The AI Year in Stories: Winter 2024

December 22, 2024

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According to Bloomberg’s report, resources from the project will be moved to focus on Gen AI projects at Apple. PICTURE: Getty

We look at the articles that made the news in AI in 2024. Today, it is January and February's turn, featuring Apple and NVIDIA and AMD

Apple to Cancel Long-Term EV Project in Favour of AI

Ten years after Apple commenced its electric vehicle (EV) project, sources suggest the initiative has been cancelled.

The project, widely referred to as Project Titan, has seen uneven progress throughout its life and its end comes as global automakers cut back their investments in electric vehicles, whose demand has dropped significantly.

What is Project Titan?

Having been approved more than a decade ago, Project Titan was developed to capitalise on the growing interest in EV at the time. In fact, it was initially expected that the company would launch its first vehicles as soon as 2024 or 2025, but in January 2024 the launch date was pushed to be no later than 2028.

More recent reports have suggested that the project struggled to get off the ground, with billions of dollars spent on research and development, including changing its software approach and car design.

Apple was also initially rumoured to be working on a fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel and pedals, which would have been radically different to a conventional car. With the iPhone’s original success, it was considered that Apple Car would treat its vehicles much like a digital device.

Enterprise shuffle to prioritise AI services

According to Bloomberg’s report, resources from the project will be moved to focus on Gen AI projects at Apple.

Given that AI is developing at such a rapid pace, plenty of businesses are scrambling to align their developments with the technology in order to remain competitive in the technology sector.

It has been widely speculated that Apple has not been quick off the mark when it comes to major AI innovations. In fact, the company was recently overtaken by Microsoft as the most valuable company worldwide, highlighting that the iPhone-maker could be struggling to keep up with AI innovation efforts.

NVIDIA and AMD Chips Continue to Surge Amid AI Demand

Nvidia

As a result of expanding their global chip presence, NVIDIA and AMD shares have skyrocketed.

Industry leaders continue to vie for the powerful AI-building chips during a time of immense digital demand. The record-high share prices indicate keen investor interest, as increasing numbers of businesses compete to buy graphics processors to harness and deploy AI.

NVIDIA has already been leading the charge in high-end chips, having released its latest chip H200 at the end of 2023, which is designed to train AI models. Likewise, AMD has continued to ramp up its investments into AI technology, with a focus on the enterprise benefits that it can bring.

AI continues to achieve stock market success

Hype over AI has grown exponentially over the past 18 months, particularly with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT causing AI stocks to surge. Now it is up to business leaders to develop that interest into cultivating more sophisticated technology for buyers.

This is what companies like Microsoft have achieved, having recently overtaken Apple as the world’s most valuable company. This is mostly in part due to Microsoft’s successes in generative AI (Gen AI) technology, in addition to its success with Copilot.

NVIDIA’s AI projects have also paid off, with its H200 working to supercharge Gen AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads with its higher performance and memory capabilities. The company has described its newest chip as the world’s most powerful supercharging GPU.

CEO Jensen Huang referred to AI as being a ‘reinvention of computing’ in 2023, as he continues to spearhead the company’s innovations. This includes a number of high-profile collaborations, including the likes of AWS and Microsoft.