AI money flow shows no signs of drying up | interest.co.nz
Despite the beginnings of "AI fatigue" setting in as the technology continues to dominate the news cycle, and Google being ridiculed for the results its AI overview search supposedly outputs, there's no shortage of money being poured into artificial intelligence ventures.
Elon Musk's AI Ventures
The latest announcement comes via Elon Musk who loves the letter X because it stands for anything and everything. Musk was early out of the gates with AI, being one of the key people behind OpenAI; his x.ai company announced that it has raised US$6 billion in a second round of funding from private equity funds and Saudi Arabian investment vehicle Kingdom Holding, which as it happens, put money into Twitter (now X) as well.
![France's AI Funding Can't Match China's, But It Doesn't Need To](https://accesspartnership.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/France-AI-1.png)
AI Developments in Other Countries
France, on the other hand, is making significant strides in AI with President Macron announcing €400 million funding for nine centres of excellence throughout the country, on top of ordering research organisations to mobilise their resources for the technology. There will be AI in schools as well, to teach kids about the technology. What the eccentric-sounding proposal to create "Cafés IA" to acculturate the citizens of France ends up as will be curious to discover, but Macron's administration insists the tech is the future of the nation.
Investment Trends in AI
Investment activity in the AI sector is on the rise. Well-known AI company Hugging Face that was founded by three French entrepreneurs, and which is popular with developers, is valued at somewhere over US$4 billion. Holistic AI, which was set up by French researchers working for Google's Deepmind division picked up a cool US$220 million in funding, just months after kicking off. It's now called H and aims to develop an artificial general intelligence or AGI, which computer scientists say will be cleverer than humans.
![The Impact of AI Technology on Various Industries Worldwide](https://www.appstudio.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Benefits-of-Artificial-Intelligence-in-Banking-Sector.jpg)
Impact of AI on Various Sectors
It's important to bear in mind that investors will seek a decent return on the vast amounts of money they're sinking into AI. This puts enormous pressure on the funded companies to deploy the technology in as many places as possible, so as to start bringing in the necessary profits. If that doesn't pan out, the venture capitalists who put up the money will not be pleasant to deal with.
Future of AI and Its Impacts
Is it all bad for humans then, being outcompeted by data centres filled with servers loaded up with high-end video cards that excel at doing many maths tasks in parallel? Possibly not, or maybe possibly not until large language models for generative AI become an awful lot smarter. While just a few years ago AI evangelists would declare with total certainty that a white-collar worker wipeout was imminent, the perspective is not quite as swivel-eyed and wild now. You won't lose your job to AI, but to someone using AI apparently.
![Ranked: Artificial Intelligence Startups, by Country](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Global-X-Digital-Evolution-Series-Aug-25-Part-1-Shareable.jpg)
AI in Everyday Devices
AI doesn't have to be limited to giant data centres; some of the more useful implementations are found in everyday devices like smartphones. Called Edge AI, there are neural network chips and other hardware everywhere, for applications such as image manipulation and voice recognition, automation, and even some generative tasks.
Upcoming International Conference on AI
There's an opportunity coming up locally to learn more about what AI can do. In December, Auckland will host the five-day 2024 International Conference of Neural Information Processing. It looks like there will be many interesting showcases, workshops, and sessions at ICONIP, which is supported by AUT and the University of Auckland among others and features researchers from around the world. Calendar the conference now if you're interested in AI and how it might interact with humanity.