Latest news with #GordonMoore
Time Magazine
15 hours ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
The Politics, and Geopolitics, of AI
Few political leaders realize the rate at which artificial intelligence is racing ahead. For decades, technological progress has been logged at a pace known as 'Moore's Law,' named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel who observed that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every 18 to 24 months. Now, we are approaching 'Nadella's Law.' 'Just like Moore's Law, we saw the doubling in performance every 18 months with AI. We have now started to see that doubling every six months or so,' said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft at the company's annual Ignite conference in 2024. As a result of this disruptive velocity, two significant consequences are on the immediate horizon One is that we are quickly approaching a world in which AI agents can autonomously produce scientific advancements. AI is already being used in fields like biotech, in which AI models leverage biological research to quickly run experiments which can generate innovations in food production, medicine, and environmental protection. And in the field of materials science, AI is being used to design new materials for use in energy production, medicine, construction, electronics, and aerospace. Soon, AI models could perform the entire scientific method, without humans. Read More: What Happens When AI Replaces Workers? The other development is 'agentic AI' that can execute increasingly complex workplace tasks without human intervention. This advancement, which experts say is probably a year away, will reinvent the workplace. Productivity will surge, the nature of white-collar work, and the number of white-collar workers, will change significantly. Knowledge work will soon be conducted entirely in the digital world, and when AI is better at coding than humans are, there will be huge disruption in the labor market. For those in scientific research, paralegal work, accounting, analytics, graphic design and any entry-level desk job, the day when AI does your job might be just two to three years away. And this trend of job-replacement will extend far beyond white-collar offices as driverless vehicles put truck, bus, and taxi drivers out of work. That brings us to the politics. In the beginning, most private- and public-sector organizations will resist the wholesale dislocation of huge numbers of workers for as long as they can. But when the next economic downturn hits, leaders of these organizations will face the first of many tough tradeoffs as they plot their path toward the future. Last fall, we got an early preview when thousands of American longshoremen and dockworkers went on strike over money, better benefits, and protection against 'any form of automation—full or semi—that replaces jobs or historical work functions.' The strike ended with an agreement, but one that didn't fully resolve the automation question. If you think populism plays a big role in politics now, you ain't seen nothing yet. There's also a geopolitical dimension to AI's rapid advance. A pitched battle has already begun, mainly between the U.S. and China, over access to the semiconductors, energy, and critical and rare earth minerals needed for the AI revolution. Trump's recent decision to allow China to buy Nvidia's most sophisticated chips underlined the leverage that China's dominance of critical and rare earth mineral production and processing gives Beijing, at least until the US can develop capacities that narrow this advantage. But the deep underlying mistrust between Washington and Beijing continues undiminished. In the past, national power has depended on geography, relative military strength, the cohesion of tribal identities, population size, the reliability of social safety nets, and vulnerability to climate change. In the years to come, these attributes will matter mainly for the impact they have on establishing AI dominance. The scramble for AI inputs, and the ability to deny rivals access to them, will determine the balance of power in the 21st century. Here, the U.S. has important advantages—if it can keep them. America has the largest number of the so-called 'hyperscalers,' cloud service providers that offer largest-scale computing, storage, and network resources which AI needs. Their superpower lies in their ability to quickly scale infrastructure to meet the demands of billions of people. Think Amazon's AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft's Azure, Oracle Cloud, and IBM Cloud. Critically, the U.S. also has the world's broadest financial, educational, and entrepreneurial ecosystem to support the continued growth of these companies and the technologies they're now pioneering. Unfortunately, the current U.S. government has embarked on political and policy strategies that will inflict lasting self-harm. Its attacks on American universities will increasingly leave the nation with less scientific funding, broken public-private sector relationships, and much less ability to attract the most ambitious, talented, and highly skilled international students and immigrant labor. By attacking America's friends and allies through a variety of means and pushing their best students away from study in American universities, the Trump Administration is forcing others to hedge their bets on future cooperation and cross-fertilization of ideas. Taken together, these policies directly undermine America's longer-term competitive advantages in the contests that will shape the future of national security and prosperity. The Trump Administration's foreign and trade policies are intended to overcome those challenges by using U.S. strength to ensure closer alignment of friends and containment of enemies, mainly China. Yes, the Chinese now have models that can compete with the Americans, including those by DeepSeek. But will they be able to power them? U.S. export controls on semiconductors and efforts to align other producers with them are designed to help America maintain its competitive edge against the one challenger with enough resources to compete effectively. No other countries come close. During its final week in office, the Biden Administration issued the 'AI Diffusion Rule.' This order placed other countries in three categories based on how likely they were to divert sensitive AI technologies to China, with varying levels of restriction on each group, especially for the export of closed-weight AI models that aren't publicly available. Read More: A Potential Path to Safer AI Development In May, the Trump Administration ditched this three-tier strategy to create an 'in or out' set of agreements that replace qualitative rules on who could access U.S. semiconductors with a quantitative approach that mandates at least 50% of data must be exported to the U.S. and no more than 7% can go to any one other country—read China. This latest strategy is designed, at least for as long as the agreement is in force, to ensure a dominant American position in AI development. Not surprisingly, this new rule is a big sticking point for Beijing in negotiations over U.S.-China trade and other critically important issues and will make it much harder to get to yes on all kinds of issues. But the biggest problems created by the Trump team's current fights with allies and adversaries are all longer-term. If the experts are right that AI will have genuinely transformative effects beginning in the next two to three years, it may not matter. For now, U.S. tech dominance is the biggest advantage Washington has. In short, AI will have transformative effects on the domestic politics of every country where it is deployed at scale in the workforce. It will intensify the already contentious rivalry between Washington and Beijing—with direct implications for dozens of other countries. The need to think through the implications is urgent. This train is already in motion and beginning to gather speed.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Scouting breakfast to highlight what the program does in the lives of members
BOARDMAN, Ohio (WKBN) – Scouting is alive and well in the Valley. Boy Scouts of America changed its name to Scouting America in February to allow all children to benefit from the program. Locally, the Scouting community will get together next Tuesday morning at the Lake Club in Poland for its 20th annual breakfast. Scouts will be there and the community is invited to attend as well. Mark Luke, Scouting America advocate, says there will be two guest speakers this year. 'Our first speaker is a Scout speaker — Gordon Moore, from Poland. He's going to tell us about his Scouting experience. He achieved his Eagle Scout recently, in April. We're going to talk about what that's meant to him in his life. And our keynote speaker this year is Bill Johnson, president of Youngstown State University, and military veteran and Congressman. He's going to talk about his Scouting experience when he was young, as well as what he's seen Scouting do in this world,' Luke said. This is a fundraising event but it's free to attend. You must reserve your spot by Thursday. You can do that online or by calling 330-773-0415. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Explore Intel co-founder's historic S.F. estate for sale on 25 protected acres
The historic, longtime Northern California estate of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore hit the market Monday for $29.5 million. Moore and his wife Betty gifted their 25-acre Woodside property, called Mountain Meadow, to the nonprofit land conservation group Peninsula Open Space Trust, which is handling the sale, according to a representative of Compass real estate firm. Gordon and Betty Moore both died in 2023 at the age of 94 and 95, respectively. The couple paid $6 million for the property in 1993. The estate's 9,300-square-foot, six-bedroom Tudor Revival residence was built in 1927. Formal gardens, an orchard, redwood groves, oaks and ties to the 1850s redwood logging history are part of the secluded Bay Area property. Woodside is about 32 miles south of San Francisco, in San Mateo County. The Moores invested heavily in the property over the course of their ownership. They added more than $15 million in renovations and improvements aimed at transforming the property into a peaceful, long-term family retreat. 'Mountain Meadow was a refuge for the Moore family, a place of peace, and reflection and a deep connection to the rich landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area,' Eric Normington of POST said in a statement. 'It is ready for a new steward who shares the Moores' love of the natural world and who embraces this rare opportunity to become a part of the property's unique legacy.' The estate is permanently protected from large-scale development by a conservation easement. The Moores strove to source authentic period materials in order to maintain the original character of the property, such as decommissioning local homes of the same era to salvage window glass, fixtures, fittings and other architectural elements, according to Compass. The couple undertook a full overhaul of the residence's interior systems, replacing electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems. The home's exterior — roofing, siding and windows — was meticulously restored to reflect the home's historical design. 'There's a timelessness here,' listing agent Erika Demma of Compass said in an email. 'From the handcrafted architecture to the redwood groves and natural springs, every inch of this property feels intentional.' The land's legacy is deep, belonging to the Ohlone Lamchin people, and later a part of the Rancho Cañada de Raymundo land grant, according to Compass. An 1850s redwood sawmill exists at Mountain Meadow. Situated at 100 Cañada Road in one of the Bay Area's most exclusive communities, the property is adjacent to Filoli gardens and protected watershed lands. 'Properties like Mountain Meadow rarely come to market,' listing agent Hugh Cornish of Coldwell Banker said in a statement. 'Its layered history and enduring conservation protections make it truly unique.' Gordon Moore founded Intel in 1968 with Robert Noyce. The Moores owned another house in Hawaii, which is listed by Steve Hurwitz of Hawai'i Life for $21.9 million.
Wall Street Journal
19-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The Longtime California Home of Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore is Listing for $29.5 Million
The longtime Silicon Valley home of the late computer-industry pioneer Gordon Moore is going on the market for $29.5 million. The Intel co-founder and his wife, Betty Moore, bought the 25-acre Woodside property in 1991 for about $6 million, according to Gordon Clark, president of the conservation nonprofit Peninsula Open Space Trust. Moore left his estate to the trust, which is selling the home.
Daily Maverick
12-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Crossed Wires: The most important company in the world and the storm brewing around it
Is it Apple? Alphabet? OpenAI? Nvidia? Microsoft? Amazon? Nope, it is none of these, critical to the global economy as they may be. It is a company most people have never even heard of. It is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, otherwise known as TSMC. If you think China is threatening to invade Taiwan because of its potential geo-military importance or its history or its valuable real estate, forget it. It is because of TSMC. The company sits with its finger in the dyke behind which is a roiling and dangerous sea of geopolitics. No, wait. Perhaps the most important company in the world is actually ASML, based in Veldhoven, in the Netherlands. We'll get to them later. So what are these companies and why have they become the firing pin of a global hand grenade? The short answer is that TSMC manufactures the world's most advanced semiconductor chips. America has no equivalent. China has no equivalent. They stand alone; no competitors come close. Let's rewind. TSMC is a relatively new company. It was started in Taiwan in 1987 by MIT-educated Morris Chang as the world's first 'pure play foundry'. This meant that they did not design chips but only manufactured them, and never under their own name (unlike competitors such as Samsung). They were originally at the bottom of the food chain — give us a chip design, they told the world's tech giants, and we will give you the physical object, perfectly manufactured, no defects, on time and on budget. I suppose at the time this was to be expected. Taiwan was well respected as a reliable high-volume, high-tech, affordable manufacturer, but not much more than that. Apple and Qualcomm and others were (and still are) happy to hand over their designs to Taiwan for manufacture. But then TSMC got serious about being the best. They raised billions from shareholders and poured money into research and development. It wasn't just about automation or bigger plants or smoother supply chains. Their core area of research and development was focused on mastering technologies and processes that would allow them to pack more and more transistors onto a single piece of silicon. Semiconductor pioneer Remember Moore's Law? It was posited by Gordon Moore, a semiconductor pioneer in the early 1970s. Moore's Law predicted that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit would double about every two years. TSMC has been the embodiment of that law, almost as though it was written for them — their North Star. How large does the company loom today? A total of 25% of Taiwan's GDP comes from semiconductors, and TSMC dominates the industry. It constitutes 30% of Taiwan's stock market value. It will exceed $100-billion in revenue and $50-billion in profits this year. It owns 67% of the global foundry market. It manufactures one-third of all the chips in the world. It manufactures more than 90% of the world's most advanced chips. In 2023, Wired writer Virginia Heffernan went to Taiwan to report on the company and the headline of her article was 'I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory'. Perhaps it was only partially hyperbolic. In short, the company is large, profitable, dominant, defendable — and vital. And so it happened that all the tech companies handed their chip designs to TSMC for manufacturing. None of them believed that mere manufacturing was 'core'' internet protocol. TSMC was seen as a serf, a manufacturing gun for hire. Yes, well, but… in the last 37 years TSMC has built the biggest, baddest gun in the world. They are used by Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Broadcom and even other chip manufacturers. The company has created, in effect, a benign monopoly, gladly providing a completely differentiated and unique and core service to all comers. How did they attain this vaunted position in the value chain of high tech? By investment in research and development, over and over again, until they built a moat so wide that the competitive expense of crossing it became prohibitive. Michael Spencer, a widely read tech commentator and blogger, makes the stakes clear in a recent article: 'A (Chinese) threat to the island nation of Taiwan (e.g, like a blockade or invasion) and supply chains of TSMC, would immediately plunge the global economy into a severe recession. It would also likely spark a hot war involving the US, Japan and other allies.' But, as always with politics, the story gets complicated, especially where Trump is involved. TSMC started to establish joint ventures in other countries (such as Germany) around 2020, well before Trump 2.0. Biden's Chips Act provided some of the kickstart funding ($11.6-billion) for the establishment of a fab plant in Arizona in 2020. Fast forward to 2025 and the Trump tariffs, and suddenly we have the chairperson of TSMC, CC Wei, at the White House announcing a $100-billion investment in TSMC US. Good for the US, good for Taiwan, right? Not so fast. It is not at all clear whether TSMC can produce chips at a profit in the US, given the labour costs, red tape, and, after decades of neglect, a significantly thinned-out high-tech manufacturing skills base. And then there is the uber-advanced end of their product line, the so-called 2nm and 3nm nodes, which are the most efficient and densely populated with transistors. The government of Taiwan is putting its foot down — those stay in Taiwan. Further wrinkle To add a further wrinkle, we have ASML, a Dutch company, which provides a critical piece of TMSC's chip manufacturing puzzle (probably the only piece not built by them) — the ultra-violet lithography kit that etches millions of minute corridors into the silicon, the 'roadways' for electrons, a necessary step without which the chip cannot be manufactured. ASML is the only company in the world with the know-how to manufacture such a machine. It has taken more than 30 years of development and tens of billions invested. You can't get the kit anywhere else and, as with TSMC, this makes for a very deep moat. The US can't allow Taiwan to be invaded by China in case they choke off the supply of advanced chips to the US and the West more generally. For their part, the Chinese can't stand helplessly by watching TMSC empower the US with the world's most advanced chips. This leaves us with one Taiwanese company and one Dutch company standing between two covetous superpowers which both want control over the supply and manufacture of the tiny brains that now power the entire world. Neither can afford to have the other win. And presumably, AMSL simply wants everyone to bugger off so they can sell their admirable kit in peace. The standoff is not going to last. It seems likely that China will indeed invade Taiwan — all indicators point in that direction. Let us hope that TSMC's internet protocol is properly externalised to other countries by the time it happens. DM
