Apple AI Delayed and OpenAI Loosing Billions

OpenAI and Anthropic Loosing Billions?

An evaluation by The Information reveals significant financial losses for AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic. OpenAI faces potential losses as much as $5 billion this 12 months, with expenses related to training AI models and running inference systems estimated to succeed in $7 billion. The prices include around $4 billion for Microsoft server rentals and $3 billion for training, with personnel expenses projected at $1.5 billion. Anthropic also reports substantial losses, forecasting over $2.7 billion in spending against estimated revenues of $800 million.

The industry is grappling with a fundamental query: can these AI models, despite their impressive feats of mimicry, generate enough tangible value to justify their astronomical costs? While there’s potential for growth in latest product areas, the present state of affairs suggests that AI might have a major upgrade in its cognitive abilities—perhaps a breakthrough basically reasoning—to actually justify the exorbitant price tag. Until then, the AI industry finds itself in a precarious position, balancing on a tightrope between ambition and economic reality. Read more.

Apple’s AI features to be delayed until October

Apple’s planned AI features, branded as Apple Intelligence, can be delayed and usually are not expected to launch with the initial iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 releases in September. In line with Bloomberg News, these latest AI capabilities will roll out a couple of weeks later, likely in October. Developers will receive early access through iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 betas starting this week.

Apple Intelligence will enhance device functionalities by generating text, images, and other content on demand. It can be available on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPads and Macs with M1 chips or later. This delay is attributable to Apple’s have to comply with European Union tech regulations that require compatibility with rival products. Read more.

China’s AI models soar with help from US open-source technology

China’s AI surge, fueled by U.S. open-source tech, is rapidly closing the gap with Western models. Firms like Kuaishou and 01.AI are leading the charge, producing AI systems that rival U.S. benchmarks. Nonetheless, the open-source nature of underlying technology complicates regulation, potentially accelerating Chinese advancements.

Unlike their Western counterparts, Chinese firms are more aggressive in deploying consumer-facing AI. Cultural considerations also shape AI development, with models aligning to socialist values. Geopolitical tensions are evident because the U.S. imposes chip export restrictions to slow China’s progress, and OpenAI limits service to authoritarian states. Read more.

Study reveals major weaknesses in AI’s ability to grasp diagrams and abstract visuals

A recent study exposed a critical blind spot in AI’s visual intelligence. While these models excel at interpreting photographic realism, they falter dramatically when presented with abstract visualizations like diagrams and charts. Advanced models comparable to GPT-4.0 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet achieved a mere 64.7% and 59.9% accuracy respectively on a various dataset of 11,193 abstract images, significantly lagging human performance at 82.1%. The research team employed a “multimodal self-instruct” approach to develop a various dataset of 11,193 abstract images, each accompanied by specific questions across eight scenarios, comparable to dashboards, road maps, diagrams, tables, and more. Despite their multimodal capabilities, the models struggle particularly with tasks requiring spatial reasoning and abstract concept understanding. Attempts to enhance open-source model performance using synthetic data showed some success, yet reliance on costly closed models for reference data poses challenges. Read more.

AI start-up Anthropic accused of ‘egregious’ data scraping

AI start-up Anthropic faces accusations of excessive data scraping, which can contravene publishers’ terms of service. Web publishers, including Freelancer.com and iFixit.com, have reported substantial traffic spikes from Anthropic’s web crawlers, with some sites receiving tens of millions of hits in brief periods.

Despite efforts to dam or limit these crawlers, comparable to using standard web protocols, the scraping continued, prompting complaints about disruption and increased operational costs. Anthropic asserts it respects protocols like ‘robots.txt’ and goals to avoid being intrusive. The practice of scraping, while legally permissible, has intensified with the growing demand for data to coach large language models. This has led to increased bandwidth costs and operational strain on affected sites. Read more.