtel is building NVIDIA's accelerated AI factories across Southeast Asia.

December 2024 - Canada commits $1.4B to sovereign compute infrastructure as it joins the AI arms race

Jensen Huang smiles.

"If You Meet ET in Space, Kill Him"

But what of the Buddha?

From Nautil.us, October 3, 2024:

Should an alien species resist, we will have discovered life.

If we ever contact extraterrestrials, we’ll have to find a way to understand them. Who are they? What are their intentions? What have they discovered that we haven’t? Olaf Witkowski thinks the only way to begin that dialogue is to try and kill them.

Clearly, there are going to be major differences between us and them. Biological, technological, and cultural gaps are likely to be as wide as interstellar space itself. “The only way to communicate with a creature that is very different from you, and you can make no assumptions at all about how they encode language or meaning, is just killing them,” Witkowski says.

He argues that the only universal basis of communication, the sole feature that all life shares, whatever its form—because it is built into the very definition of life—is that life wants to live. It strives to maintain itself, because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t survive the depredations of the world.

Living entities have to be “replicating or maintaining themselves in a homeostatic loop,” Witkowski says. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t be there.” They will be experts at detecting threats to survival. “So, you try to hurt them. Then they will understand.”

Witkowski hasn’t worked out how threatening ET would open a door to communication rather than shut it rather firmly. In Stanislaw Lem’s final novel, Fiasco, humans (spoiler alert) send a ship to contact aliens on a distant planet and, when they don’t respond to radio messages, attack. That does get the aliens to answer, but the consequences are evident from the book title.

The only universal basis of communication,
the sole feature that all life shares,
is that life wants to live.

Still, in Witkowski’s scenario, ET’s instinct to survive tells us it’s a form of life, something we share. Perhaps, then, we could turn around and help it survive. “Now we can start from something they value,” Witkowski says. “So they will hear us.” And that could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

A soft-spoken researcher on artificial life and intelligence, Witkowski is an unlikely advocate for a warmongering view of interstellar interchange. He is monk-like in his serenity and once considered taking his vows. “I even joined some religious communities as a teenager and have sometimes considered a monastic life,” he says.

Born to a Vietnamese mother and Polish father, growing up in Belgium, studying in Spain, now living in Japan, Witkowski speaks six languages fluently and can get by in another six. For his dissertation, he analyzed how communication enables cooperation among AIs or other cognitive systems. Yet despite his linguistic superpowers, Witkowski feels that communication is such a fraught act, presupposing a background of shared knowledge and motivations, that we might scarcely even recognize a message from beyond Earth, let alone decipher it. Humans can often barely communicate among themselves.

Pioneers of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence recognized the challenge, but many assumed that mathematics and physics could serve as a cosmic lingua franca. Our radio signals or laser pulses might tap out a sequence of prime numbers, for example—a prime on Earth is a prime on Alpha Centauri Ca—and build up from there.

In 1966, Carl Sagan wrote about the tests of this principle which he and Frank Drake had conducted. Once he gave a sample message to eminent scientists at a party in Cambridge, Mass., and asked them to figure it out. They couldn’t. (He does not mention whether those scientists ever came back to one of his parties.)....

....MUCH MORE

Related:
"This is What Game Theory Tells Us About Messaging Aliens"
The prime directive from my mother if she was feuding with a neighbor: "Ignore them, do not wave back."*
She meant it and so do I....

"Classifying alien civilizations: The Kardashev scale is based on how much energy a civilization uses" 

And many more including:

MIT researchers reveal plan for a giant laser 'porch light' in space to make it easier for aliens to find us
No.
This is a bad, bad, very bad idea.
There is no reason to think space aliens would be favorably disposed toward humans....

South China Sea: China Coast Guard’s ‘monster’ ship arrives at Scarborough Shoal

We've looked at this vessel a few times, pointing out that it is larger than American cruisers, typically a navy's second largest category of ship. This ain't your Grandfather's coast guard cutter.

From Radio Free Asia, January 2:

The world’s largest coast guard ship arrived at the disputed area as China’s navy holds drills to exert air control.

The Chinese coast guard ship CCG 5901, known as “The Monster,” in Philippine waters on June 24, 2024. 

(Philippine Coast Guard)

The world’s largest coast guard vessel, a Chinese ship known as “The Monster,” has arrived at the disputed Scarborough Shoal inside the Philippine exclusive economic zone to boost Beijing’s control over the maritime area, an American analyst said.

Meanwhile, the Chinese navy has been conducting a New Year carrier-based helicopter training exercise in the airspace over the South China Sea, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

The 12,000-ton CCG 5901 arrived at Scarborough Shoal on Wednesday, said Ray Powell, director of the SeaLight project at Stanford University, who tracks the ship’s movements.

There are at least three other Chinese coast guard ships - CCG 3106, 3302 and 3305 – as well as seven militia ships, already present at the shoal, Powell told Radio Free Asia.

The aim of their mission is to boost Beijing’s control over the maritime area just 125 nautical miles (232 kilometers) from the main Philippine island of Luzon, he said....

....MUCH MORE

Also at Radio Free Asia, January 3:

South China Sea: 5 things to watch in 2025 

The waterway is expected to stay turbulent through the new year; we explore possible flashpoints. 

....Vietnam’s island building

Vietnam’s island building in the South China Sea has reached a record, with the total area created in the first six months of 2024 equaling that of 2022 and 2023 combined, according to a study by the Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI).

Between November 2023 and June 2024, Hanoi created 692 new acres (280 ha) of land across a total of 10 features in the Spratly archipelago. Vietnam’s overall dredging and landfill totaled about 2,360 acres (955 ha), roughly half of China’s 4,650 acres (1,881.7 ha).

“Three years from when it first began, Vietnam is still surprising observers with the ever-increasing scope of its dredging and landfill in the Spratly Islands,” AMTI said.

Vietnam occupies 27 features and has been carrying out large-scale reclamation works on some over the past year....

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Taking a page from the Chinese playbook:

• "Aboard the Giant Sand-Sucking Ships That China Uses to Reshape the World"
• "China's Latest Weapon Against Taiwan: the Sand Dredger"

UAH Satellite-Inferred Global Temperature Anomaly: Down Slightly For December After Record High During 2024

Our proposition bet has the UAH figure falling from +0.95°C the day we announced the bet, May 2, 2024 (three days later the April figure was announced, +1.05°C, not very good timing on the part of yours truly) to +0.45°C by the termination date:

Here's a prop bet for you. By May 15, 2026 we will see the satellite-measured -inferred global lower atmospheric temperature anomaly decline by at least 1/2 degree C.

The two keepers of the satellite record are Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa CA and the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

Here's the temperature graph from UAH:....

And from Dr. Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, January 3, 2025:

UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for December, 2024: +0.62 deg. C

2024 Sets New Record for Warmest Year In Satellite Era (Since 1979)

The Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for December, 2024 was +0.62 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, down slightly from the November, 2024 anomaly of +0.64 deg.

The Version 6.1 global area-averaged temperature trend (January 1979 through December 2024) remains at +0.15 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).

As seen in the following ranking of the years from warmest to coolest, 2024 was by far the warmest in the 46-year satellite record averaging 0.77 deg. C above the 30-year mean, while the 2nd warmest year (2023) was +0.43 deg. C above the 30-year mean. [Note: These yearly average anomalies weight the individual monthly anomalies by the number of days in each month.]....

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U.N. FAO Food Price Index: Down For December, Up For 2024

From the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, January 3:

Despite steady monthly increases for most of 2024, primarily driven by dairy, meat and vegetable oil prices, FAO Food Price index overall in 2024 remained below its 2023 levels

» The FAO Food Price Index* (FFPI) stood at 127.0 points in December 2024, down 0.6 points (0.5 percent) from its November level, as decreases in the price indices for sugar, dairy products, vegetable oils and cereals more than offset increases in meat. The index stood 8.0 points (6.7 percent) above its corresponding level one year ago, yet remained 33.2 points (20.7 percent) below the peak reached in March 2022. For 2024 as a whole, the index recorded 122.0 points, 2.6 points (2.1 percent) lower than the average value in 2023.

» The FAO Cereal Price Index averaged 111.3 points in December, relatively unchanged from November and 11.5 points (9.3 percent) below its year-earlier level.  Wheat export prices remained overall stable in December. Downward pressure from subdued international demand and higher seasonal availability from harvests in Argentina and Australia was balanced by upward pressure from poor winter crop conditions in the Russian Federation. World maize prices edged upwards marginally, supported by an uptick in export sales and tighter supplies in the United States of America, along with strong demand for Ukrainian origins. Among other coarse grains, world prices of barley increased, while those for sorghum decreased. The FAO All Rice Price Index declined by 1.2 percent in December, reflecting falls in quotations of Indica and fragrant rice driven by a slowdown in demand. For the year as a whole, the FAO Cereal Price Index averaged 113.5 points in 2024, down 17.4 points (13.3 percent) from the 2023 level, underpinned by lower wheat and coarse grain prices, and marking a second annual decline from the 2022 record level. The FAO All Rice Price Index averaged 133.1 points, up 0.8 percent from 2023 and representing a 16-year nominal high. Indica quotations underpinned this annual increase, as strong import demand from some countries in Asia and reduced competition among exporters kept them elevated during the first nine months of 2024.

» The FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index averaged 163.3 points in December, down 0.9 points (0.5 percent) month-on-month but still 33.5 percent higher than its year-earlier level. The marginal decrease of the index mainly reflected lower soy, rapeseed and sunflower oil prices, more than offsetting slightly higher palm oil prices. In December, international palm oil quotations on average increased by 2.0 percent from the previous month, largely driven by protracted tight supplies in leading producing countries in Southeast Asia. By contrast, world soyoil prices fell moderately, underpinned by prospects of ample global supplies and somewhat weaker demand in the United States of America. Meanwhile, world rapeseed and sunflower oil prices also declined due to contraction in demand. For 2024 as a whole, the FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index stood at 138.2 points, up 11.9 points or 9.4 percent from 2023 amid tightening global supplies.

» The FAO Meat Price Index* averaged 119.0 points in December, up 0.5 points (0.4 percent) from November, marking a rebound after three months of consecutive declines. At this level, the index stood 7.9 points (7.1 percent) above its corresponding value a year ago. The increase was primarily driven by higher bovine meat prices, resulting from strong global demand coupled with production constraints due to routine end-of-year maintenance shutdowns at processing plants in major exporting countries. Likewise, international ovine meat prices rose, underpinned by reduced slaughter availability in Australia following improved pasture conditions from recent rainfall, which encouraged higher livestock retention, combined with sustained global demand. By contrast, pig meat prices declined, underpinned by weaker-than-expected consumer demand in the European Union ahead of the winter holidays. Meanwhile, poultry meat prices registered a slight decline due to ample export supplies from Brazil. In 2024 as a whole, the FAO Meat Price Index averaged 117.2 points, up 3.1 points (2.7 percent) from 2023, driven by robust import demand from key meat-importing countries, amid slower global production growth. This sustained higher average prices for bovine, ovine, and poultry meats, while average pig meat prices declined, prompted by subdued import demand, particularly from China.

» The FAO Dairy Price Index averaged 138.9 points in December, down 1.0 point (0.7 percent) from November, marking the first decline after seven consecutive months of increases, but remained 20.2 points (17.0 percent) above its corresponding level a year earlier. International quotations for butter registered the largest decline, ending a fourteen-month streak of continuous increases, due to subdued global demand and accumulated stocks. Similarly, world cheese and skim milk powder prices contracted, driven by a weaker international demand. By contrast, international whole milk powder quotations surged, underpinned by price increases in Oceania stemming from solid global demand, especially in Asia, combined with tighter inventories in Western Europe due to seasonally low milk production. In 2024 as a whole, the FAO Dairy Price Index averaged 129.6 points, up 5.8 points (4.7 percent) from 2023. This increase was mainly attributed to a sharp surge in butter prices, on the back of a high global demand and constrained exportable supplies, resulting from erratic weather patterns that negatively impacted production....

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"Singapore Watchdog Urges Probe Into SingPost Executive Firings"

It was just a throwaway line, the outro from December 29's "Singapore Money Laundering Suspects Spent Lavishly on Dubai Real Estate" (plus "Dubai Unlocked"): 

...Unrelated but noteworthy at The Edge, Singapore:

SingPost moving ahead with divestment of non-core businesses and assets despite recent firing of three top executives

January 2 Bloomberg reported: 

Singapore Post Ltd.’s sudden dismissal of three senior executives, and their strong denials of the company’s allegations against them, calls for an independent inquiry, according to Singapore’s investor watchdog.

“The disclosures from the company and the responses from the three executives thus far raise more questions than provide answers,” David Gerald, president of the Securities Investors Association Singapore, said in a statement on Jan. 2. There is a fundamental difference in positions taken by the two parties and “the only way to properly resolve this is via an independent investigation,” he added....

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"Quantum Teleportation Achieved Over Internet For First Time"

From ScienceAlert, December 27:

A quantum state of light has been successfully teleported through more than 30 kilometers (around 18 miles) of fiber optic cable amid a torrent of internet traffic – a feat of engineering once considered impossible.

The impressive demonstration by researchers in the US may not help you beam to work to beat the morning traffic, or download your favourite cat videos faster.

However, the ability to teleport quantum states through existing infrastructure represents a monumental step towards achieving a quantum-connected computing network, enhanced encryption, or powerful new methods of sensing.

"This is incredibly exciting because nobody thought it was possible," says Prem Kumar, a Northwestern University computing engineer who led the study.

"Our work shows a path towards next-generation quantum and classical networks sharing a unified fiber optic infrastructure. Basically, it opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level."....

....MUCH MORE

Wake me up when we get instantaneous cat video downloads.

"Tesla reports 1.1% sales drop for 2024, first annual decline in a decade" (TSLA)

From the Associated Press via MSN, January 2: 

Tesla's global sales rose 2.3% in the fourth quarter, but the increase wasn't enough to overcome a sluggish first half, and sales for the full year fell short of 2023 numbers.

It was the first year-over-year sales drop for the Austin, Texas, company since at least 2015, and it came despite offers of discounts such as 0% financing, free charging and low-priced leases.

Tesla delivered 495,570 vehicles from October through December, boosting deliveries to 1.79 million for the full year. But that was 1.1% below 2023 sales of 1.81 million as overall demand for electric vehicles in the U.S. and elsewhere slowed....

....MUCH MORE

The stock is down $15.57 (-3.86%) at $388.27

Earlier today:

Electric Vehicles: BYD By The Numbers, December and Full-Year 2024 (may catch Tesla)

"Canada, an Early A.I. Hub, Fights to Stay Relevant"

There was a time, 7 - 8 - 9 years ago when all the Americans who said they were moving to Canada after 2016—and didn't, decided the next best thing would be to praise Canada from their homes in Silicon Valley, U.S. of A. This included Canadian superiority in AI/machine learning.

They were half right (in AI's case it was the people, not the place).

From Observer, December 30:

Canada was once a haven for ambitious A.I. research. Its breakthroughs have since gone global—and so has its talent.

In the late 1980s, Geoffrey Hinton was a few years into teaching at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., when he became increasingly troubled about the state of the nation he had left his home country of England for a decade prior. Hinton took issue with Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy, particularly the mining of harbors in Nicaragua, and the fact that the A.I. research he was pursuing was largely funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. So when he was presented with an opportunity to head North, he jumped at the chance. 

“My wife and I were very fed up with the U.S.,” Hinton told Observer, “and Canada seemed like a good place.” Enticed to Toronto by a strong social system and a generous offer to become a fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), a global research organization, Hinton made his way to the country in 1987. He’s largely stayed put ever since, picking up a Nobel Prize for his contribution to A.I. research along the way. 

Hinton wasn’t alone. Decades of sustained funding for curiosity-driven research has brought scores of pioneering A.I. researchers to Canada, where a series of breakthroughs laid the foundations for the A.I. products dominating today’s tech industry. Canada built upon this momentum in 2017 when it became the first country to implement a national A.I. strategy, one that congregated much of its innovative work in three A.I. hubs spread out across Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton. 

Despite the country’s contributions towards the now-booming technology, many say Canada has failed to reap the rewards of its own innovations. It isn’t just ideas that have been exported to the U.S., but much of the nation’s talent. “It’s this historic Canadian challenge of being often the inventors and pioneers of new technology, but not necessarily seeing the commercial success here,” Cam Linke, head of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), told Observer. 

While attempts to establish competitive A.I. companies in Canada have been largely unsuccessful over the past few decades, a combination of enhanced government funding, bolstered research institutions and changing cultural attitudes is starting to make a gradual impact. The Toronto-based startup Cohere, for example, earlier this year raised $500 million—an unprecedented amount for a Canadian generative A.I. startup—from a mix of Canadian, American and international investors. While conceding that Canada’s A.I. “brain drain” is still an ongoing issue, Nick Frosst, a co-founder of Cohere, told Observer, “I feel the tide is turning.” 

 Attracting the best researchers in the game....

....MUCH MORE

Some previous posts on the topic:

October 2017  - Questions America Wants Answered: "Is AI Riding a One-Trick Pony?"

From MIT's Technology Review:
Just about every AI advance you’ve heard of depends on a breakthrough that’s three decades old. Keeping up the pace of progress will require confronting AI’s serious limitations.

I’m standing in what is soon to be the center of the world, or is perhaps just a very large room on the seventh floor of a gleaming tower in downtown Toronto. Showing me around is Jordan Jacobs, who cofounded this place: the nascent Vector Institute, which opens its doors this fall and which is aiming to become the global epicenter of artificial intelligence.

We’re in Toronto because Geoffrey Hinton is in Toronto, and Geoffrey Hinton is the father of “deep learning,” the technique behind the current excitement about AI. “In 30 years we’re going to look back and say Geoff is Einstein—of AI, deep learning, the thing that we’re calling AI,” Jacobs says. Of the researchers at the top of the field of deep learning, Hinton has more citations than the next three combined. His students and postdocs have gone on to run the AI labs at Apple, Facebook, and OpenAI; Hinton himself is a lead scientist on the Google Brain AI team. In fact, nearly every achievement in the last decade of AI—in translation, speech recognition, image recognition, and game playing—traces in some way back to Hinton’s work.

The Vector Institute, this monument to the ascent of ­Hinton’s ideas, is a research center where companies from around the U.S. and Canada—like Google, and Uber, and Nvidia—will sponsor efforts to commercialize AI technologies. Money has poured in faster than Jacobs could ask for it; two of his cofounders surveyed companies in the Toronto area, and the demand for AI experts ended up being 10 times what Canada produces every year. Vector is in a sense ground zero for the now-worldwide attempt to mobilize around deep learning: to cash in on the technique, to teach it, to refine and apply it. Data centers are being built, towers are being filled with startups, a whole generation of students is going into the field....

January 2018 - Take that Toronto: "Beijing to build $2 billion AI research park: Xinhua"

Toronto prides itself on being both a center of A.I. research and a city of the future, what with Google kin Sidewalk Labs hooking up with the city to develop same.
But no one is talking a $2 billion investment....

December 2023 - The Godfather of Artificial Intelligence Has Some Concerns

From Toronto Life, November 16...

***

....Previously on Professor Hinton:

2014: "As Machines Get Smarter, Evidence They Learn Like Us"
2015: "Inside Google’s Massive Effort in Deep Learning" (GOOG)
2017: Questions America Wants Answered: "Is AI Riding a One-Trick Pony?"
2018: Artificial Intelligence Chips: Past, Present and Future
2022: Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall

December 2023 -  "France's unicorn start-up Mistral AI embodies its artificial intelligence hopes"

More on Mistral. They are going to have to hire some hyper-brains. Go to Toronto, go to Carnegie Mellon, get beyond ChatGPT and the large language models....

December 8, 2024 - "Canada commits $1.4B to sovereign compute infrastructure as it joins the AI arms race"

"Calif. will force insurers to cover fire-prone areas. But rates will rise."

Forcing all the insureds not in the fire-prone areas to subsidize those who choose to live in the scenic towns and semi-wilderness where the power lines meet the forests.

From the Washington Post, December 31:

A new state regulation says insurers must increase their coverage of high-risk regions, while allowing them to pass certain costs on to consumers.

Insurance companies that pulled back from fire-prone areas of California in recent years will have to start covering those regions again if they want to stay in the state — but they can pass more costs on to customers.

A regulation announced this week by the California Department of Insurance requires insurers to increase the writing of comprehensive policies in disaster-prone areas by 5 percent every two years up to a certain threshold. Currently, there is no requirement that insurers operate in high-risk areas at all, and some of the largest home insurers have cut their natural disaster coverage or hiked rates as climate risk grows.

But in an effort to keep those firms from leaving California altogether, regulators included a concession that the industry has sought for years: the ability to include reinsurance costs in the rates that homeowners pay.

“Californians deserve a reliable insurance market that doesn’t retreat from communities most vulnerable to wildfires and climate change,” California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said in a statement.

Lara described the rule, which was announced Monday, as part of an ambitious plan for insurance reform. Lara’s broader plan allows carriers to charge residents for the rising costs of climate change, incorporating forward-looking projections rather than just historical data, in exchange for an expansion of coverage. The rule takes effect in 30 days pending an administrative review.

Under the new rules, insurers would eventually write comprehensive home insurance policies in high-risk areas up to a level that is at least 85 percent of their statewide market share. For example, if a company holds 10 percent of policies statewide, its market share in a high-risk area must reach at least 8.5 percent, said Michael Soller, a California deputy insurance commissioner.

“We’re not rewriting their business plan; we are saying these are the areas where people are hurting and where you need to be writing policies,” Soller said.

The changes come after several leading insurers stopped writing new policies in the state, citing financial risk from wildfires. Allstate, for example, pulled back coverage and was later approved for a 34 percent rate hike.

The regulation effectively means homeowners will bear the cost of the reinsurance policies that insurers use to cover their own losses. Under the new rule, insurance companies can treat reinsurance like any other company expense as long as they abide by an industry standard for how much it should cost.

California has been the only state that doesn’t allow those costs to be considered when insurance companies set rates.

While insurance industry representatives praised the reinsurance changes, a consumer organization criticized the new regulation as a giveaway to insurers. Consumer Watchdog, a California advocacy group, said it is worried that the changes will drive up home insurance rates by as much as 40 or 50 percent without offering a “substantive” expansion in wildfire coverage....

....MUCH MORE 

If interested see also:

Wildfire: "Living in the Danger Zone"

"The Wildfire West: Where Housing Sprawl and Wildfire-Prone Areas Collide"

and the intro to and outro from "State Farm Halts Home-Insurance Sales in California"

"Move over DINKs—companies are eyeing singles to buy their single-serve wine bottles amid loneliness epidemic"

This is sad. 

From Fortune, January 2:

DINKs, SINKs, DINKWADs, and KIPPERs. Modern media has found increasingly creative ways to identify the economy’s millennial power players. Now, companies are finding a way to market to them.

In March, the consultancy Bain & Co. predicted eight consumer economies of the future. One of them was the redefined family economy.

The traditional “nuclear family,” defined as a couple with a child that typically lives in the same home, is becoming less fashionable. 

Divorces rose sharply in the U.K. between the 1970s and 1990s, though have declined since. And while the rate of marriages ending in divorce has also declined, around 100,000 married couples still part ways in the country every year. At the same time, marriages have continued a steady decline after peaking in the 1970s.

In their place are new household dynamics that companies are keen to tap. 

DINKs, an acronym for dual-income-no-kids, have become prominent as birth rates in the U.S. fell to a historic low in 2023.

This cohort represents a growing share of millennials choosing not to have kids, blaming the state of the environment and associated costs of childcare among their key concerns. Instead, they are prioritizing their careers and personal experiences. They’re proving a goldmine for direct-to-consumer brands, even if they may prove to be a drag on the economy.

“Pets are the new kids, and plants are the new pets,” summarized Leah Johns, who leads Bain’s Consumer Lab. 

The nature of the modern world has also pulled people from their go-to communities, like family and childhood friends.

Bain’s Johns said the three things that used to keep us in one place had all decreased.

“Our need to be in a city because an office is there has decreased because of remote work. The need to be really close to families has decreased because now we have communication and affordable travel. And then real estate is so expensive that people can’t afford homes anymore. 

“Those three things have, over the last couple of decades, come down, and they’re not keeping people in the same place.”

One long untapped area that is fast proving popular, however, is single-parent households. According to the OECD, single parent households are expected to experience a rapid rise through to 2030.

DINKs have very different needs to a single parent juggling children and potentially taking care of an older parent, Johns says, and there are already examples of how companies are catering to them.

One direct-to-consumer wine company that spoke with Bain said they grew sales by 250% between 2020 and 2021, adding that single-serve bottles were their fastest-growing market....

....MUCH MORE

Sliding toward the inevitable "Embracing päntsdrunk, the Finnish way of drinking alone in your underwear".

Electric Vehicles: BYD By The Numbers, December and Full-Year 2024 (may catch Tesla)

Because BYD manufactures Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles in addition to Battery Electric Vehicles their total sales far outstrip Tesla which reports Thursday. More on that after the jump.

From CNEV Post, January 1:

BYD sells record 514,809 NEVs in Dec, full year 2024 sales reach 4.27 million

In the fourth quarter, BYD sold 595,413 passenger BEVs and 918,556 passenger PHEVs.

BYD (HKG: 1211, OTCMKTS: BYDDY) saw a new sales record in December, selling more than 4 million units for the first time annually.

The company sold 514,809 new energy vehicles (NEVs) in December, marking the third time it has surpassed the 500,000 mark and the seventh consecutive month of record sales, according to data released today.

This is a 50.95 percent increase from 341,043 in the same period last year and a 1.58 percent increase from 506,804 in November.

BYD ceased production and sales of vehicles powered entirely by internal combustion engines in March 2022, switching to focus on the production of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) and battery electric vehicle (BEV) models.

BYD's NEVs include passenger cars as well as commercial vehicles, with passenger NEVs selling a record 509,440 units in December, up 49.76 percent year-on-year and up 1.08 percent from November.

....MUCH MORE

And from Bloomberg via the Japan Times, January 2:

BYD chalks up new record as it narrows EV sales gap with Tesla

...Tesla target

Tesla will unveil its fourth-quarter sales figures later this week. The Elon Musk-led company needs to deliver at least 515,000 EVs in the final three months of 2024 to meet its guidance for "slight growth” in annual sales, or 1.81 million deliveries, which would be a quarterly record for the company. Analyst estimates are for 510,400 deliveries, just shy of Tesla’s expectations.

BYD has trailed Tesla in quarterly sales this year. By the third quarter, BYD had sold 1.16 million EVs, lagging Tesla by 124,100. However, the Chinese best-seller has seen a last-quarter surge to narrow the gap with its U.S. rival.

On BYD’s December data, it will fall just shy of surpassing Tesla in annual sales. It has only topped Tesla once — on a quarterly basis in the final three months of 2023..... 

....MUCH MORE

"Growth in China's factory activity slows, Caixin PMI shows"

 From Reuters via Investing.com, January 1:

China's factory activity grew in December but at a slower-than-expected pace, as overall sales were dampened by falling export orders amid concerns over the trade outlook, a private-sector survey showed on Thursday.

The data echoed an official survey on Tuesday showing manufacturing activity expanded modestly, reinforcing calls for more stimulus to spur growth this year as Donald Trump will soon take office and likely intensify U.S.-China trade tensions.

The Caixin/S&P Global manufacturing PMI nudged down to 50.5 in December from 51.5 the previous month, undershooting analysts' forecasts in a Reuters poll of 51.7.

The rate of output expansion eased to a three-month low as growth in new orders slowed....

....MUCH MORE

How To (gently) Tell Someone They're An Idiot

From Your Tango (please don't judge me), December 28:

11 Phrases Brilliant People Use To Validate Someone They Don’t Agree With

....The phrases brilliant people use to validate someone they don’t agree with are full of generosity, patience, and compassion. Brilliant people aim to be kind and understanding, even when their perspectives are wildly different from someone else’s. They focus on building respectful relationships, which are rooted in emotional validation, even with people they disagree with....

1. ‘I respect where you’re coming from, but I see things from a different angle’

2. ‘Thank you for sharing your perspective’

6. ‘I value how much thought you’ve put into this’

11. ‘You’ve given me a lot to think about’

....MUCH MORE

And of course, the all purpose turnaround for C-suite managers: 

"Think about it a little more and you will agree with me because you're smart and I'm right."
—Charlie Munger quoted in "Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with..."