ComputerWorld AI·
Apple has held “exploratory” talks about manufacturing processors for its devices in the US, Bloomberg reports. The move seems to reflect Apple’s need to secure additional chip supplies to meet growing demand for its products, but could also represent a contingency plan to reduce the company’s reliance on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC’s) advanced manufacturing facilities in Taiwan. I doubt this means Apple doesn’t want to work with TSMC, nor does it mean TSMC is cooling on Apple. I suspect company management is far more concerned about what might happen in the event China attacks TSMC’s home nation. Contingency planning That concern seems legitimate in the context of unravelling of international relations and a recently-disclosed warning the CIA gave to tech leaders back in 2023. Executives from Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm were all warned that China might attack Taiwan. Such an attack would comprise a huge threat to the entire tech industry. Speaking at the World Econ
Read full articleInsider Brief Spirit AI and Bosch China announced a strategic partnership focused on bringing embodied AI systems into industrial environments, combining Spirit AI’s robotics foundation models with Bosch’s manufacturing and automation infrastructure. According to the companies, the partnership is aimed at accelerating deployment of what Spirit AI describes as a “universal brain” for robots — […]
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) takes place in just a few weeks. Everyone expects the company to explain its approach to AI deployment on its platforms. With that in mind, here’s what several months of speculation suggest Apple will announce, though the details remain to be disclosed. Apple is investing billions of dollars in these plans; R&D spending reached 10.3% of revenue in the second quarter, up from 7.6% in Q1. Given Apple’s accelerating revenue, on a dollar basis this means the company’s R&D spend is up 34% from a year ago. “We believe AI is a really important investment area for Apple, and we’re going to be doing that incrementally on top of what we normally invest in our product roadmap,” said Apple CFO Kevan Parekh during Apple’s latest fiscal call. (AI isn’t Apple’s only spending target, either.) While the billions Apple is investing are dwarfed by the huge infrastructure investments made by pure AI players, Apple’s infrastructure already exists — in the form
Also in today’s newsletter: a new company seeks to tackle the power constraints on European data centre growth
Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it misled consumers about the AI capabilities of the iPhone 15 and 16. The complaint claimed Apple exaggerated the readiness and functionality of Apple Intelligence features, particularly an upgraded Siri, influencing purchase decisions with capabilities that were incomplete or delayed. Without […]
Partnership between top startup DeepL and Amazon comes amid concern about Silicon Valley’s monopoly over digital infrastructure AI companies in Europe risk losing their world-leading status in the field of machine translation, industry figures have said, after the decision by one of the continent’s leading startups to partner with Amazon’s cloud computing division provoked alarm. While businesses in the EU have generally lagged behind the US and China in AI adoption, a small group of European companies have cornered the global market for high-quality machine translations for professional use. Continue reading...
TSMC backs renewables during record demand for energy-hungry chip manufacturing.
While some are using AI to tailor programs better suited to their needs, others warn ‘it can be wrong, confidently so’ People have mixed feelings about AI. While many people regularly use it – 62% in the US and 69% in the UK – trust in the technology is low. In the US, only 26% of people have a positive view of AI, according to one NBC poll, and in the UK, 78% say they worry about negative outcomes from AI. So it is perhaps no surprise that readers’ responses to our callout about AI and fitness were varied. Some said they rely on AI to shape their workouts and diets while others said they refuse to use it at all because of its impact on the economy and the environment. And many were somewhere in between – they found it a useful tool, but were less than thrilled about the technology’s impact overall. Continue reading...
Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class-action lawsuit for overpromising the arrival of Siri's AI features.
