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Hard Numbers: Imran Khan’s AI dub, Turkey's AI sector boost, Danish death forecasts, IBM’s big bet

December 19, 2023
Scott Nover
Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Reuters
4: Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan delivered a campaign speech on Sunday – from prison. Due to limitations in jail, he’s not able to campaign normally, and his party is banned from doing so on his behalf. So Khan wrote a four-minute speech that was recited by an AI trained on his voice to sound like him. It’s garnered more than 1.5 million views on YouTube.

$100 million: One of Turkey’s largest venture capital firms is preparing to pour money into the region’s AI sector. Revo Capital is raising $100 million, which will go to AI-related startups in Turkey and throughout central Asia. Revo has found international appeal with investments into the Turkey-based delivery startup Getir, lamenting to Bloomberg that Turkish firms are often ignored by foreign investors.

6 million: Danish researchers claim that their new AI model, trained on a massive data set of 6 million Danish individuals, can predict early death better than insurance company actuarial tables. The researchers, based at the Technical University of Denmark, want to keep their model far away from the hands of insurance companies, but it could be used to help people better understand health and environmental risk factors in their lives.

$2.33 billion: IBM is making a $2.33 billion purchase to boost its AI offerings. The technology giant just announced that it reached a cash deal to buy two divisions of the German company Software AG. The units, called StreamSets and webMethods, are data management tools that IBM plans to integrate with its Watsonx AI data platform that it sells to business clients.

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