AI Leadership Weekly

Issue #14

Brad
January 16, 2025

Welcome to the latest AI Leadership Weekly, a curated digest of AI news and developments for business leaders.

Top Stories

Source: Nvidia

Nvidia Responds to Latest Biden Admin AI Rules
As one of his last acts as US President, Joe Biden has strengthened export controls on advanced AI chips to nations around the world.

The ban also involves exporting the 'weights' used in AI models. The major parts of the ban were already in place (such as restricting the export of AI chips to China), but strengthened restrictions on third-party countries being used to funnel the technology into banned countries.

Nvidia, currently the world's leader in AI chip design and manufacture, has blasted the move.

Source: whitehouse.gov

Presidential Order Ensuring Clean Energy for AI
An executive order from outgoing US President Joe Biden has directed the US Department of Defense and Department of Energy to lease federal land to the private sector for use in AI datacentres and clean energy infrastructure.

The order recognises the significance of the growing AI industry, but also its endless need for power which many existing grids struggle to meet and maintain. We reported recently on Musk's own plans being stumbled by a lack of grid capacity. The worry is that the US will fall behind in AI technology if it cannot power these datacentres.

The order also specifies the need for clean energy production, which is hoped to also grow that sector for the US economy, and offset some of the environmental impacts of AI

Source: OpenAI

OpenAI Betas “Tasks”
On Twitter/X, OpenAI has announced the beta launch of 'Tasks', which—as the name implies—allows users to schedule future tasks for ChatGPT to later execute.

The example given in the video is for ChatGPT to remind the user to work out at 9AM each day, and to give them a motivational message. It then gives the user a notification on their phone. If and when ChatGPT integrates with other computer systems, it's easy to see how this can help to automate (at least) smaller, simpler tasks.

In Brief

Market Trends

AI Chips Startup Going Public
Blaize, an AI chip startup founded by former Intel engineers, is set to go public on the NASDAQ. The California-based company was founded in 2011, and has raised over $335 million of investment from the likes of Samsung and Mercedes-Benz.

While the company is said to be currently "unprofitable", the CEO has claimed hundreds of millions of deals in the works, as well as their need for capital investments in manufacturing before the company has its "hockey stick" moment..

Musk’s AI is Taking Over X/Twitter
Musk's AI, Grok, has been integrated into Twitter/X for a while now, at first adding trending news summaries and the like. But AI will soon become even more tightly integrated into the social media platform.

Findings from Nima Owji point to features as innocuous as location-based queries, like asking about nearby stores, to more questionable abilities like the AI being able to modify your tweets. The end goal is unclear here, but it's worth noting that the X startup, xAI, is valued at more than double that of X/Twitter.

”Racist AI” Upsets Book App Users
Book-tracking app Fable recently upset their users with AI-generated reading summaries.

The summaries took each user's read books for the year and created a witty summary. The problem, however, was the rather problematic and sometimes out-right racist language some received. These included suggestions for users to not just read books from one authors of one gender, race, or sexual orientation.

The backlash prompted apologies from the company, as well as for them to immediately remove all AI features from their app (at least for the time being).

Tools and Resources

Reachy
Automate your LinkedIn outreach with this AI.

Shapen
This funky tool lets you create full 3D objects from 2D images. The object can then be used for 3D modelling, 3D printing, and more!

Fullmoon
An iOS app that lets you run LLMs locally on your Apple devices (including phones and iPads).