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Hard Numbers: Voters express AI skepticism, Mastercard’s latest purchase, China’s AI deficit, the Taylor Swift effect, Intel’s European delays
Taylor Swift's Instagram profile is seen in this photo illustration taken in Warsaw, Poland on 11 September, 2024. The musician announced her endorsement of Kamala Harris for president shortly after the current vice president debated Donald Trump on live television that evening.
400,000: More than 400,000 people visited vote.gov after Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris last week and encouraged her fans to register to vote. Swift said she was spurred to make an official endorsement after Trump posted AI fakes on Truth Social showing her and her supporters endorsing him. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter,” she said.
64: Most Americans are skeptical of AI-powered election information, according to a new survey by the Associated Press. Only 5% of respondents said they’re very confident or extremely confident in the answers that AI systems give for political questions, 30% said they’re somewhat confident, and 64% said they’re not very confident or not at all confident in the accuracy of these services.
2.65 billion: Mastercard agreed to buy the threat intelligence company Recorded Future last week from the private equity firm Insight Partners for $2.65 billion. Recorded Future has already partnered with Mastercard, using machine learning to identify when credit cards might be compromised, and Mastercard said the partnership has already doubled the rate at which it can identify compromised cards compared to the year prior.
6: It’s no secret that the US is leading China in the AI race, but by how much? Kai-Fu Lee, founder of the startup 01.AI and former head of Google China, said that China’s large language models are likely six to nine months behind those in the US. “It’s inevitable that China will [build] the best AI apps in the world,” he said at a conference last week. “But it’s not clear whether it will be built by big companies or small companies.” China’s ability to do this depends on its firms’ ability to do cutting-edge research and its access to powerful chips, which despite US restrictions appear to be seeping through the country’s borders.
33 billion: Intel announced Monday that it has delayed its $33 billion chip factory in the German city of Magdeburg amid broader cost-saving measures across the company. The US chipmaker said the project would be delayed by two years as it tries to deliver $10 billion of cost savings in 2025. It’s also postponing plans for a new factory in Poland. Intel had expected to employ about 5,000 people across the two plants.