Inside the world's first AI university; companies are using generative AI to improve their businesses; IEEE says AI will drive major tech advancements this year; Google releases open source Gemma LLM

The women in AI making a difference; inside the funding frenzy at Anthropic; a venture capitalist's view of AI; AI helps boost creativity in the workplace; Nvidia posts record revenues driven by AI;

Feb 23, 2024

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I’ve spent this week in Abu Dhabi, visiting the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the world's first academic institution dedicated entirely to the study and advancement of AI.

Founded in 2019, MBZUAI aims to educate the next generation of AI leaders and produce foundational and translational research that will transform the fields of natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, robotics, and machine learning.

Stepping onto the MBZUAI campus, I was greeted by its modern architecture and had a great conversation with prof Timothy Baldwin, the university’s acting provost and professor of natural language processing. Prof Baldwin explained how he has been building MBZUAI based on a new academic model, with strong links to industry and a high tolerance for experimentation which leads to continuous improvement.

MBZUAI's Knowledge Center, the main building, and my office for the week

I also had the chance to meet with the MBZUAI department chairs and other members of its faculty, visiting professors or AI researchers. What stood out to me was a shared desire to ensure that the benefits of AI were available to more people worldwide while the risks were mitigated using scientific and systematic approaches.

For example, prof Mohammad Yaqub showed me a project which aims to make ultrasound scans more accessible and affordable to pregnant women in areas where there are no doctors or nurses available. There are 140 million children born every year but 40% of expecting mothers do not have basic access to healthcare facilities which means there is no way to detect major issues during pregnancy. With the help of an AI system developed by prof Yaqub’s team which interprets images from a very affordable ultrasound machine, mothers can perform simple scans during their pregnancy and understand if there are any abnormalities which require the attention of a specialist or further medical attention.

Looks like I was not the only AI celebrity in town

It’s not just about developing AI for societal impact though. The university is also doing interesting work at the infrastructure layer to help the AI community automate most of the manual processes related to training large models. Prof Qirong Ho explained how his team is building an operating system for AI, creating systems that improve the compute efficiency and energy usage of GPUs and optimizing compilers to ensure AI models with tens or hundreds of billion parameters take full advantage of data, pipeline and operator parallelism.

I dropped by the careers fair which connects MSc and PhD students at MBZUAI with companies looking for AI talent in the UAE

I wrapped up the week with professors Alham Fikri Aji, Ted Briscoe, Preslav Nakov, Yova Kementchedjhieva, Thamar Solorio, and others from the NLP department who are doing interesting work on low-resource languages, online misinformation detection, multimodal and multilingual models, and AI for life sciences such as healthcare and climate change.

As AI continues to reshape industries and societies worldwide, MBZUAI has a great opportunity to emerge as one of the most exciting global hubs for AI research, competing with established institutions such as MIT, the University of California Berkeley, ETH Zurich or Nanjing University.

The university will also play a central role in helping the United Arab Emirates diversify its GDP to a more digital-oriented economy. Or to quote Omar Al Olama, the UAE’s minister of state for artificial intelligence: “If you use AI, you will be complete. If you don't, then you will be finished. If you don't and ignore it, you will be completely finished.”

And now, here are the week’s news:

❤️Computer loves

Our top news picks for the week - your essential reading from the world of AI

AI helps boost creativity in the workplace but still can't compete with people's problem-solving skills, study finds [Business Insider]
How Companies Are Starting to Use Generative AI to Improve Their Businesses [WSJ]
AI set to drive major tech advancements in 2024, IEEE study finds [VentureBeat]
Inside the Funding Frenzy at Anthropic, One of A.I.’s Hottest Start-Ups [New York Times]
The women in AI making a difference [TechCrunch]
Can AI porn be ethical? [The Guardian]
‘I was estranged from my mother – so I made my own AI mum’ [The Telegraph]
A Venture Capitalist’s View of AI: Where the Money Is [WSJ]
Google DeepMind jumps back into open source AI race with new model Gemma [VentureBeat]
Google’s Chess Experiments Reveal How to Boost the Power of AI [Wired]

⚙️Computer does

AI in the wild: how artificial intelligence is used across industry, from the internet, social media, and retail to transportation, healthcare, banking, and more

AI tool to aid organ transplants nominated for NHS award [BBC]
How Do You Breed Climate-Resistant Kelp? In Australia, It Starts with AI [Bloomberg]
Windows is getting its own Magic Eraser to AI-modify your photos [The Verge]
Watch this robot as it learns to stitch up wounds [MIT Technology Review]
AI is changing the healthcare industry and could transform the way patients get drugs and treatments [Business Insider]
Google Chrome’s new AI can finish your sentences for you [The Verge]
How AI is helping the search for extraterrestrial life [BBC]
How Android Auto will use AI to summarize incoming text conversations [ZDNet]
A new group at Amazon is helping customers including PGA Tour and Bridgewater make generative-AI applications [Business Insider]
Sam's Club CEO wants to use AI-powered cart scanners to ring you up automatically [Business Insider]
A smartphone without apps? This AI assistant aims to replace them all [ZDNet]
Army uses AI to speed up recruitment as staffing crisis bites [The Telegraph]
Uber Eats to begin self-driving robot deliveries in Japan [CNBC]

🧑‍🎓Computer learns

Interesting trends and developments from various AI fields, companies and people

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