Top 5 stories of the week: Deloitte, Meta, Nvidia and Oracle news highlights current state of AI, deep learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) is continuing to evolve rapidly, so it may be unsurprising that Deloitte‘s 2022 State of AI report calls out organizations that are still getting up to speed on the technology. It emphasizes how important the technology is becoming and points out that companies late to the game need to do better — predicting that AI will become critical to business success in the next five years.

In the same vein, a look at some of the most notable overarching trends in deep learning reveals that AI’s use cases continue to revolve around deep learning’s ability to scale. On top of that, other trends like multimodality and unsupervised learning are delivering promising results for the companies that are applying them — although the technology is still not without its faults. 

Some of the latest innovations announced in AI came from Nvidia, Oracle and Meta this week. At the Oracle CloudWorld event, Nvidia and Oracle announced an expanded, multiyear partnership that will bring Nvidia’s GPUs, systems and software into the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The partnership is aimed at bolstering OCI users’ options for AI training and deep learning, along with cluster networking and storage. 

Meanwhile, Meta announced the launch of the universal speech translator (UST) project, which will use AI for real-time speech translation across languages — including one unwritten language, Hokkien, a Chinese language spoken in southeastern China and Taiwan. 

Outside of the AI realm, in data infrastructure news, Snowflake this week acquired TV advertising firm, OpenAP to build out a data clean room solution.

Here’s more from our top 5 tech stories of the week:

1. 4 deep thoughts on deep learning in 2022
   We’re putting another year of exciting developments in artificial intelligence (AI) deep learning behind us – one filled with progress, controversies and, of course, disputes.

   As we wrap up 2022 and prepare to embrace what 2023 has in store, here are some of the most notable overarching trends that marked this year in deep learning:

1. Scale continues to be an important factor
2. Unsupervised learning continues to deliver
3. Multimodality takes big strides
4. Fundamental deep learning problems remain

2. Snowflake acquires stake in OpenAP to set up data clean room for advertisers
   Snowflake Ventures, the venture capital arm of data cloud company Snowflake, today announced an investment in advanced TV advertising firm OpenAP.

   OpenAP was founded in 2017 by a consortium of television publishers to provide advertisers and agencies with a standard open platform for cross-publisher audience targeting and independent posting.

   A few months ago, the ad-tech firm partnered with Snowflake and announced the plan to launch a dedicated clean room solution called OpenAP data hub.

3. Meta AI announces first AI-powered speech translation system for an unwritten language
   Meta AI just announced the launch of the universal speech translator (UST) project, which aims to create artificial intelligence (AI) systems that enable real-time speech-to-speech translation across all languages, even those that are spoken but not commonly written.

   “Meta AI built the first speech translator that works for languages that are primarily spoken rather than written,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO. We’re open-sourcing this, so people can use it for more languages.”

   According to Meta, the model is the first AI-powered speech translation system for the unwritten language Hokkien, a Chinese language spoken in southeastern China and Taiwan and by many in the Chinese diaspora around the world.

4. Deloitte State of AI Report 2022 calls out underachievers 
   Deloitte released the fifth edition of its State of AI in the Enterprise research report today, which surveyed more than 2,600 global executives on how businesses and industries are deploying and scaling artificial intelligence (AI) projects.

   Most notably, the Deloitte report found that while AI continues to move tantalizingly closer to the core of the enterprise – 94% of business leaders agree that AI is critical to success over the next five years – for some, outcomes seem to be lagging.

5. Nvidia and Oracle announce expanded cloud AI partnership
   Nvidia and Oracle announced an expanded, multiyear partnership today at Oracle CloudWorld to help customers speed artificial intelligence (AI) adoption.

   The collaboration will bring Nvidia’s full accelerated computing stack — from GPUs to systems to software — to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

   OCI will add tens of thousands more Nvidia GPUs, including the A100 and upcoming H100, to its capacity. Oracle says that, along with OCI’s AI cloud infrastructure of bare metal, cluster networking, and storage, enterprises will get a broad, accessible portfolio of options for AI training and deep learning.