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Anthropic releases the Claude 3 series model, Suqian, Jiangsu province, China, March 5, 2024
Hard Numbers: Amazon’s AI ambitions, what to use ChatGPT for, energy crisis, Enter Stargate
2.75 billion: Amazon invested an additional $2.75 billion in the AI startup Anthropic, which makes the popular chatbot Claude, brings their total investment to around $4 billion, while Google also has a $2 billion stake in the company. The big tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, with its $13 billion deal with OpenAI, have chosen investments and strategic partnerships instead of buying startups outright. Amazon also announced it’ll spend $150 billion on data centers over the next 15 years to support its AI ambitions.
2: 20% of US adults say they’ve used ChatGPT for work, up from 12% just six months ago, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center. But only 2% of Americans surveyed said they’ve used the chatbot to gather information about the country’s upcoming elections—a good sign for people worrying about the immediate impact of AI tools that have a tendency to make stuff up.
4: The electricity used by data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence represented nearly 2% of global energy use in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. That number could double to 4% by 2026 if current trends continue.
100 billion: Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly teaming up to build data centers along with a supercomputer, nicknamed “Stargate,” to power their artificial intelligence systems. The project, which still has yet to be greenlit, could cost a staggering $100 billion.
Executive Vice-President Vestager and Commissioner Breton on fostering a European approach to Artificial Intelligence, in the European Commission. Brussels the 21/04/2021.
Let’s get some non-American options
In a recent interview, European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said that Europeans should have AI tools that aren’t exclusively made by American companies.
“The choice should not be American or American,” Vestager told Politico. “Europe is open for business from everywhere. But I think it’s important that you have choice.”
Most of the largest AI firms are American. That includes Silicon Valley behemoths like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, but also startups like Anthropic and OpenAI, which make the chatbots Claude and ChatGPT, respectively.
That said, there is a tangible AI presence in Europe: Google’s DeepMind lab, once an independent British company, still largely operates in the UK. The French startup Mistral AI was recently valued at $2 billion, and the UK startup Stability AI, which makes the Stable Diffusion model, is worth $1 billion.
With so many major technology companies headquartered in the US, Europe has long struggled to both rein in overseas tech while boosting its own firms. AI presents a fresh opportunity to reassert its influence. European lawmakers and regulators, about to pass their first-mover AI legislation, simultaneously want to clamp down on the technology and enable its firms to compete on the world stage.