Apple poaches Google AI employees / AWS releases 'Q' assistant to businesses / Microsoft to invest $1.7B in Indonesia

Plus: The number of groups lobbying the U.S. on AI nearly tripled from 2022 to 2023.

Inside AI For April 30, 2024

Here’s a look at today's AI briefing: Apple poaches AI employees from Google. AWS releases 'Q' AI assistant to all businesses. Microsoft to invest $1.7B in AI and cloud infrastructure in Indonesia. Number of groups lobbying on AI nearly triples. Samsung profits surge amid demand for chips used in AI applications. Beth p/beth-duckett

1 Apple has hired AI specialists from Google and set up a low-profile AI lab in Switzerland, reports the Financial Times. Apple has expanded its AI team by poaching experts from Amazon, Meta, Netflix, and especially Google. More: Apple has brought in at least 36 AI experts from Google since it hired John Giannandrea as its top SVP of AI strategy in 2018. Apple's AI team also includes former Google experts such as Samy Bengio and Ruoming Pang. While the AI team primarily operates out of California and Seattle, it has expanded its presence in Zurich. The company built a "Vision Lab" research center there after acquiring locally-based AI startups FaceShift and Fashwell. Many of the Zurich employees are involved in Apple's research on generative AI models. Zoom out: Apple researchers recently revealed ReALM (Reference Resolution as Language Modeling). The conversational AI system could improve how Siri understands context and processes commands.

2 Amazon Web Services (AWS) has made its AI assistant "Q" generally available to businesses and developers. The chatbot is an assistant for AWS users, answering employee questions based on a company's data and workflows. More: Q can also streamline workflows by automating coding, debugging, planning, and data querying. The assistant integrates with over 40 data sources like Microsoft 365 and Salesforce. Companies can use it to build chatbots from their own data to answer employee questions. Zoom out: Amazon Q Developer and Amazon Q Business are now generally available. The Developer version targets coding, while Q Business lets enterprises tailor the AI assistant to their needs.

3 Microsoft plans to spend $1.7B on cloud and AI infrastructure over four years. The company will also use the funds to train 2.5 million people in Southeast Asia in AI skills by 2025, including 840,000 Indonesians. More: CEO Satya Nadella announced the investment Tuesday after meeting with Indonesian President Joko Widodo. The two discussed AI and tech breakthroughs, joint AI research, and talent development. Indonesia said it is willing to offer Microsoft incentives for its investments Microsoft also recently announced plans to invest $2.9B in Japan's cloud and AI infrastructure and $1.5B in UAE AI firm G42. Zoom out: Buoyed by a younger tech-savvy population, Indonesia's goal is to become a developed nation by 2045. Indonesia's Gen Z makes up 28% of its population, while Millennials account for 25.9%.

4 From 2022 to 2023, the number of groups lobbying the U.S. government on AI skyrocketed from 158 to 451, according to OpenSecrets data. What the numbers show: Last year, 334 of the 451 organizations lobbying on AI did so for the first time. These included Visa, GSK, Ernst and Young, BSA The Software Alliance, Andreessen Horowitz, the ACLU, MIT, and Yale, according to OpenSecrets. More: Big tech companies still dominate in the AI lobbying arena, allegedly pushing for minimal regulations despite public support for AI regulation, according to Time magazine, which cited multiple Congressional staffers and experts. Several staffers said that while the number of lobbyists they met with stayed the same, lobbyists are increasingly bringing up AI as a topic in discussions.

5 Samsung Electronics reported a 933% surge in operating profit for the first quarter, driven by higher chip prices and demand for products used in AI applications. The turnaround follows six quarters of profit declines and record losses during a post-pandemic slump. More: The world's largest memory chip maker cited solid demand for servers, storage, and DRAM and NAND chips used in AI applications, marking a return to profitability in its memory chip business. Samsung's operating profit surged to 6.6 trillion won in Q1, its highest since 2022, up from 640 billion won a year earlier. Its revenue was up 13%, including a 96% increase in memory chip sales. What's next: Samsung expects generative AI to drive its Q2 performance, with plans to triple its supply of advanced High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips essential for AI applications. HBM chips offer quicker data processing and lower power usage compared to traditional NAND chips.

6 Who's hiring in AI: Expert AI/ML Scientist - Generative AI and Knowledge Graphs SAP | Palo Alto, California Computer Vision Architect Apple | Sunnyvale, California Senior Product Manager, AI/ML Network Fabric Google | Sunnyvale, California GenAI Research Scientist - Multimodal and Computer Vision Databricks | New York, New York Sr. Principal Engineer, GPU AI Research and Path Finding Intel | Santa Clara, California Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Search Recommendation TikTok | San Jose, California Developer AI Senior Staff Engineer, Machine Learning Google | New York, New York; Sunnyvale, California

7 QUICK HITS: Eight major U.S. newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Canalys forecasts that 60% of PCs shipped by 2027 will be AI-capable, up from 19% in 2024. Yelp's new chatbot, Yelp Assistant, uses conversational AI to help users find local businesses. Sam's Club says its AI tech allowing customers to exit without receipts is in 20% of its stores, with plans to expand to all locations by year-end.

Beth Duckett AI and technology writer Beth is a contributing editor and writer of Inside's AI and Tech newsletters. She has written for publications including USA Today, the Arizona Business Gazette, and The Arizona Republic, where she received recognition with a Pulitzer Prize nomination and a First Amendment Award for collaborative reporting on state pension cost increases. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com. This newsletter was edited by Beth Duckett

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