United Arab Emirates Takes Lead in Artificial Intelligence
Well, Okay, the UAE is not the world’s leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI). But in terms of government policy on AI, the regulators of that sandy land appear to be a whole lot better at their jobs and, if we may be excused for using the term, more progressive, than their U.S. counterparts.
The UAE just reiterated its commitment to “open source” development of Artificial Intelligence by releasing to the public the source code for its Falcon 40B LLM. (Large Language Model, the basic machinery for generative AI such as ChatGPT).
When a software platform goes open source, the original source code—by which programmers control how a program or application functions—is released to the public so it can be modified, enhanced, or debugged by motivated codejocks. Typically, the modified code is published with a clear account of what has been changed so it can be further improved or disregarded by others.
Most open-source software is not for casual users. Nobody is making money, so not a lot of work goes into building user-friendly interfaces. But open source brings dozens or thousands of brains to work together to make the thing better. It promotes transparency, competition, and innovation, and hastens interoperability and integration with third-party systems.
The open-source movement goes back to the early 1980s when Richard Stallman, a programmer at MIT, started rallying colleagues to his ideas and setting his own code free for others to play with. The idea caught on and bore fruit in the Open Source Initiative, which to this day informally organizes and supports the movement.
This did not have to happen; open source is entirely a product of the entrepreneurial culture that energizes the programming world. Its growth without interference from the state testifies to one of the core cultural prerequisites of capitalism and freedom: a presumption of trust between strangers. To be sure, we verify as well. Yet in all free and capitalist societies, the expectation of honest dealing is remarkable and fundamental.
Meanwhile, as the UAE was demonstrating why it is becoming a center of world capitalism, home to a booming venture capitalist community, and, conspicuously, a leading funder of Israeli start-ups, Sen. Hawley was explaining that to compete with the authoritarian regimes of the world the U.S. government needs more authority.
In a letter to Meta (NASDAQ: META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, co-signed with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the senator expressed “concern” about the firm’s public release of LLaMA, a “large language” model developed by the company.
The senators were troubled that the model was made “available to anyone, anywhere in the world, without monitoring or oversight.” Far better, the senators argued, are “centralized AI models [that] can be more effectively updated and controlled to prevent and respond to abuse compared to open-source AI models.”
Previously, Sen. Hawley had given the world the gift of a set of “legislative principles” that would require “entities working on generative AI models to obtain a license” from You Know Who.
Too bad Sen. Hawley’s principles were not enacted into law 20 years ago. That would have spared us the problem, since without open source it is fair to say AI would not exist.
Google’s research and development of AlphaGo, which made history and headlines by beating the human world champion in Go, could not have succeeded without the contributions of outsiders enabled by open source. Deep Mind, which developed the program, was not launched by Google; it was a start-up Google later acquired. Remarkably, the guys at Deep Mind just went ahead and built AlphaGo without even asking Sen. Hawley’s permission.
OpenAI, which with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) developed ChatGPT, was also a start-up, also (then) committed to open source, and proceeded without notifying any Senators at all.
Crucial to AI development have been open-source AI tools such as PyTorch and TensorFlow (released to the world by Google) and at least a dozen companies—including Meta—that have open-sourced their AI tools.
The United States has led the development of AI every step of the way without so much as a “by your leave” from our political masters. Now, Senator Hawley proposes to detour the U.S. AI movement to the slow class so he can control it.
Sadly, AI incumbents like Google and OpenAI are jumping aboard the closed-system bandwagon. That’s hardly a surprise; the incumbents are always the regulators’ best allies, seeking to use the government to frustrate potential competitors.
But why are Senator Hawley and other allegedly free enterprise lawmakers doing this?
Simple.
China.
Senator Hawley and his China Hawk colleagues either believe or profess to believe that, left to its own devices, China is so technologically backward that if cut off from the West its own efforts in AI and other advanced technologies would founder.
This assertion does multiple duty for the China Hawks. It allowed them to claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that Huawei had to be a government-funded espionage tool. Because China is so backward, Huawei could not possibly have earned honestly its position as the most successful telecom systems producer in the world.
How to reconcile the Hawks’ claim—and they really do say this—that today’s China is still as resolutely Communist as it was under Mao with China’s fantastically successful economy? Simple: they respond that the economy is an illusion built on stolen technology and propped up by mountains of unserviceable debt.
The Chinese must be spies and thieves. No, actually the hawks’ claim is more fantastic, the Chinese must be such remarkable spies and thieves that they actually make their crimes pay. Otherwise, the hawks would have to admit that there are two Chinas struggling for supremacy today, the entrepreneurs vs. the thugs, the producers vs. the moochers, and the hawks are helping the bad guys.
Can Hawley and his brethren really be that stupid?
Or is it just that patriotism is still the last refuge of a scoundrel.
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Notable for Tech Investors
Naturally all the tech world wants to talk about is AI, and especially Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA).
What the world says is that AI, in the first place, is a huge gift to Microcosm companies because the hardware demands are so huge. We say that’s right, but the hardware makers will thrive only if they can keep bringing down the costs.
Here are a few of the more interesting pieces on the topic we have seen in the past couple weeks.
Data Centers Go toward the Light
Moving computational input/output at the speed required for large AI models via electronic systems requires unsustainable amounts of power and heat. That makes on- and inter-chip optical systems (aka silicon photonics) a crucial competitive battleground.
TSMC is sprinting to 2nm to satisfy demand from Nvidia, Apple
Here’s why the combination of foundry and fabless companies has been such a driver of innovation. No one inside Apple or Nvidia is saying “but we can’t manufacture what you (colleagues) are demanding” because that’s the job of contract companies like TSMC or Samsung, who must meet the challenge or die.
Nvidia sets the table for the hardware makers
https://www.yolegroup.com/strategy-insights/nvidia-sets-the-pace-for-the-ai-era/
Good overview of the implications of AI for the hardware makers, though actually Jenson Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said most of it in one sentence during NVDA’s second quarter call. “A trillion dollars of installed global data center infrastructure will transition from general-purpose to accelerated computing as companies race to apply generative AI into every product, service, and business process,” Huang said.
Nvidia says tests of Intel-made Nvidia GPUs “look good.”
Under Pat Gelsinger, Intel is quietly assembling victories on quality. Eventually winning Nvidia as a customer could be one result.
On the other hand, TSMC is still Nvidia’s main squeeze.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2023/06/03/2003800880
MediaTek teaming with Nvidia on infotainment systems
https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-mediatek-partner-connected-car-technology-2023-05-29/
Birds do it, bees do it, even MediaTek and Nvidia are doin’ it.
Vision Pro: The world’s first spatial PC?
https://www.yolegroup.com/industry-news/introducing-apple-vision-pro-apples-first-spatial-computer/
Okay, a whole article that does not mention Nvidia. Our excuse for including it here is that Vision Pro is preeminently a product of AI. Apple has caught a lot of grief for its $3,500 price tag on Vision Pro which is being called a solution in search of a problem. We’ve joined in the fun, some. But as this piece reminds us, prior attempts at dismissing Apple’s apparently bizarre innovations have not worked out so well. And as advocates for the Spatial Web, we should not be too quick to deride what is arguably the world’s first spatial PC.