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Jennifer L. Schenker
Innovator Founder and Editor-in-Chief |
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Al large language models are old hat, Meta Chief AI Scientist Yan LeCun told a private breakfast organized by the Joint European Disruptive Initiative (JEDI) during VivaTech, Europe’s largest tech conference. Focus on what’s next, he urged participants. “Every single interaction will be mediated by AI assistants,” personalized bots that help you work, create, or communicate better, and interface with the digital world on your behalf, he said. Meta has already launched an AI assistant on its platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp across more than a dozen countries. Google and its AI division DeepMind, as well as Microsoft-backed OpenAI, along with Microsoft itself and other tech companies, are all racing to offer AI personal assistants to everyone from consumers to business users to teachers. In the past week Google and Open AI simultaneously announced a series of upgraded AI tools that are multimodal, which means they can interpret voice, video, images, and code in a single interface, and carry out complex tasks like live translations or planning a family vacation.
Microsoft this week announced an upgraded version of Copilot, its AI assistant, an AI assistant for work teams, and a partnership with tutoring organization Khan Academy to provide a Generative AI assistant to all teachers in the U.S. for free. Apple is also expected to be a major player in this race. During the May 23 breakfast meeting Meta’s LeCun talked about the many new opportunities AI assistants will offer for the tech industry. Along with actually creating the bots there will be a need to develop low power kits to run AI systems on eyeglasses or pocket devices, new chips to power the devices and new types of batteries, he said. But, as with all new AI developments, the potential impact on society must be taken into consideration, says a Google DeepMind white paper on the ethics of advanced AI assistants, published on May 19. Read on to learn more about this story and other important technology news impacting business. |
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Some 88% of business leaders surveyed by VivaTech plan to invest in AI in 2024. They, along with thousands of startups and investors, converged in Paris at Europe’s largest tech conference May 22-25 to learn about how to best leverage the technology, avoid its pitfalls and navigate an uncertain future.
Paying subscribers and those that sign up for a free four-week trial by clicking on “read more” will be able to access the story when it is filed at the end of the conference.
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Who: Eric Hazan is a senior partner with McKinsey & Company, where he co-leads the global strategy practice. He is active in the growth, marketing, and sales practice as well as the digital practice in Western Europe. With a strong focus on digital transformation, Hazan specializes in helping companies with strategic challenges, particularly in the retail, consumer goods, and tech sectors. He is also a member of the McKinsey Global Institute Council, offering insights that shape MGI’s business, economic, and technology research. Hazan has contributed to numerous McKinsey research programs, including recent studies on artificial intelligence and Generative AI, and the use of technology for the common good. He has also co-authored several reports on the future of work and the influence of the Internet and ICT on the economy
Topic: McKinsey’s report “A New Future For Work: The Race To Deploy AI and Raise Skills in Europe And Beyond” which Hazan presented at the VivaTech conference in Paris on May 22..
Quote: "Europe doesn’t have a choice. If it wants to reap the productivity growth benefits of AI and GenAI, it needs to deploy the technology as fast as the U.S. while investing and improving human capital and raising the skills of its workforce. If it doesn’t do that it will experience much less growth and social turmoil. Training is the best social protection." |
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| Pasqal develops quantum hardware and software technology for real-world computing applications. Customers include Aramaco, Saudi Arabia's state-owned gas and oil company, global aerospace-and-defense company Thales, French energy company EDF, U.S. healthcare company Johnson & Johnson, French bank Crédit Agricole and GNC, a group that includes most of the French and foreign hotel chains operating in France. The French scale-up, which focuses on neutral atoms, was founded by physics Nobel Prize winner Alain Aspect and is named after Blaise Pascal, the inventor of the world’s first mechanical calculator.. “We expect to see a quantum computer in each data center within two years and our long-term vision is to build the quantum Nvidia,” says CEO Georges-Olivier Reymond, a speaker on a panel about quantum cryptography at the Paris VivaTech conference on May 22 moderated by The Innovator’s Editor-in-Chief. Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) are the engine behind the AI boom because they enable the ability to run lots of computations at the same time. In the future quantum technology is expected to power computations, helping solve some the world’s biggest challenges, from developing targeted drugs more cheaply and quickly to combating climate change. Launched in 2019, Pasqal operates in eight countries and has the same number of people – about 250 -working on quantum as IBM, one of its big rivals in the space, says Reymond. |
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Earlier this month Microsoft said it is committing €4 billion toward expanding its Cloud and AI infrastructure in France, in addition to funding AI skilling and support for France’s technology industry. As part of its investment, Microsoft said it plans to bring up to 25,000 graphics chips to France by the end of 2025 and open a new data center in the French city of Mulhouse.
Consider it a sign of things to come. Microsoft and other big U.S. tech companies are expected to spend $100 billion this year on AI infrastructure, with analysts predicting an investment of around $1 trillion over the next ten years, according to an article published this week in The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft has plans for more than $16 billion in investments over the next several years spread between France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Spain and Indonesia, according to a story this week in The Wall Street Journal. Amazon, meanwhile, has planned infrastructure investments of $15 billion in Japan, $9 billion in Singapore, $5 billion in Mexico, and $1.3 billion in France. “As the rest of the world migrates more to the Cloud, there’s more need to have these data centers built in the region where that shift is happening,” DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria told The Wall Street Journal. Companies “need those data centers full of Nvidia GPUs to be local” due to faster processing times as well as data privacy and security.
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