OpenAI has made a deal for some $38 billion for AI training with Amazon. Theverge.com reports that Amazon Web Services that will give the AI giant access to “hundreds of thousands” of Nvidia GPUs to power its AI models. The seven-year partnership comes as Microsoft continues to loosen its grip on OpenAI, dropping its status as its exclusive cloud provider and losing the first right of refusal to host its AI workloads. In a press release, OpenAI said it will “immediately” start using AWS compute to train its AI models, with “all capacity targeted to be deployed before the end of 2026, and the ability to expand further into 2027 and beyond.”

The CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, has come out and said what a lot of us have believed to be true….that only biological beings are capable of consciousness, and that developers and researchers should stop pursuing projects that suggest otherwise. According to CNBC.com, he told a conference in Houston,  “If you ask the wrong question, you end up with the wrong answer. I think it’s totally the wrong question.” Suleyman says it is particularly important to draw a clear contrast between AI getting smarter and more capable versus its ability to ever have human emotions. “Quite simply, we’re creating AIs that are always working in service of the human,” he said.

Apple has of late being using ChatGPT to answer more detailed queries that Siri gets, buy handing off to the large language model…but first asking you if it is ok if your prompt leaves the Apple private server system. Now, a change is afoot. 9to5mac.com picked up a report from Mark Gurman that says starting this spring, Apple will use a bulked up version of Siri, backed by Google Gemini models. Here’s the difference, though. The Gemini models will run on Apple’s private servers, giving the user much more privacy than with the old system. The new Siri setup will have three distinct components; a query planner, a knowledge search system, and a summarizer. Google Gemini models will run on Apple’s servers and provide planner and summarizer capabilities. It should be able to do much more personalized questions, like ‘What was that book Mom recommended?’ This setup is similar to what Samsung does with its Galaxy phones. Many Galaxy AI features are really Google Gemini with a light Samsung coat of paint on them.

With the continuing issues around plastic pollution, here’s a bit of a ray of sunshine…A neural network has found an enzyme that can break down polyurethane. Arstechnica.com notes that the plastic is often found in the soles of shoes…which get thrown out when worn and the plastic remains for the ages. The enzyme can break the plastic down into useable chemicals within 12 hours! The new enzyme is compatible with an industrial-style recycling process that breaks the polymer down into its basic building blocks, which can be used to form fresh polyurethane. This may help reduce the some 22 million metric tons of polyurethane that was made in just 2024! 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.