Yikes it was CES this week and basically every product involved AI in some way, here are the highlights from both break and the last week! This is a big one, and includes both hardware and software updates. (hardware first)

Nvidia:

Nvidia made some big moves at CES this week, with the launch of their new RTX 50 series! These new consumer graphics cards come equipped with immense tensor (AI) performance. Nvidia also unveiled some exciting new robotics frameworks that allow you to train robots in a digital world, which saves both time and money as the robots don't wear down. These guys continue to play a huge role in the AI race, and every day they seem to pull further ahead of their competitors, with the possible exception of Google.

AMD:

Also launched some new GPUs and AI stuff, the only really relevant thing was the new laptop CPUs. The new Zen 5 architecture powers the brand new lineup of chips (AMD Ryzen AI 395 Max+). Yes that is its actual name, I don't understand it either. The only important thing here is that these chips enable consumers to run huge and powerful models on their laptop, without sacrificing efficiency. This moves us a step further towards a world where many apps can utilize cool AI and neural network-powered features.

Intel:

Intel was pretty much AMD this week, but substantially worse. Their chips lag behind in all areas and have almost nothing that justifies them over their competitor. Intel continues to be in a sad spot recently.

Meta:

Meta trialed some new AI bots this week, basically influencers but everything they say and create is totally AI. They've also been caught creating images of users and then serving them AI generated pictures of themselves. This has caused fairly significant backlash online, as while these AI posts of the user themselves are private, it's still extremely jarring to see a random picture of yourself created without permission.

Anthropic:

While not releasing a new product, Anthropic has started a new $2 Billion funding round, which likely indicates that something huge is on the horizon, and they likely have been showing potential investors their latest tech.

Microsoft:

A new version of Phi is here, it delivers fairly impressive results for its size, but is pretty far behind its competitors. Compared to Phi 3 however, this new Phi 4 is a huge uplift and puts Microsoft on a track to potential AI relevance at some point.