Richard Windsor

Featured in: Favicon

disruptive.asia

Articles

The Metaverse is chugging along, but does anyone care?

Aug 29, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

Twelve months is a long time in the technology sector, and while no one is interested in the Metaverse anymore, the developments and product launches are continuing just as I forecasted in 2022 when The Metaverse was the hottest thing since sliced bread. The mood is so bleak that when the word metaverse is mentioned in conjunction with Apple’s Vision Pro device, the fan base and technology press will claim that it is not a metaverse device but something else.
Microsoft should probably just go ahead and buy out OpenAI

May 29, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

Microsoft is putting OpenAI’s technology into almost everything it makes. This is creating single-source risk that I think can only be resolved by the full acquisition of OpenAI. Last week’s Microsoft Build 2023 was all about how generative AI, ChatGPT and OpenAI’s technology would enhance Microsoft products, as well as start to make a dent in Google.
What Micron ban really says about China’s chipset situation

May 23, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

China has banned Micron products from critical infrastructure in a move that clearly demonstrates just how weak its hand is in semiconductors, which remains something it is not going to fix any time soon. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has announced that Micron’s products “posed significant risks to China’s critical information infrastructure”. As such, those that own and run such infrastructure have been ordered to stop buying from Micron.
AI debate - could it make your job better, not worse?

May 14, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

The AI debate continues to dominate public discourse, with the emphasis now being on the job market, and while there are going to be some effects, they are unlikely to result in millions of white-collar workers being out of work. The problem with the AI debateThe other problem with this debate is that it is already becoming highly politicised, meaning that facts are quickly giving way to tribal rivalry, which will help no one. From a very high level, this fear is very easy to understand.
Relax - AI is still too stupid to start Armageddon

May 3, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

The exit of Geoffrey Hinton from Google has caused a stir and reignited the AI safety/Armageddon debate, but the reality remains that humans are at much greater risk from humans than they are from machines, which remain as dumb as ever. Geoffrey Hinton is widely known as the “godfather of AI”, as it was he and his team who first created neural networks during the 1970s and 1980s and then finally got them to work in 2012, sparking the real-world use cases we see today.
May, 2023 - Disruptive.Asia

May 2, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Google vs Microsoft - a tale of two AI search engines

May 1, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

Last week, Google and Microsoft both reported good results but took very different lines on what AI is doing to search. Google says all is well, while Microsoft says that everything is about to change. Microsoft FQ3 23 – OffenseMicrosoft reported excellent results, and promises of good growth and tight cost control allowed the shares to rally strongly in after-hours trading.
Now is the time to make LLMs cheaper to run and less crazy

Apr 25, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

OpenAI has admitted that the limitations of massive compute and massive data for GPT and large language models (LLMs) may have already been reached. This means that to make these systems useful, ways need to be found to implement them cheaply and make them less crazy. At an event last week at MIT, Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, confessed that making the models bigger would no longer make them better, leading many critics to highlight that we are already at the point of diminishing returns.
China’s new LLM chatbots still useful despite clampdown

Apr 17, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

AI proponents will look at the immediate clampdown on large language model (LLM) chatbots by Beijing with dismay. But I think that for the use cases I have identified for these systems, it won’t make much difference. At its 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit, Alibaba announced an LLM-based chatbot called Tonyi Qianwen (“truth from a thousand questions”) that it intends to integrate into its workplace collaboration products.
New Japan chip export controls are bad news for China

Apr 10, 2023 | disruptive.asia | Richard Windsor

Japan has entered the US-China semiconductor fray and put in place restrictions on semiconductor exports that are more draconian than the US to the point that the Japanese state has effectively taken control of its semiconductor capital equipment market. Japan is imposing export restrictions on 23 types of equipment used to make semiconductors. But instead of limiting it just to China, it has flipped the entire industry on its head.