Hello, fellow humans! Here’s our monthly AI-focused special edition of the Daily Brief. Enjoy, and we’ll see you again on Monday with your regularly scheduled Quartz news.
Here’s what you need to know
Intel says its new AI hardware is “way ahead of Nvidia.” Those are bold claims about the Gaudi 3 accelerator, which the company introduced this week.
Google added glowing reviews of its own new Nvidia-rivaling chip. The Cloud TPU v5p is now available to developers.
The AI Mac is coming. Apple is reportedly working on overhauling its computer fleet with new chips, and the news sent the company’s stock soaring.
TSMC is getting $6.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding for a new Phoenix hub. That makes three planned for the Arizona city, but this one is for AI chips (well, and military technology chips).
And Microsoft’s opening an AI hub in London. The new digs will be dedicated to LLMs and the infrastructure that goes with all that.
If you come for Nvidia, you best not miss
As mentioned above, Google and Intel both laid some cards on the table this week, and the shark they’re after is Nvidia.
“Nvidia’s been able to extract a tremendous amount of windfall profits over the last couple of years, based on the fact that they had the right product at the right time,” one analyst tells Quartz. “But now that the market is the size that it is, [there are] multiple companies that are in a position to replace Nvidia with other products — most importantly, Nvidia’s own customers.”
In other words, good on you, Jensen and co. — but now other folks have had the time and space to catch up. Apple wasn’t the first company to make a smartphone, after all.
Quartz’s Laura Bratton and Britney Nguyen talked to industry experts who had a lot of thoughts about whether Intel and Google can become the big fish in the water.
Gemini hopes Goldman Sachs and Mercedes will help its image
Google is trying to turn a new page from that time its chatbot Gemini, fresh out of its Bard era, generated some really concerning images that forced Google to pause its image generating capabilities for a while.
What better way to move on than getting executives from the likes of Goldman Sachs, Mercedes-Benz, and Uber to talk up your product? Well, at a keynote this week at Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, CEO Sundar Pichai spoke about how businesses can use Gemini; Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon and Mercedes-Benz’s Ola Källenius added how their respective companies used Google’s AI products.
Even competitor Apple has said it’d look into using Gemini for iPhones — a deal that would certainly mark a new chapter for the bot.
One big number: $1 million
The salary some tech giants are offering new hires that are experts in AI
Demand for employees who can take on AI projects is so intense that it’s leading big players like OpenAI and Meta to poach employees from rivals. But such a shift in priorities is creating a conundrum: Big Tech simultaneously has a worker shortage and is laying off workers at levels not seen since the Great Recession.
Other AI reads
💰 Nvidia is giving employees a 25% stock boost and calling it the ‘special Jensen grant’
🩻 Google and Bayer are using AI to help overworked radiologists
☁️ Amazon’s CEO says the AI revolution will be powered by AWS
💫 Microsoft and OpenAI plan supercomputer project worth $100 billion called ‘Stargate’
🚔 AI is making life easier for financial fraudsters
🚔🚨 New York City’s AI chatbot is telling people to break laws and do crimes
Ask an AI
🎧 This week, Spotify — you know, the Swedish streaming giant credited with killing the Top 40, introducing you to Japanese chillhop and Chicago underground, and rewrapping the way we share music — debuted a new AI-powered playlist tool. It’s being called the streamer’s very own ChatGPT.
The premise is pretty simple: Select the AI playlist tool in your library, plug in a few words to capture your mood (say, “reading smart emails from my favorite news source, Quartz”), et voila! AI-Spotify serves up a playlist that translates your words into its picks.
The tool isn’t widely available yet — although early users are already using it to generate playlists for witch house, whatever that is.
📲🎧 But once it makes its way to Quartz, we’ll have our prompts ready. Will we request songs to contemplate eco-friendly steel? Or maybe the philosophy of auto lights? What about the tech sensors coming to your fingertips? Sure. Until then, we’ll just stream the Quartz Obsession podcast.
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Our best wishes for a very human day. Send any news, comments, Mercedes halos, and chip sharks to [email protected]. Reader support makes Quartz available to all—become a member. Today’s AI in Focus Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner, Susan Howson, and Gabriela Riccardi.