🚰China's Thirsty AI

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Today we will discuss-

• 💧China's AI industry nearing water crisis

• 🤝🏻India explores Nvidia partnership for AI GPUs

• 💲Bezos Earth Fund allocates $100M for climate-solving AI

• ⚙️9 amazing AI tools you might not have heard of

All this and more - Let's dive in!

👩‍🍳What’s cooking in the newsroom?

China's data centers and AI sector set to surpass South Korea's water consumption by 2030

🌊News - The rapid growth of artificial intelligence and the increasing number of data centers in China could lead to a significant strain on the country's water resources, according to a recent report by the China Water Risk think tank. For context, data centers require water for cooling IT equipment and for generating electricity from coal.

The Hong Kong-based non-profit organization has estimated that data centers in China currently consume about 1.3 billion cubic meters (343 billion gallons) of water per year, which is enough to meet the residential needs of 26 million people. By 2030, this consumption is projected to exceed 3 billion cubic meters—equivalent to the water demand of a population larger than South Korea's—as more data facilities are expected to open.

🚣🏻‍♀️What's more? The report also highlighted the substantial water consumption of AI chatbots, which require significant amounts of water for cooling purposes. It referenced a preprint study from US researchers last year, indicating that the GPT-3 language model consumed 500 milliliters of water for every 10 to 50 responses it generated—20 times more water than needed for 50 Google searches.

To this end, the report emphasized the growing user base of chatbots in China, noting that tech giants such as Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba launched their own AI services last year, which could further impact water consumption.

In response, the think tank urged China's ICT giants to aim for "water neutral" or "water positive" statuses—a goal also pursued by their Silicon Valley counterparts such as Meta and Google.

India to partner with NVIDIA to secure AI-capable GPUs for local startups

🗣️News - India is in discussions with NVIDIA about a potential collaboration to acquire their GPUs and NPUs at discounted prices. The aim is to make these resources available to local startups, researchers, and academic institutions, thus boosting India's AI infrastructure. 

The initiative, estimated to cost ₹10,000 crore ($1.2 billion), is in its initial stages, with a final decision expected after the 2024 general elections.

☕What's the plan? In March, the Union Cabinet approved a ₹10,372 crore budget for India’s AI Mission, aiming to deploy 10,000 GPUs through public-private partnerships.

In line with this,  India is considering two approaches to obtain and distribute AI compute-capable NPUs and GPUs. Firstly, through a rent-and-sublet model, where the government aims to offer GPUs to eligible startups, researchers, and others at discounted rates. 

Alternatively, they are exploring a marketplace model, akin to a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, where performance can be assessed objectively, and incentives allocated accordingly.

💁🏻‍♀️For context - The initiative aims to support startups, for whom acquiring GPUs has been a significant challenge due to scarcity and high costs. To put this into perspective, Nvidia's H100 GPUs typically cost around $50,000 each, while newer Blackwell cards go for about $40,000. Even a basic AI data center requires at least 100 to 300 GPUs, while meaningful computing capabilities for large language models demand 5000-10,000 GPUs. For instance, OpenAI reportedly used 720,000 H100 GPUs worth $36 billion to develop and train Sora, its AI video generator.

Bezos Earth Fund launches $100M initiative to boost AI solutions for climate crisis

🌱News - The Bezos Earth Fund has announced a new initiative called the AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge, offering grants of up to $100 million. 

This initiative aims to explore how advanced AI can contribute to tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, fostering collaboration between environmental organizations and AI technology leaders. 

♻️What areas will the challenge focus on? The first round of the Grand Challenge will focus on advancing solutions in sustainable proteins, biodiversity conservation, and power grid optimization, with an additional "Wild Card" category for innovative ideas. 

Each round will offer two funding opportunities. Initially, up to 30 seed grants will be awarded to promising AI proposals addressing the specified areas, with recipients announced at a Bezos Earth Fund-TED event during Climate Week NYC in late September. 

In the second phase, these awardees can apply for grants of up to $2 million to further develop their concepts into actionable solutions, receiving mentorship, technology support, and access to necessary resources.

🙆🏻‍♀️What else is happening?

• Amazon Music's Maestro is a new AI playlist generator that could challenge Spotify; here's how it works

• Snapchat is watermarking its AI-generated images

• AMD introduces AI chips for business laptops and desktops

• Meta’s Oversight Board probes explicit AI-generated images posted on Instagram and Facebook

• Intel and others commit to building open generative AI tools for the enterprise

😁AI life hacks

• Use data visualization tools - AI-powered data visualization tools can help you create clear and concise visualizations of your data, making it easier to communicate insights to others.

• AI for academic research - Make use of AI-powered search engines for your academic research. AI-powered search engines like Consensus answer queries using data solely from research papers. This can save you hours of filtering through irrelevant pages and is perfect for literature reviews, or obtaining blog citations.

• Generate stock images with AI - If you're a content creator who makes YouTube videos, writes blogs, or curates social media posts, you likely encounter the need for stock images. But, investing in stock images can become costly, and free options often lack quality. Now, with text-to-image AI tools, you can effortlessly produce personalized, high-quality stock-style images in minutes.

👩🏼‍🚒Discover mind-blowing AI tools

1. Presentations.AI - An AI-powered tool that enables users to create professional and engaging presentations quickly and effortlessly ($198/year)

2. ChefGPT - An AI-powered recipe recommendation tool that suggests recipes based on the ingredients and tools you have (Free)

3. 60sec.site - A no-code website builder that allows users to create a landing page in just 60 seconds ($10/month)

4. WatchThis.Dev - A tool that provides users with curated show or movie recommendations (Free)

5. BaruaAI - An AI-powered platform that generates personalized, high-converting sales emails ($39/month)

6. Dupe Any Product - A tool that helps users find affordable dupes of home decor items (Free)

7. PDF Candy - Allows users to convert files to and from PDF format ($3.60/month)

8. Turbologo - An online logo maker tool that helps people to create professional and high-quality logos in minutes (Free)

9. Pseudoface - Generates artificial faces that can be used by content creators who want to remain anonymous (0.99/month)

😲Unusual AI use cases

• AI sports analysis - AI can improve sports viewing with real-time analysis. IBM's Sports Insights Central generates detailed commentary for games, offering viewers insights and a richer experience.

• AI criminal intent prediction - AI has been used to analyze writing styles to predict criminal tendencies. Veritone, an AI brand, uses this technology to examine audio, video, and text data, enabling criminal intent detection through writing styles.

• Fake news detection - AI is also being used to identify misinformation in news and social media. A company called Factmata offers AI tools that can help businesses identify facts from fiction.