Good morning, and happy Friday, unless you’re TikTok …

Unless something radical changes very quickly, the app is just a few days away from shutting down.

— Ian Krietzberg, Editor-in-Chief, The Deep View

In today’s newsletter:

• 🧠 AI for Good: Novel material generation

• 💰 TSMC spikes, reports ‘strong demand’ for AI chips

• 👁️‍🗨️ Anduril is building a billion-dollar autonomous weapons factory in Ohio

• 📊 Report: AI is everywhere already, even if we don’t know it

AI for Good: Novel material generation 

In a paper published in Nature on Thursday, Microsoft researchers unveiled MatterGen, a new AI model that can generate stable, novel materials across the periodic table. 

The details: First announced a year ago, MatterGen, when given prompts with design requirements and constraints, can “generate materials with desired chemistry, mechanical, electronic or magnetic properties.”

• According to the researchers, materials generated by MatterGen are twice as likely to be novel and stable when compared to previous generative models. As a proof of concept, the researchers successfully synthesized a novel material based on MatterGen. 

• Similar to AI image generators, MatterGen is a diffusion model. Operating on a 3D geometry of materials, MatterGen works by adjusting the positions, elements and periodic lattice of a random structure. Trained on more than 600,000 materials, the researchers say MatterGen achieves state-of-the-art performance in generating novel, stable and diverse materials. 

Why it matters: Material innovation, according to Microsoft, has “propelled technological innovation for centuries.” Referencing the discovery of lithium cobalt oxide in the 1980s, as well as advancements in silicon chips and superconductors, the researchers wrote that areas like healthcare, energy storage and carbon capture are all reliant on the rapid design of functional new materials. 

“From an industrial perspective, the potential here is enormous,” Microsoft principal research manager Tian Xie said. “Human civilization has always depended on material innovations. If we can use generative AI to make materials design more efficient, it could accelerate progress in industries like energy, healthcare and beyond.”

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TSMC spikes, reports ‘strong demand’ for AI chips

Nvidia, known locally as the ‘picks and shovels’ of the AI race, supplies the chips that developers need to build AI. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) supplies Nvidia (and others, including Apple) with the advanced processors they need to build those chips. 

As such, TSMC has become one of the core AI names of the public market. And the stock surged again on Thursday, climbing more than 4% (after surging 100% in 2024).

What happened: TSMC on Wednesday reported fourth-quarter earnings, a performance that beat revenue and profit expectations. 

• TSMC raked in $26.88 billion for the quarter, a 37% year-over-year increase and a 14% quarter-over-quarter increase that came in above expectations of $25.8 billion. 

• The semiconductor reported net income of roughly $11.3 billion, also above analyst expectations, on a 59% gross margin for the quarter. 

The trend continues: “We observed robust AI-related demand from our customers throughout 2024,” Wendell Huang, chief financial officer and vice president at TSMC, said in an earnings call on Thursday, adding: “Even after more than tripling in 2024, we forecast our revenue from AI accelerators to double in 2025 as a strong surge in AI-related demand continues as a key enabler of AI applications.”

TSMC guided revenue for the first quarter of 2025 somewhere between $25 billion and $25.8 billion. 

But with the U.S.’s latest round of chip export restrictions — and a new, anti-China administration set to take office next week — TSMC may face a tough start to the new year. 

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• Apple has hopped on board the UALink Consortium, an industry standard group developing an “interconnect technology that advances next-generation AI cluster performance.” Apple, Alibaba and Synopsys all joined the board of UALink, according to a press release.

• The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (Enforce) filed complaint urging the FTC to investigate Google, arguing that the company knew about a flaw in its real-time bidding system that sends American data to foreign adversaries.

• Blue Origin reaches orbit on first flight of its titanic New Glenn rocket (Ars Technica).

• Trump, Musk dined with Microsoft CEO at Mar-a-Lago (Semafor).

• Biden administration launches cybersecurity executive order (CNBC).

• Despite tensions, US-China AI research collaborations are alive and well (Rest of World).

• Microsoft bundles Office AI features into Microsoft 365 and raises prices (The Verge).

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Anduril is building a billion-dollar autonomous weapons factory in Ohio

Prominent defense tech contractor Anduril has selected Colombus, Ohio as the location for the first of its coming series of mega-factories. The 5 million square foot facility, once fully operational, will churn out “tens of thousands of military systems annually,” and will take an investment of around $1 billion to get going. 

The details: Anduril predicted that this will bring around 4,000 jobs to the area. 

• Saying that the U.S. and its allies must produce “orders of magnitude” more autonomous systems and weaponry, Anduril said its new facility will support that effort by “hyperscaling weapons manufacturing with … a software-defined manufacturing platform that is optimized for the mass production of autonomous systems and weapons.”

• The firm has won billions of dollars in government contracts, and, according to Bloomberg, brought in $1 billion in revenue last year. 

Anduril has partnered with both Palantir and OpenAI to accelerate its AI capabilities. Anduril expects the facility to begin producing weapons by 2026. 

Report: AI is everywhere already, even if we don’t know it 

As shiny and new as generative AI chatbots still are, the technology itself — machine learning-based algorithms — has been around for decades. And long before we had GenAI spitting out synthetic content, these algorithms have tied together the digital world. 

Most people still don’t know it. 

What happened: A new Gallup poll of roughly 4,000 American adults found that just about 100% of people use products that involve AI features. A significant number of them have no idea.

• Asked if they’ve used an AI product in the past seven days, 50% of respondents said they hadn’t, and 14% said they weren’t sure. But 99% of those surveyed reported the regular use of several common AI apps or services, such as navigation and weather aps, social media platforms, streaming services, online shopping apps and virtual assistants. 

• The weather apps, streaming services and social media sites are popular digital destinations for the vast majority of Americans surveyed. Indeed, the average person in the U.S. spends more than two hours on social media every day. 

Half of those polled said they interact regularly with a virtual assistant, a’la Siri, Alexa or Google’s assistant. 

Still, Americans have a largely negative view toward AI and its expected impact on society, according to the poll, despite the fact that they interact with AI (unknowingly) on a regular basis. 72% said that, over the next five years, AI will have a net negative impact on the spread of misinformation; 64% expect a net negative impact on social connections; 60% expect a negative impact on the availability of good jobs and 56% expect a negative impact on U.S. national security. 

These impressions feature an interesting age gradient; 78% of those aged 18-29 believe AI will have a very negative impact on the availability of good jobs, a belief that only 58% of those between the ages of 40 and 64 subscribe to.

But, generally, those who reported using AI products tend to have a more positive view regarding the predicted impact of the tech, according to Gallup. 

Gallup also found that vast majorities of both Democrats and Republicans alike believe the government is responsible for addressing and mitigating AI-related harms, including those pertinent to national security, misinformation, data privacy and job loss. 

There seems to be a lack of synchronicity here; fears of AI are prevalent, but awareness of AI isn’t. 

The interesting element of this to me is that, as much as the tech companies have been shouting about AI for the past two years, in a lot of cases, the integration of the latest evolution of the tech has been undertaken quietly; the aim is seemingly to nail adoption before people realize what they’ve adopted.

Algorithms are everywhere. 

It’s a good bet that everything you do on the internet involves countless invisible algorithms, a situation that, if the majority of Americans really are feeling cautious about, ought to be addressed with greater transparency. 

I think of the capacity for the public to, instead of accepting adoption, reshape the market through collective action. That hasn’t happened here, despite seemingly broad frustrations and concerns raised about weaponized social media feeds, hyperpersonalized cross-platform advertising and data collection.

People aren’t leaving Instagram to protest its use of AI and data. People aren’t seeming to switch out of Google Search, either (though you can find yours truly on DuckDuckGo).  

I wonder if people were more aware of the details of the algorithms that influence them, and the ways in which their data is used, processed and leveraged by these platforms, they would still be content to stay. 

🤔 Your thought process:

Selected Image 2 (Left):

• “If you had hair that long and were riding a motorcycle without a helmet, it would not be artfully flying behind you. It'd be a rats nest all over your face.”

Selected Image 1 (Right):

• “I am flabbergasted!! I thought Image 2 was for sure the fake bc the railing was all blurred and looked missing.”

💭 A poll before you go

Thanks for reading today’s edition of The Deep View!

We’ll see you in the next one.

Here’s your view on agents at your company:

35% of you said your company isn’t using agents at the moment.

20% said their company is using agents, but that the agents suck. 12% said their company is using agents, and that agents are awesome.

14% of you don’t think you’ll ever be able to trust an agent.

Nope:

• “Our company is too small (~100 employees) to make it seem economical.”