Nvidia Shows New Research on Using AI to Improve Chip Designs

The logo of technology company Nvidia is seen at its headquarters in Santa Clara, California February 11, 2015. (Reuters)
The logo of technology company Nvidia is seen at its headquarters in Santa Clara, California February 11, 2015. (Reuters)
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Nvidia Shows New Research on Using AI to Improve Chip Designs

The logo of technology company Nvidia is seen at its headquarters in Santa Clara, California February 11, 2015. (Reuters)
The logo of technology company Nvidia is seen at its headquarters in Santa Clara, California February 11, 2015. (Reuters)

Nvidia Corp, the world's leading designer of computer chips used in creating artificial intelligence, on Monday showed new research that explains how AI can be used to improve chip design.

The process of designing a chip involves deciding where to place tens of billions of tiny on-off switches called transistors on a piece of silicon to create working chips. The exact placement of those transistors has a big impact on the chip's cost, speed and power consumption.

Chip design engineers use complex design software from firms like Synopsys Inc and Cadence Design Systems Inc to help them optimize the placement of those transistors.

On Monday, Nvidia released a paper showing that it could use a combination of artificial intelligence techniques to find better ways to place big groups of transistors. The paper aimed to improve on a 2021 paper by Alphabet Inc's Google, whose findings later became the subject of controversy.

The Nvidia research took an existing effort developed by University of Texas researchers using what is called reinforcement learning and added a second layer of artificial intelligence on top of it to get even better results.

Nvidia chief scientist Bill Dally said the work is important because chip manufacturing improvements are slowing with per-transistor costs in new generations of chip manufacturing technology now higher than previous generations.

That goes against the famous prediction by Intel Corp co-founder Gordon Moore that chips would always get cheaper and faster.

"You're no longer actually getting an economy from that scaling," Dally said. "To continue to move forward and to deliver more value to customers, we can't get it from cheaper transistors. We have to get it by being more clever on the design."



Reddit Sues AI Giant Anthropic Over Content Use

Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP
Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP
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Reddit Sues AI Giant Anthropic Over Content Use

Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP
Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP

Social media outlet Reddit filed a lawsuit Wednesday against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing the startup of illegally scraping millions of user comments to train its Claude chatbot without permission or compensation.

The lawsuit in a California state court represents the latest front in the growing battle between content providers and AI companies over the use of data to train increasingly sophisticated language models that power the generative AI revolution.

Anthropic, valued at $61.5 billion and heavily backed by Amazon, was founded in 2021 by former executives from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

The company, known for its Claude chatbot and AI models, positions itself as focused on AI safety and responsible development.

"This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets," the suit said.

According to the complaint, Anthropic has been training its models on Reddit content since at least December 2021, with CEO Dario Amodei co-authoring research papers that specifically identified high-quality content for data training.

The lawsuit alleges that despite Anthropic's public claims that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit, the company's automated systems continued to harvest Reddit's servers more than 100,000 times in subsequent months.

Reddit is seeking monetary damages and a court injunction to force Anthropic to comply with its user agreement terms. The company has requested a jury trial.

In an email to AFP, Anthropic said "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously."

Reddit has entered into licensing agreements with other AI giants including Google and OpenAI, which allow those companies to use Reddit content under terms that protect user privacy and provide compensation to the platform.

Those deals have helped lift Reddit's share price since it went public in 2024.

Reddit shares closed up more than six percent on Wednesday following news of the lawsuit.

Musicians, book authors, visual artists and news publications have sued the various AI companies that used their data without permission or payment.

AI companies generally defend their practices by claiming fair use, arguing that training AI on large datasets fundamentally changes the original content and is necessary for innovation.

Though most of these lawsuits are still in early stages, their outcomes could have a profound effect on the shape of the AI industry.