International News 02/05
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Microsoft has announced the introduction of its latest AI model, Phi-3, which represents the company's smallest AI offering to date.
Microsoft has unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) model, Phi-3-mini, which offers enhanced cost-effectiveness and efficiency in content creation and social media posting. Despite its smaller size, the Phi-3-mini outperforms larger models in a range of benchmarks related to language, coding, and mathematical skills. This development is designed to provide companies with limited resources with easier access to AI capabilities. Microsoft highlighted that the Phi-3 model can summarise long documents, extract key insights, and identify industry trends from market research reports. The Phi-3-mini model will be made available on Microsoft's Azure AI model catalogue, Hugging Face machine learning model platform, and Ollama. This announcement follows Microsoft's recent investment of $1.5 billion in the UAE-based AI company G42 and its previous partnership with the French startup Mistral AI to make their models accessible through the Azure cloud computing platform.
https://internasional.kontan.co.id/news/microsoft-memperkenalkan-phi-3-model-ai-terkecilnya
Meta has announced the establishment of an AI Service Innovation Fund.
Meta Platforms has revealed that its capital expenditure in 2024 will be higher than initially projected, while also forecasting lower revenue for the second quarter. The company estimates its revenue for April-June to be between $36.5 billion and $39 billion, with an average of $37.8 billion, which is below the prediction of the London Stock Exchange Group. On the other hand, Meta has increased its capital expenditure forecast, with funds allocated for new investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and computing infrastructure. The total spending target for 2024 will now be between $96 billion and $99 billion, up from the previous projection of $94 billion to $99 billion. CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Meta's current focus is on AI, with plans to significantly increase investment before generating substantial revenue from new products. However, analysts remain sceptical about the increased AI spending, suggesting that the returns on these investments may take years to materialize.
https://internasional.kontan.co.id/news/meta-perbesar-dana-inovasi-layanan-ai
The current low yen rate is not an indication of an imminent increase in interest rates.
The yen has reached new lows against the US dollar and the euro, as investors anticipate that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) meeting will not provide sufficient support for the currency. The yen's weakness against the dollar has surpassed the level of 155.74, its lowest level since 1990. Against the euro, the yen hit a 16-year low of 166.98. While there was a belief that Tokyo authorities would take action if the yen exceeded the 155 level, there is speculation that no intervention will occur. The BOJ is expected to maintain interest rates at the meeting, following a recent increase to 0.1%. The bank has stated that it will raise rates only if it sees improvements in inflation, and it plans to maintain accommodative monetary policies to stimulate the Japanese economy. There is a possibility that the BOJ meeting will adopt a slightly more hawkish tone, based on indications from Governor Kazuo Ueda.