Lifeboat Foundation

“Whoever leads in AI will rule the world,” President Vladimir Putin declared at an address commencing the 2017 Russian school year. Six years later, despite intense focus from senior leadership and heavy investment from the federal budget and state-owned enterprises, Russia remains a laggard in this field, hobbled by international isolation and structural challenges.

Military, political, and business leaders in Moscow have long understood the importance of controlling the information space to secure their grasp on power. After the scare of social media powered “color revolutions” on Russia’s doorstep, Moscow doubled down on these efforts. But facing both headwinds intrinsic to the nature of generative AI and deep, self-inflicted wounds from the war in Ukraine, the window for Russia to take a lead is closing quickly.

Russia’s leaders were caught flat-footed by the rise of social media. The supposed dangers of emerging technology were brought to the fore by Chisinau’s so-called “ Twitter revolution,” when protests organized in part on American social networks prevented Moldova’s ardently pro-Russian Party of Communists from winning the election in 2009.

The onslaught of press, research and perceived urgency has done little to prepare business and information technology leaders to deploy artificial intelligence-powered technologies.

That’s according to the first Cisco AI Readiness Index, issued Tuesday. The company used a double-blind survey of over 8,000 business and IT leaders worldwide.

The findings are alarming. Although 97% of the organizations say that the urgency around deploying AI tech has risen in the last six months, only 14% feel they’re prepared to deploy and utilize it.

The company on Wednesday announced Astro for Business, a version of its household robot that it’s framing as a crime prevention tool for retailers, manufacturers and a range of other industries, in spaces that are up to 5,000 square feet. Astro for Business is launching only in the U.S. to start, and it comes at a steep price point of $2,349.99.

Amazon unveiled Astro, its first home robot, in September 2021. The squat, three-wheeled device can roll around the house to answer Alexa voice commands, and it has a 42-inch periscope camera that allows it to see over countertops or other obstacles to check if a stove has been left on, among other tasks.

Two years on from its debut, the original Astro, which costs $1,599, is available in limited quantities and on an invite-only basis.

Microsoft launched its big AI push earlier this year as part of its Bing search engine, integrating a ChatGPT-like interface directly into its search results. Now less than a year later, it’s dropping the Bing Chat branding and moving to Microsoft Copilot, the new name for the chat interface you might have used in Bing, Microsoft Edge, and Windows 11.

Microsoft initially talked up the Google search competition for its AI ambitions earlier this year, but it now looks like it has its sights set on ChatGPT instead. The Bing Chat rebranding comes just days after OpenAI revealed 100 million people are using ChatGPT on a weekly basis. Despite a close partnership worth billions, Microsoft and OpenAI continue to compete for the same customers seeking out AI assistants, and Microsoft is clearly trying to position Copilot as the option for consumers and businesses.

“Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will now simply become Copilot,” explains Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft 365. The official name change comes just a couple of months after Microsoft picked Copilot as its branding for its chatbot inside Windows 11. At the time it wasn’t clear that the Bing Chat branding would fully disappear, but it is today.

OpenAI has placed a temporary ban on new sign-ups for ChatGPT Plus following a surge in demand for the service.

ChatGPT Plus is the $20 per month, premium version of the now infamous chatbot. It includes a host of extra features, including the recently added GPTs—personalized chatbots that are focused on a specific task, such as teaching you how to play chess or negotiating better business deals.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims a surge in usage of the service since the launch of GPTs and other new features announced at its recent developer conference has forced the company to act.

VentureBeat presents: AI Unleashed — An exclusive executive event for enterprise data leaders. Hear from top industry leaders on Nov 15. Reserve your free pass

Fine-tuning large language models (LLM) has become an important tool for businesses seeking to tailor AI capabilities to niche tasks and personalized user experiences. But fine-tuning usually comes with steep computational and financial overhead, keeping its use limited for enterprises with limited resources.

To solve these challenges, researchers have created algorithms and techniques that cut the cost of fine-tuning LLMs and running fine-tuned models. The latest of these techniques is S-LoRA, a collaborative effort between researchers at Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley (UC Berkeley).

Barbara Corcoran almost missed out on “the best hire” she ever made — all because the prospective employee seemed too introverted.

“When I started my business [in 1973], I needed people to join my real estate company,” the millionaire investor and real estate entrepreneur said in a recent TikTok video. “But I had little to offer, and good people were really hard to get.”

In walked Esther Kaplan, who would eventually become Corcoran’s business partner and longtime president of The Corcoran Group. But at the time, Kaplan didn’t seem like the right fit for the sales position she’d applied for, Corcoran said.

As the dawn of generative AI unfolds, a distinct separation will emerge among professionals and businesses: those who leverage this transformative technology to enhance productivity and innovation and those who lag behind.

Discover how adopting a generative AI mindset, blending adaptability, curiosity, and collaboration, is key to thriving in the rapidly evolving professional landscape,.

Nvidia is on a tear.

But “there are no companies that are assured survival,” Huang warned Thursday at the Harvard Business Review’s Future of Business event.

Nvidia in its 30-year history has faced several existential threats, which helps explain why Huang recently told the Acquired podcast that “nobody in their right mind” would start a company. For example, it almost went bankrupt in 1995 after its first chip, the NV1, failed to attract customers. It had to lay off half its employees before the success of its third chip, the RIVA 128, saved it a few years later.

Continue reading “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says his AI powerhouse is ‘always in peril’ despite a $1.1 trillion market cap: ‘We don’t have to pretend…we feel it’” »