Three Hottest AI Trends to Follow

Hi AI Enthusiasts!

Every other week I will explore the top three trends in AI that you need to know to stay competitive in the workforce.

This week, we'll explore the growing buzz around physical AI and robotics, China's innovative application of generative AI, and the surging demand for data centers.

– the future awaits, Ayesha ??

#1 Why Is Everyone Talking About Robots?

The buzz around humanoid robots has reached a fever pitch, with Silicon Valley VCs all talking about "physical AI" at every meetup and conference.?

At Tesla's shareholder meeting, Elon Musk said he already has a few Optimus robots in the California plant and predicts that "next year we'll have over a thousand, maybe a few thousand, Optimus robots working at Tesla."?

Interestingly, he said that buying a humanoid robot would cost around $20,000 once Tesla hits robot production at scale.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is equally optimistic, declaring that "the next wave of AI is physical AI," In Taiwan this month, Huang emphasized NVIDIA's commitment to developing advanced robotics platforms.?

The reason for all this enthusiasm is that robots are getting more intelligent thanks to AI in two ways:

• You can give robots tasks in natural language or upload a manual to read (pretty much how humans interact with AI agents like ChatGPT).?
• Companies like Nvidia are developing AI models that will enable robots to learn movements quickly by observing humans or videos and making decisions on how to interact with and move in the world around them.

If this sounds far-fetched, look at the automotive companies apart from Tesla starting pilots with robots:

• BMW: Announced plans to test humanoid robots from Figure AI at their South Carolina manufacturing facility.
• Mercedes-Benz: Exploring the use of Apptronik's Apollo humanoid robot for tasks like inspecting and delivering components to production line workers.

?? It's still early days in humanoid manufacturing, but it's a trend we cannot ignore.?

#2 China starts to apply generative AI

In general, one hasn’t heard much about generative AI outside the US. Yet, Kai Fu Lee, former President of Google China and Founder of 01.ai, has pointed out a key dynamic in the global AI race: while the US leads in AI research and innovation, China excels in AI application and implementation.

So, if you’re noticing more and more news from China, don’t be surprised.

Case in point: two stories from China this week

• Kuaishou's Kling, a text-to-video AI tool that transforms textual content into high-quality video. The videos it generates from simple text prompts and a few in-app adjustments look incredibly realistic. See the awesome clip above. Imagine it being used across China’s own version of Hollywood.
• Alibaba says its LLM Qwen2 outperforms Meta's LLaMA 3 in math and coding tasks while also reporting that over 90,000 enterprises are using Qwen generative AI models to personalize products for their customers.

My take: It’s always good for consumers to have more choices when it comes to AI, and it’s always good not to have just one geography or a handful of companies dominate access to a transformative technology like AI.

?? I’d love to see more news from Asia, Latin America and Africa in Generative AI. You may not see a lot about what is happening in Generative AI in these regions but don’t underestimate them.

#3 The Data Center Boom

Every single big corporation has AI on its roadmap, but AI needs more than just the goodwill of CEOs to succeed: it needs data centers, and data centers need power.

This is the behind-the-scenes AI infrastructure worth discussing.

First, data centers are popping up everywhere. About a third of the world's 8,000 data centers are in the US, but their expansion is a global trend.?

Here are two examples: Microsoft has committed $3 billion in Virginia and Indiana, $3.3 billion in Southeast Wisconsin, and $7.16 billion in northeastern Spain to build data centers. Amazon is investing $11 billion in Indiana and $9 billion in Singapore.

But how will we power these data centers??

One emerging popular option is nuclear power, particularly small modular reactors (SMRs). Nuclear energy offers a stable and reliable source of electricity with low greenhouse gas emissions.?

Take Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates. Gates has invested $1 billion into a nuclear power plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The other investor is the US Department of Energy. Amazon also recently paid $650 million for a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania.

Food for thought: Ami Badani, Chief Marketing Officer of semiconductor firm Arm, highlighted that data centers training AI models now use 2% of the world's electricity and cautioned that AI could account for 25% of US power consumption by 2030.?

?? Finding a sustainable way to cater to AI's insatiable need for data centers and power is critical to our planet's future.

Interested in learning more?

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