When the U.S. put controls on China in 2022, Chorzempa explained, they set a specific parameter concerning the speed of communication between chips. It was thought that if you control the power of an individual chip that might not be enough, because if you bring enough less powerful chips together, it's possible to have supercomputer-like capabilities at a level the U.S. government didn't want China to obtain. It appears from what DeepSeek described in its R1 paper that the company was able to overcome that speed limit.
"Experts in the technical community in at least early 2023 were pointing out that other restrictions were required to have an effective control as the technology evolved," Chorzempa said.
…After completing these works, having selected as level ground as he could, considering the nature of the country, and having enclosed an area of fourteen miles, he constructed, against an external enemy, fortifications of the same kind in every respect, and separate from these, so that the guards of the fortifications could not be surrounded even by immense numbers, if such a circumstance should take place owing to the departure of the enemy's cavalry; and in order that the Roman soldiers might not be compelled to go out of the camp with great risk, he orders all to provide forage and corn for thirty days.”
Given the persisting global economic crisis, it's essential for individuals to focus on diversifying their income streams independent of governmental reliance. This involves exploring options such as digital currencies. Despite the adversity in the economy, now is an opportune moment to contemplate these investment avenues. Thanks to Jinny Franz for her exceptional guidance and support in mastering these essential skills! so glad I started her program.
In late September, a relief force of eighty thousand Gauls arrived and both Gallic forces attacked the Romans – one from the inside and one from the outside. Caesar sent his cavalry against the relief force while his army fought off an attack from those trying to breakout from the city. Neither Gallic army was able to penetrate the fortifications. The next day Vercingetorix concentrated a new attack force against a weak spot in the inner fortifications. His army successfully broke through but were attacked from behind by Roman cavalry that had ridden around the outer ring to their rear. Caesar, himself, appeared with the troops trying to close the gap and the Romans were ultimately successful.
With their reinforcements routed, and no further hope to break the siege, Silesia surrendered and handed over Vercingetorix to Caesar, who imprisoned him for six years and then paraded him through Rome before his execution.
Of course, Leonidas was of the Agiad line. Menelaos (husband of Helen and brother of Agamemnon) was Kynosouran. Forklore has it that Menelaos migrated from Therapne (old Lakedaimon) to the west bank of the Eurotos and later the Spartan people became Lakedaimons. There is a shrine to Menelaos at Therapne.
And there's that fifth village that was part of Sparta -- Amyklai.
In 2023, the U.S. government added additional layers of restriction that made the Nvidia chips DeepSeek says it trained the model on no longer legal for export. Tightened controls could be further strengthened by subsequent initiatives from the Trump administration.
But through a combination of having a limited number of advanced chips available and innovation spurred on by that limit, DeepSeek was able to build a better, and potentially cheaper, mousetrap.
Pyrrhus – The Underrated Military Mind of Antiquity
King Pyrrhus of Epirus is best known to us for his “Pyrrhic” victory over the Romans at the Battle of Asculum, but that single event does not begin to characterize the life and the skill of this great military mind of antiquity. Scipio Africanus described a conversation he had with Hannibal where he asked the Carthaginian general who he thought was the greatest commander of all time. Hannibal immediately named Alexander as the greatest. Then, when Scipio pressed him for his opinion on the second best, expecting Hannibal to name himself or Scipio, Hannibal replied, “Pyrrhus of Epirus”. Antigonus, when asked who he believed to be the greatest general said, “Pyrrhus, if he lives to be old.” Pyrrhus was good enough to rate a spot in Plutarch’s lives, paired with no less a figure than Gaius Marius. Sadly, the comparison document, which would have paralleled their lives, was lost.
DeepSeek has already shown that you don't need maximum computing power, and you can you use open-source as alternative when building a viable LLM, and in fact, according to Mousavizadeh, these factors can be a driver of innovation.
"We're seeing that limits forced them to use scientific methods and systems that compress data onto a much smaller pool that uses much less power using mixed expert models," she said. AI rivals can "do more with less," Mousavizadeh added.
Continuation of such controls is also likely to push China in further developing its own chips.
While there, Pyrrhus married Ptolemy’s step daughter Antigone and used the Egyptian King’s financing and military aid to regain his throne in 297 B.C. Pyrrhus then moved the Epirian capital to Ambrakia and began to wage war on Demetrius. At one point during the war, Pyrrhus was challenged to one on one combat against Pantaucus, one of Demetrius’ senior officers, and defeated him. He took Macedonia and was declared king, but the conquest could not be held and Pyrrhus was pushed out by Lysimachus in 285 B.C.
Plutarch tells us what happened next. "At this time, then, when Pyrrhus had been driven back to Epirus and had given up Macedonia, fortune put it into his power to enjoy what he had without molestation, to live in peace, and to reign over his own people. But he thought it tedious to the point of nausea if he were not inflicting mischief on others or suffering it at other's hands and, like Achilles, could not endure idleness."
Why is the big tech giant Qualcomm so nervous about ParkerVision CEO Jeffrey Parker appearing on The Glenn Beck Program? After Parker’s last appearance on Glenn’s show, Qualcomm filed a motion to shut him up and named Glenn over a dozen times. Parker joins Glenn again to give updates on the case and refute some of Qualcomm’s accusations against him.
To be sure, there are many reasons to be wary of doing anything to contribute to China's AI advances and successes like DeepSeek, from national security concerns about data sharing with the Chinese government, to ongoing hacking risks, to Chinese AI apps becoming popular enough to be used by Chinese intelligence to learn about Americans and American industries, and to sow division among the public.
Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp told CNBC's Sara Eisen in a recent interview that "we have to run harder, run faster, have an all-country effort."
Palantir's rise — its shares soared 340% last year to lead the S&P 500 — didn't come by trying to stop others, and in that there may be a lesson. "We don't focus on the competition," Karp said. "We focus on how do we execute."
“Consumers today are looking for innovative and user-friendly experiences that give them flexibility and control over their money,” Jim Johnson, co-president of banking solutions at FIS, said in the press release. Affirm's offering can help banks "offer more competitive, differentiated services through their own banking channels,” he said.
Affirm has over 335,000 merchants in its network, ranging from travel booking sites and concert ticket providers to jewelry stores and electronics providers. By bringing BNPL into the debit world, Affirm aims to provide consumers more alternatives to credit.
In 282 the Thurii tribe, located in the heel of Italy, asked Rome for help against the city of Tarentum, so Rome sent a small fleet to the Gulf of Tarentum to assess the situation. More than likely the Romans were exercising a show of support for the aristocrats of Tarentum who were trying to regain power from the democratic faction running the city. Whatever the reason, the convoy was attacked by the Tarentines, and four of the Roman ships were sunk. Rome dispatched an envoy carrying a protest and he was purposely insulted. The Tarentines clearly wanted a war and they appealed to Pyrrhus for support. The following year, the consul L. Aemilianus Barbula was sent with an army and an ultimatum for Tarantum to compensate for the attack on the convoy or face the consequences. The Tarentines were at the point of capitulation when the envoy from Pyrrhus arrived with a message saying the king would lend them a hand.
Pyrrhus, always the adventurer, was ready to move away from the frustrations of Greek politics and pursue something more interesting. As the son-in-law of Agathocles King of Syracuse and a relative of Alexander the Great, he had a legacy to apply to empire building in the west. Courageous, ambitious, and skillful, Pyrrhus would present a challenge to the Roman citizen army.
He arrived in Tarentum in 280 B.C. with 25,000 professional soldiers and 20 elephants.
“When he learned that the Romans were near and lay encamped on the further side of the river Siris, he rode up to the river to get a view of them; and when he had observed their discipline, the appointment of their watches, their order, and the general arrangement of their camp, he was amazed and said to the friend that was nearest him: ‘The discipline of these Barbarians is not barbarous; but the result will show us what it amounts to.’”
That summer he met the consul Valerius Laevinus in the Battle of Heraclea. The Romans had never fought the Greek Phalanx before and the horses of their cavalry were frightened by the elephants. Pyrrhus won the battle, leaving 4,000 men on the field versus Rome’s 7,000, but his victory was dubious because in a foreign land he could not afford significant losses with no way to obtain new recruits. After the battle, Pyrrhus, anticipating Hannibal, raced for Rome hoping to turn the Roman allies to his side, but his efforts to treat with Rome were unsuccessful, so he headed back to Tarentum. In the spring of 279, he fought the Romans again at Asculum, winning a second dubious victory. After that battle he quipped, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."
The project was announced last month. OpenAI at the time said that Stargate would "begin deploying $100 billion immediately." However, Musk questioned whether the companies involved in the initiative had sufficient capital to finance it, stating "they don't actually have the money."
Speaking on Tuesday, Altman took a swipe at Musk, saying: "I'm not the one who tweeted funding secured. I just actually try to show up and build."
The remark was a reference to Musk's controversial claim of 2018 that he had "funding secured" to take his electric car firm Tesla private at $420 per share.
The infamous tweet became the subject of an investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission because of resulting fluctuations in Tesla's share price. Musk eventually reached a settlement with the SEC in which he and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million in fines, with the billionaire also giving up chairmanship of the company.
"Too often I hear that Europe is late to the race — that China or the United States have already gotten ahead. I disagree, because the AI race is far from being over," she said.
"The frontier is constantly moving, leadership is still up for grabs, and behind the frontier is the whole world of AI adoption... Bringing AI to industry-specific applications and harnessing its power for productivity and for people, and this is where Europe can truly lead the race."
However, critics have raised a host of concerns about the proliferation of the technology, including its heavy power usage and the potential for the spread of disinformation through the use of manipulated "deep fakes."
Ahead of the Paris summit, French President Emmanuel Macron shared a video on social media featuring a montage of deep fakes of himself.
Macron also said Sunday that his country's AI sector would receive 109 billion euros ($112.6 billion) of private investment in the "coming years," comparing the pledge to U.S. President Donald Trump's $500 billion private AI investment project "Stargate."
Addressing the summit Tuesday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said America would block efforts by "authoritarian regimes" to "strengthen their military intelligence and surveillance capabilities, capture foreign data and create propaganda to undermine other nations' national security" using AI.
Men believed that in military experience, personal prowess, and daring, he was by far the first of the kings of his time, but that what he won by his exploits he lost by indulging in vain hopes, since through passionate desire for what he had not, he always failed to establish securely what he had. For this reason Antigonus used to liken him to a player with dice who makes many fine throws but does not understand how to use them when they are made.”
Pyrrhic Victory was coined from a single battle, but Pyrrhic behavior (half winning) was a self-inflicted disease that would haunt the man his entire life.
US Senator and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance speaks to a Fox News reporter in the spin room after participating in the Vice Presidential debate with Minnesota Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz hosted by CBS News at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York on October 1, 2024.
"We're all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that's been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes," he said.
In a suggestive swipe toward U.S. allies present in the room, Vance added that it "never pays off" to work with firms operating under such authoritarian regimes.
Collaborating with such parties means "chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure," the U.S. VP added.
The word Phalanx conjures up images of the formidable Greek battle formation and its impact on warfare over half a millennium. Designed to be impregnable through its reliance on a structure of unit strength made up of equal parts, the Phalanx anticipated every power formation in the future of battle including the modern tank.
Lost in the military view of the Phalanx, however, is the impact it had on the development of the Greek political system. Indeed, it was also the social leveling force in Greek society that helped push the Polis into being and sowed the seeds of modern government.
Our story begins in the Greek Archaic period (800 to 500 B.C.) which saw the development of the Polis as a stable political institution. But to get to a Polis, we must first weave together the threads of government and war.
"But to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that fosters the creation of AI technology rather than strangles it, and we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation."
The EU has taken a strict regulatory approach to AI, introducing first-of-its-kind legislation to safeguard against risks posed by the technology. The bloc's landmark AI law, which recently became enforceable for the first time, imposes tough restrictions and threatens hefty fines for breaches.
The phalanx was not invented by the Greeks. The earliest example of the formation was depicted in a Sumerian stone carving from 2,500 B.C. The word phalanx was first used by Homer to describe combat in an organized battle line as distinguished from combat between individuals. Trouble is we don’t know what kind of formation Homer was describing, so we can’t know if our concept of the Phalanx dates from his time.
In the time before the Phalanx, Greek battles were disorganized affairs consisting of two opposing armies running at each other in a line. Once the Greeks perfected it, the Phalanx became the default battle formation ancient armies, until the Romans developed the maniple.
The DeepSeek moment represents the end of the first chapter of AI's recent takeoff as told through the emergence of ChatGPT. It reminds us, that while substantial resources, coalitions, brands, and trends have been established, the narratives we have been championing are not set in stone. DeepSeek, especially with R1, resets all the narratives around open vs closed, US vs China, scaling and commoditization, etc. as we prep for yet another acceleration in the diffusion, progress, and adoption of AI.
Its political importance is based on the following scenario. At the time the Phalanx came into being, Greek cities contained a mixture of wealthy, poor, and those rising in economic status -- an emerging middle class. Ruling kings realized that they could build an army around larger military formations because more men could now afford to buy the necessary equipment. We can only speculate about the chicken and egg here. Did the kings coerce at first and then later the hoplites figured out how to leverage political power, or did the hoplites refuse to fight unless they were given political rights? I suppose we can imagine a case where the initial formations were small coerced units which grew in size when more independent men decided to participate.
Accurate data pinpointing the advent of the Phalanx is elusive. Written evidence is non-existent so we have to rely of archeology to guide us. The following image, referred to as the Chigi vase, dates from around 650 B.C.
ECB President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday said the EU would mobilize a total of 200 billion euros ($206.5 billion) for AI investments in Europe, noting that the race for leadership in the technology had not yet been won by China or the U.S.
We might ask how long the phalanx existed before it was painted on vases, but any answer is only a guess. Certainly the artists had to be interested in the subject and capable of representing it before it was first rendered. Unfortunately, the many attempts to validate the dating by translating the two dimensional formations on pottery into a three dimensional representation of the Phalanx have not met with much success.
The design of the Phalanx required that all hoplites operate as a single unit, meaning that each soldier had an equal, and important role, in the army’s success. Since everyone was an equal, each had the right to demand political authority when the war was over, because he had made an equal contribution to victory. This demand for political authority eventually manifested itself in the strengthening of the legal code, which protected the rights of the lower classes, and increased their participation in the apparatus of government.
Yet, with the most funding in aggregate — more than $20 billion to date, with another $40 billion reportedly in the works — and a viral app in the form of ChatGPT, OpenAI has come to represent a bellwether in the industry.
Unsurprisingly, its two biggest business interests, foundational models and generative AI, appear to be the engines driving all VC activity, with generative AI companies raising $47.4 billion in 2024, and foundational AI technology overtaking AI applications with the most growth (and a giant slice of funding) over the last two years.
“In Europe we have a bit of an innovators’ dilemma,” said Wijngaarde. “We don’t want to replace what we have and that can be a less aggressive position.”
How will 2024 AI funding play out in 2025?
One of the reasons AI startups have raised so much money is that the costs of building and operating these services: large language models cost a lot in computing infrastructure to build and run. The emergence of DeepSeek and other projects — one built a rival to an OpenAI model for just $50 — present an alternative approach built on open source. Is that something we will see develop further in the year ahead?
So far, the prospects for open-source companies have been fairly modest, even counting the outsized presence of Mistral (which bills itself as open source) in Europe and Meta’s efforts in the space.
Dealroom says some 12% of AI VC funding last year went to startups building open source AI. “However, there is considerable grey area for what is considered open source or not,” Orla Browne, its head of insights, told me. “For example, xAI is not included in these figures, as while Grok-1 was open source, Grok-2 is currently not. With the inclusion of xAI alone, the percentage would rise to 22%.”
Comulate, which builds tools to help insurance companies manage billing and revenue operations, has closed a round of $20 million, a Series B that it will be using to expand its tech stack to cover more functions and to scale operations.
Bond and strategic backer Workday — the back office giant — are co-leading the round. The funding is coming after Comulate’s experienced a barnstorming year (in the good sense).
In 2024, the startup tripled revenues (it doesn’t disclose what those revenues are except to say that they are in the tens of millions). It was getting so much inbound business from large firms that — for what its worth — it said it skipped raising a Series A and went directly to Series B.
“There’s a lot of software out there that does very similar things, built by other software professionals who know how to build good software for problems they’ve experienced,” he said. “We just felt Silicon Valley didn’t need more software for itself.”
So they intentionally changed focus to insurance, he said, an area they knew very little about.
It was a lucky hunch. Insurance is one of the many industries that seem tech-adjacent (it’s often coupled with financial services) but in truth has been largely ignored when it comes to new technology, in particular vertical-specific solutions.
“It’s a sleepy but critical area,” said Jay Simons, the general partner at Bond. Simons himself has first-hand experience of building “SaaS for SaaS”, as the former president of Atlassian.
If the world is your oyster, “sleepy but critical” is nearly a perfect formula when it comes to figuring out what to target in enterprise software.
Comulate says that its customers today include brokers the Baldwin Group, IMA Financial, Risk Strategies, and The Hilb Group.
When the U.S. put controls on China in 2022, Chorzempa explained, they set a specific parameter concerning the speed of communication between chips. It was thought that if you control the power of an individual chip that might not be enough, because if you bring enough less powerful chips together, it's possible to have supercomputer-like capabilities at a level the U.S. government didn't want China to obtain. It appears from what DeepSeek described in its R1 paper that the company was able to overcome that speed limit.
"Experts in the technical community in at least early 2023 were pointing out that other restrictions were required to have an effective control as the technology evolved," Chorzempa said.
…After completing these works, having selected as level ground as he could, considering the nature of the country, and having enclosed an area of fourteen miles, he constructed, against an external enemy, fortifications of the same kind in every respect, and separate from these, so that the guards of the fortifications could not be surrounded even by immense numbers, if such a circumstance should take place owing to the departure of the enemy's cavalry; and in order that the Roman soldiers might not be compelled to go out of the camp with great risk, he orders all to provide forage and corn for thirty days.”
!summarize #cost #ai #training #compute
Given the persisting global economic crisis, it's essential for individuals to focus on diversifying their income streams independent of governmental reliance. This involves exploring options such as digital currencies. Despite the adversity in the economy, now is an opportune moment to contemplate these investment avenues. Thanks to Jinny Franz for her exceptional guidance and support in mastering these essential skills! so glad I started her program.
In late September, a relief force of eighty thousand Gauls arrived and both Gallic forces attacked the Romans – one from the inside and one from the outside. Caesar sent his cavalry against the relief force while his army fought off an attack from those trying to breakout from the city. Neither Gallic army was able to penetrate the fortifications. The next day Vercingetorix concentrated a new attack force against a weak spot in the inner fortifications. His army successfully broke through but were attacked from behind by Roman cavalry that had ridden around the outer ring to their rear. Caesar, himself, appeared with the troops trying to close the gap and the Romans were ultimately successful.
With their reinforcements routed, and no further hope to break the siege, Silesia surrendered and handed over Vercingetorix to Caesar, who imprisoned him for six years and then paraded him through Rome before his execution.
Of course, Leonidas was of the Agiad line. Menelaos (husband of Helen and brother of Agamemnon) was Kynosouran. Forklore has it that Menelaos migrated from Therapne (old Lakedaimon) to the west bank of the Eurotos and later the Spartan people became Lakedaimons. There is a shrine to Menelaos at Therapne.
And there's that fifth village that was part of Sparta -- Amyklai.
In 2023, the U.S. government added additional layers of restriction that made the Nvidia chips DeepSeek says it trained the model on no longer legal for export. Tightened controls could be further strengthened by subsequent initiatives from the Trump administration.
But through a combination of having a limited number of advanced chips available and innovation spurred on by that limit, DeepSeek was able to build a better, and potentially cheaper, mousetrap.
Pyrrhus – The Underrated Military Mind of Antiquity
King Pyrrhus of Epirus is best known to us for his “Pyrrhic” victory over the Romans at the Battle of Asculum, but that single event does not begin to characterize the life and the skill of this great military mind of antiquity. Scipio Africanus described a conversation he had with Hannibal where he asked the Carthaginian general who he thought was the greatest commander of all time. Hannibal immediately named Alexander as the greatest. Then, when Scipio pressed him for his opinion on the second best, expecting Hannibal to name himself or Scipio, Hannibal replied, “Pyrrhus of Epirus”. Antigonus, when asked who he believed to be the greatest general said, “Pyrrhus, if he lives to be old.” Pyrrhus was good enough to rate a spot in Plutarch’s lives, paired with no less a figure than Gaius Marius. Sadly, the comparison document, which would have paralleled their lives, was lost.
DeepSeek has already shown that you don't need maximum computing power, and you can you use open-source as alternative when building a viable LLM, and in fact, according to Mousavizadeh, these factors can be a driver of innovation.
"We're seeing that limits forced them to use scientific methods and systems that compress data onto a much smaller pool that uses much less power using mixed expert models," she said. AI rivals can "do more with less," Mousavizadeh added.
Continuation of such controls is also likely to push China in further developing its own chips.
!summarize #georgefriedman #china #Economy
While there, Pyrrhus married Ptolemy’s step daughter Antigone and used the Egyptian King’s financing and military aid to regain his throne in 297 B.C. Pyrrhus then moved the Epirian capital to Ambrakia and began to wage war on Demetrius. At one point during the war, Pyrrhus was challenged to one on one combat against Pantaucus, one of Demetrius’ senior officers, and defeated him. He took Macedonia and was declared king, but the conquest could not be held and Pyrrhus was pushed out by Lysimachus in 285 B.C.
Plutarch tells us what happened next. "At this time, then, when Pyrrhus had been driven back to Epirus and had given up Macedonia, fortune put it into his power to enjoy what he had without molestation, to live in peace, and to reign over his own people. But he thought it tedious to the point of nausea if he were not inflicting mischief on others or suffering it at other's hands and, like Achilles, could not endure idleness."
Why is the big tech giant Qualcomm so nervous about ParkerVision CEO Jeffrey Parker appearing on The Glenn Beck Program? After Parker’s last appearance on Glenn’s show, Qualcomm filed a motion to shut him up and named Glenn over a dozen times. Parker joins Glenn again to give updates on the case and refute some of Qualcomm’s accusations against him.
!summarize #crybertruck #tesla #ev #insiders
To be sure, there are many reasons to be wary of doing anything to contribute to China's AI advances and successes like DeepSeek, from national security concerns about data sharing with the Chinese government, to ongoing hacking risks, to Chinese AI apps becoming popular enough to be used by Chinese intelligence to learn about Americans and American industries, and to sow division among the public.
Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp told CNBC's Sara Eisen in a recent interview that "we have to run harder, run faster, have an all-country effort."
Palantir's rise — its shares soared 340% last year to lead the S&P 500 — didn't come by trying to stop others, and in that there may be a lesson. "We don't focus on the competition," Karp said. "We focus on how do we execute."
“Consumers today are looking for innovative and user-friendly experiences that give them flexibility and control over their money,” Jim Johnson, co-president of banking solutions at FIS, said in the press release. Affirm's offering can help banks "offer more competitive, differentiated services through their own banking channels,” he said.
Affirm has over 335,000 merchants in its network, ranging from travel booking sites and concert ticket providers to jewelry stores and electronics providers. By bringing BNPL into the debit world, Affirm aims to provide consumers more alternatives to credit.
He looked westward.
In 282 the Thurii tribe, located in the heel of Italy, asked Rome for help against the city of Tarentum, so Rome sent a small fleet to the Gulf of Tarentum to assess the situation. More than likely the Romans were exercising a show of support for the aristocrats of Tarentum who were trying to regain power from the democratic faction running the city. Whatever the reason, the convoy was attacked by the Tarentines, and four of the Roman ships were sunk. Rome dispatched an envoy carrying a protest and he was purposely insulted. The Tarentines clearly wanted a war and they appealed to Pyrrhus for support. The following year, the consul L. Aemilianus Barbula was sent with an army and an ultimatum for Tarantum to compensate for the attack on the convoy or face the consequences. The Tarentines were at the point of capitulation when the envoy from Pyrrhus arrived with a message saying the king would lend them a hand.
!summarize #elonmusk #government #doge
Pyrrhus, always the adventurer, was ready to move away from the frustrations of Greek politics and pursue something more interesting. As the son-in-law of Agathocles King of Syracuse and a relative of Alexander the Great, he had a legacy to apply to empire building in the west. Courageous, ambitious, and skillful, Pyrrhus would present a challenge to the Roman citizen army.
He arrived in Tarentum in 280 B.C. with 25,000 professional soldiers and 20 elephants.
“When he learned that the Romans were near and lay encamped on the further side of the river Siris, he rode up to the river to get a view of them; and when he had observed their discipline, the appointment of their watches, their order, and the general arrangement of their camp, he was amazed and said to the friend that was nearest him: ‘The discipline of these Barbarians is not barbarous; but the result will show us what it amounts to.’”
That summer he met the consul Valerius Laevinus in the Battle of Heraclea. The Romans had never fought the Greek Phalanx before and the horses of their cavalry were frightened by the elephants. Pyrrhus won the battle, leaving 4,000 men on the field versus Rome’s 7,000, but his victory was dubious because in a foreign land he could not afford significant losses with no way to obtain new recruits. After the battle, Pyrrhus, anticipating Hannibal, raced for Rome hoping to turn the Roman allies to his side, but his efforts to treat with Rome were unsuccessful, so he headed back to Tarentum. In the spring of 279, he fought the Romans again at Asculum, winning a second dubious victory. After that battle he quipped, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."
!summarize #trump #wealth #sovereignwealth
The project was announced last month. OpenAI at the time said that Stargate would "begin deploying $100 billion immediately." However, Musk questioned whether the companies involved in the initiative had sufficient capital to finance it, stating "they don't actually have the money."
Speaking on Tuesday, Altman took a swipe at Musk, saying: "I'm not the one who tweeted funding secured. I just actually try to show up and build."
The remark was a reference to Musk's controversial claim of 2018 that he had "funding secured" to take his electric car firm Tesla private at $420 per share.
The infamous tweet became the subject of an investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission because of resulting fluctuations in Tesla's share price. Musk eventually reached a settlement with the SEC in which he and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million in fines, with the billionaire also giving up chairmanship of the company.
"Too often I hear that Europe is late to the race — that China or the United States have already gotten ahead. I disagree, because the AI race is far from being over," she said.
"The frontier is constantly moving, leadership is still up for grabs, and behind the frontier is the whole world of AI adoption... Bringing AI to industry-specific applications and harnessing its power for productivity and for people, and this is where Europe can truly lead the race."
However, critics have raised a host of concerns about the proliferation of the technology, including its heavy power usage and the potential for the spread of disinformation through the use of manipulated "deep fakes."
Ahead of the Paris summit, French President Emmanuel Macron shared a video on social media featuring a montage of deep fakes of himself.
Macron also said Sunday that his country's AI sector would receive 109 billion euros ($112.6 billion) of private investment in the "coming years," comparing the pledge to U.S. President Donald Trump's $500 billion private AI investment project "Stargate."
Addressing the summit Tuesday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said America would block efforts by "authoritarian regimes" to "strengthen their military intelligence and surveillance capabilities, capture foreign data and create propaganda to undermine other nations' national security" using AI.
Men believed that in military experience, personal prowess, and daring, he was by far the first of the kings of his time, but that what he won by his exploits he lost by indulging in vain hopes, since through passionate desire for what he had not, he always failed to establish securely what he had. For this reason Antigonus used to liken him to a player with dice who makes many fine throws but does not understand how to use them when they are made.”
Pyrrhic Victory was coined from a single battle, but Pyrrhic behavior (half winning) was a self-inflicted disease that would haunt the man his entire life.
US Senator and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance speaks to a Fox News reporter in the spin room after participating in the Vice Presidential debate with Minnesota Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz hosted by CBS News at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York on October 1, 2024.
"We're all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that's been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes," he said.
In a suggestive swipe toward U.S. allies present in the room, Vance added that it "never pays off" to work with firms operating under such authoritarian regimes.
Collaborating with such parties means "chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure," the U.S. VP added.
!summarize #australia #ev #tax #automotive
The word Phalanx conjures up images of the formidable Greek battle formation and its impact on warfare over half a millennium. Designed to be impregnable through its reliance on a structure of unit strength made up of equal parts, the Phalanx anticipated every power formation in the future of battle including the modern tank.
Lost in the military view of the Phalanx, however, is the impact it had on the development of the Greek political system. Indeed, it was also the social leveling force in Greek society that helped push the Polis into being and sowed the seeds of modern government.
Our story begins in the Greek Archaic period (800 to 500 B.C.) which saw the development of the Polis as a stable political institution. But to get to a Polis, we must first weave together the threads of government and war.
"But to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that fosters the creation of AI technology rather than strangles it, and we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation."
The EU has taken a strict regulatory approach to AI, introducing first-of-its-kind legislation to safeguard against risks posed by the technology. The bloc's landmark AI law, which recently became enforceable for the first time, imposes tough restrictions and threatens hefty fines for breaches.
The phalanx was not invented by the Greeks. The earliest example of the formation was depicted in a Sumerian stone carving from 2,500 B.C. The word phalanx was first used by Homer to describe combat in an organized battle line as distinguished from combat between individuals. Trouble is we don’t know what kind of formation Homer was describing, so we can’t know if our concept of the Phalanx dates from his time.
In the time before the Phalanx, Greek battles were disorganized affairs consisting of two opposing armies running at each other in a line. Once the Greeks perfected it, the Phalanx became the default battle formation ancient armies, until the Romans developed the maniple.
The DeepSeek moment represents the end of the first chapter of AI's recent takeoff as told through the emergence of ChatGPT. It reminds us, that while substantial resources, coalitions, brands, and trends have been established, the narratives we have been championing are not set in stone. DeepSeek, especially with R1, resets all the narratives around open vs closed, US vs China, scaling and commoditization, etc. as we prep for yet another acceleration in the diffusion, progress, and adoption of AI.
!summarize #fox #podcast #megynkelly #tuckercarlson #monopoly
Its political importance is based on the following scenario. At the time the Phalanx came into being, Greek cities contained a mixture of wealthy, poor, and those rising in economic status -- an emerging middle class. Ruling kings realized that they could build an army around larger military formations because more men could now afford to buy the necessary equipment. We can only speculate about the chicken and egg here. Did the kings coerce at first and then later the hoplites figured out how to leverage political power, or did the hoplites refuse to fight unless they were given political rights? I suppose we can imagine a case where the initial formations were small coerced units which grew in size when more independent men decided to participate.
Accurate data pinpointing the advent of the Phalanx is elusive. Written evidence is non-existent so we have to rely of archeology to guide us. The following image, referred to as the Chigi vase, dates from around 650 B.C.
ECB President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday said the EU would mobilize a total of 200 billion euros ($206.5 billion) for AI investments in Europe, noting that the race for leadership in the technology had not yet been won by China or the U.S.
!summarize #economy #global #recession #Trump
!summarize #aisummit #jdvance #macron #france #ai
We might ask how long the phalanx existed before it was painted on vases, but any answer is only a guess. Certainly the artists had to be interested in the subject and capable of representing it before it was first rendered. Unfortunately, the many attempts to validate the dating by translating the two dimensional formations on pottery into a three dimensional representation of the Phalanx have not met with much success.
The design of the Phalanx required that all hoplites operate as a single unit, meaning that each soldier had an equal, and important role, in the army’s success. Since everyone was an equal, each had the right to demand political authority when the war was over, because he had made an equal contribution to victory. This demand for political authority eventually manifested itself in the strengthening of the legal code, which protected the rights of the lower classes, and increased their participation in the apparatus of government.
Yet, with the most funding in aggregate — more than $20 billion to date, with another $40 billion reportedly in the works — and a viral app in the form of ChatGPT, OpenAI has come to represent a bellwether in the industry.
Unsurprisingly, its two biggest business interests, foundational models and generative AI, appear to be the engines driving all VC activity, with generative AI companies raising $47.4 billion in 2024, and foundational AI technology overtaking AI applications with the most growth (and a giant slice of funding) over the last two years.
!summarize #trump #gaza #idea #war
“In Europe we have a bit of an innovators’ dilemma,” said Wijngaarde. “We don’t want to replace what we have and that can be a less aggressive position.”
How will 2024 AI funding play out in 2025?
One of the reasons AI startups have raised so much money is that the costs of building and operating these services: large language models cost a lot in computing infrastructure to build and run. The emergence of DeepSeek and other projects — one built a rival to an OpenAI model for just $50 — present an alternative approach built on open source. Is that something we will see develop further in the year ahead?
!summarize #eu #countries #economy #regulation
So far, the prospects for open-source companies have been fairly modest, even counting the outsized presence of Mistral (which bills itself as open source) in Europe and Meta’s efforts in the space.
Dealroom says some 12% of AI VC funding last year went to startups building open source AI. “However, there is considerable grey area for what is considered open source or not,” Orla Browne, its head of insights, told me. “For example, xAI is not included in these figures, as while Grok-1 was open source, Grok-2 is currently not. With the inclusion of xAI alone, the percentage would rise to 22%.”
Comulate, which builds tools to help insurance companies manage billing and revenue operations, has closed a round of $20 million, a Series B that it will be using to expand its tech stack to cover more functions and to scale operations.
Bond and strategic backer Workday — the back office giant — are co-leading the round. The funding is coming after Comulate’s experienced a barnstorming year (in the good sense).
In 2024, the startup tripled revenues (it doesn’t disclose what those revenues are except to say that they are in the tens of millions). It was getting so much inbound business from large firms that — for what its worth — it said it skipped raising a Series A and went directly to Series B.
!summarize #unitedstates #ai #jdvance #unitedstates
“There’s a lot of software out there that does very similar things, built by other software professionals who know how to build good software for problems they’ve experienced,” he said. “We just felt Silicon Valley didn’t need more software for itself.”
So they intentionally changed focus to insurance, he said, an area they knew very little about.
It was a lucky hunch. Insurance is one of the many industries that seem tech-adjacent (it’s often coupled with financial services) but in truth has been largely ignored when it comes to new technology, in particular vertical-specific solutions.
“It’s a sleepy but critical area,” said Jay Simons, the general partner at Bond. Simons himself has first-hand experience of building “SaaS for SaaS”, as the former president of Atlassian.
If the world is your oyster, “sleepy but critical” is nearly a perfect formula when it comes to figuring out what to target in enterprise software.
Comulate says that its customers today include brokers the Baldwin Group, IMA Financial, Risk Strategies, and The Hilb Group.