‘Tried and True’ in AI. Nvidia, Anthropic & OpenAI. ARD #202
By Google News AI ·
Today’s theme is ‘Tried and True’, carrying the day in AI. Some of the oldest playbooks out there are still working, and they apply to this AI Tech Wave too. Just with a lot more zeros, and a few unexpected twists.
Three events today: China’s alleged honey pot operation ensnaring Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Anthropic firming up its mega-AI IPO, and OpenAI buttoning down its pre-IPO funding. Then the Gadget AI, on what happens if AI beats quantum computers to breaking encryption. Each one is a tried and true story in the AI Tech Wave, with a twist.
As most of you probably know by now, China apparently ran a honey pot operation on Nvidia, employing a female agent who targeted founder and CEO Jensen Huang, per The New York Times in ‘China’s Top Spy Agency Recruited Woman Who Targeted Jensen Huang’.
A memo circulated among top Trump administration officials last spring said the woman, an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based Nvidia customer, was an asset of China’s Ministry of State Security, its main spy agency. Her job, per the memo, was to learn about American AI chips, and potentially push Nvidia to make its most advanced chips available to China.
US officials believe Jensen had a romantic relationship with her, per the Financial Times in ‘US believes Nvidia’s Huang had romantic relationship with alleged Chinese spy’, and three House committees have asked him to a closed-door briefing later this month, per The Verge in ‘China reportedly recruited AI exec to spy on Jensen Huang’.
It’s all over the news now, detailed in a lot of scenarios. Jensen has written an apology letter acknowledging the affair, and Nvidia’s board is conducting an independent investigation, run by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel, per NBC News in ‘Nvidia opens investigation after CEO Jensen Huang was targeted by Chinese intelligence’.
The board says it has no reason to believe national security or Nvidia’s secrets were compromised, and Nvidia says Jensen continues as CEO without interruption. Apparently, the US government was notified by its spy agencies some time ago. The Chinese government calls the reports unsubstantiated, and smears.
Nvidia, over $5 trillion in market value at its peak, is now about $4.5 trillion, and down another 5 to 6 percent today, so a bit more is being chipped off.
MP Take: it’s extraordinarily unfortunate that this occurred. Nvidia is one of the most important companies, if not the most important, in this AI Tech Wave. Congress is going to want answers, not just the current Republican one, but the Democratic one that’s coming after January 3. A lot of House committees will be asking Jensen more questions, and the board will have to continue its investigation.
In any normal company, this would probably lead to the resignation of the CEO. In this case, until we know more, or unless more details emerge that this is deeper than it looks, Jensen probably gets to keep his job, but with diminished capacity on a global basis.
Jensen, along with Apple, has been one of the key voices trying to balance the relationship between the US and China, under extraordinary geopolitical stress. I’ve written a lot about the importance of the US and China figuring out a way to work through this, to make the global technology pie bigger. Instead, we’re in a race dynamic.
This news event, salacious as it is, is going to be fuel and fodder for a lot of investigations, and potentially a lot of curtailment of the opportunities for…
Originally published by Google News AI
