Susana Schwartz
Tensions run high at World Economic Forum
“A Spirit of Dialogue” is the theme at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which kicked off yesterday with CEOs from BlackRock, Microsoft, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and other prominent AI, energy, business, and geopolitical leaders. That “spirit” was one of tension, with President Trump on his way to the event after breaking news about his texts last night to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, in which he said he “no longer feels an obligation to think purely of Peace because he did not get the Nobel Peace Prize.” After the Prime Minister reiterated in texts that an independent committee awards the prize, he asked Trump to reconsider newly announced tariffs against NATO nations that do not support a U.S. takeover of Greenland. Those tariffs will, no doubt, be a hot topic among world leaders in backroom discussions in Davos. On the main stages, however, discussions went on as planned, covering AI, climate change, and global economic shifts, although with protesters drawing attention to growing feelings of frustration about what is viewed as rampant inequality — a topic that peppered many Davos talks, including those about AI’s impact on jobs and the effect of tariffs on trade and inflation.
In the following days, RCRTech will report on key aspects of the AI-related tracks, such as:
Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains
AI Excellence
Cybersecurity
Centre for Energy and Materials
Financial and Monetary Systems
Nature and Climate
Centre for Frontier Technologies and Innovation
Tune in for live discussions, here, such as the current “Next Phase of Intelligence” session, which talks of where AI’s integration into real environments, and how humans can stay in the loop for accountability as AI autonomy increases.
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
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AI Today: What You Need to Know
WEF kicks off: World leaders from government, business, civil society, and academia are convening in Davos to address global issues, of which AI is a central component in most sessions and panel discussions.
Anthropic on selling chips to China: At WEF, Anthropic’s CEO said, “We are many years ahead of China in our ability to make chips… It would be a big mistake to ship these chips… It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.“
CoreWeave faces lawsuit: A securities class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Jersey, claiming that GPU cloud provider CoreWeave exaggerated its capacity to meet demand and hid delays in data center construction.
Taiwan semiconductor tariffs will drop: Taiwanese semiconductor and technology enterprises have struck a deal with U.S. Dept. of Commerce to make at least $250 billion investments in U.S. advanced semiconductor, energy, and AI production.
Commercial builders focus on DCs: Higher interest rates and steeper material prices mean commercial real estate construction will stagnate this year, except in the realm of data center construction, which is expected to rise by 23% in 2026.
EaPU bests GPUs?: Chinese researchers developed an error-aware probabilistic update (EaPU) method that aligns memristor hardware’s updates with neural network training, validating EaPU on 180 nm memristor arrays.
