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Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk addresses a stadium audience in Washington, DC, on Inauguration Day.
Hard Numbers: DOGE cuts boost Palantir stocks, Shooter rampages at Swedish school, Trump makes “rare” demand of Ukraine, Rebels in DRC announce ceasefire
10: At least 10 people were believed to be dead following a shooting at an adult education center in central Sweden on Tuesday. As of this writing, police have not released information about the shooter’s identity or motive, except to say that it was a man who is believed to have acted alone.
500,000: What does Donald Trump want in exchange for continuing to support Ukraine? Something rare. The US president suggested on Monday he wanted US access to Ukraine’s rare earths and critical minerals – those used in batteries, microchips, and other advanced technologies. China currently dominates the global supply. Ukraine has at least 15,000 hectares worth of deposits already mapped out, and 500,000 tons of Lithium which could be worth tens of trillions of dollars. Kyiv said it was “ready to work with America.”
900: After more than 900 people were killed last week in the battle for Goma, a key city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who have wrested control of the city from the Congolese army announced a unilateral ceasefire on Tuesday. The move is meant to facilitate the arrival of humanitarian aid. DRC and Kenyan leaders are to meet next week in a fresh attempt to end the more than three-year-old conflict.Visitors check out Alibaba Cloud's data synthesis and Embodied engine at the 2024 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, China, on September 19, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Alibaba’s models, Palantir’s contract, Newsom’s deadline, Vietnam’s fab plan
100: Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant, launched more than 100 new open-source AI models, collectively known as Qwen 2.5. Many of the models have specific design purposes, such as for automobiles or science research. Alibaba’s models are free to use, but the company sells its cloud services and support to fellow businesses.
100 million: Palantir has won a $100 million US defense contract to give military personnel advanced visualizations of battlefields in real time across different computers. The company will use intelligence data and computer vision technology to make digital replicas of battlefields for real-time decision making.
6: California Gov. Gavin Newsom has six days left to sign SB 1047, the California AI safety bill. He hasn’t signaled whether he’s going to sign it yet, but he recently signed a pair of bills into law that protect performers from artificial intelligence recreations being made without their permission. However, he has said that he’s concerned about the “chilling effect” the bill could have on the state’s tech industry.
1: Vietnam said it’s aiming to build one semiconductor fabrication plant and 10 packaging plants in the country by 2030. To help, it’ll launch a fund to help foreign investors with taxes on the projects. The country is seeking to evolve from a manufacturing economy to include more high-tech industries such as chip making.Startup Cerebras System's new AI supercomputer Andromeda is seen at a data center in Santa Clara, California, U.S. October 2022.
Hard Numbers: Electricity drain, Coal in demand, Ignoring AI, Deal for Palantir, China’s chip fund
9.1: The nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute estimates that data centers will drain up to 9.1% of US electricity by 2030. Last year it was just 4%, but the rise of artificial intelligence has placed newfound demands for easily accessible computing power.
54: The increased energy demands from AI have even slowed US plans to close coal plants. 54 gigawatts of coal-based power generators are expected to be retired by 2030, a number that has fallen 40% from last year’s estimate from S&P Global Commodity Insights.
2: Only 2% of Brits say they use ChatGPT or another AI technology every single day, according to a new survey from Reuters Institute and Oxford University. “Large parts of the public are not particularly interested in generative AI, and 30% of people in the UK say they have not heard of any of the most prominent products, including ChatGPT,” the report’s lead author said.
480 million: Palantir won a $480 million deal with the US Army for a computer vision project. The Peter Thiel-founded company already works extensively with the military and has worked with allied militaries, including Ukraine’s in the war against Russia.
47.5 billion: In the face of stringent US export controls that limit China’s ability to gain access to important semiconductors, the Chinese government announced its third chip fund after similar investments in 2014 and 2019. This fund is a $47.5 billion investment into chip companies, aimed at getting a stronger foothold on the chips necessary for training and running AI models.