Industry Watcher’s Digest

Buzzworthy developments of the past few days.

• Beatles vs. Stones. Amazon vs. Walmart. OpenAI vs. Nvidia. Classic rivalries all, and the fierceness of the latter battle will—like those earlier struggles for dominance—bring out the best in both. As put by Pymnts.com: The dynamics between OpenAI and Nvidia “will ultimately transform commercial and consumer AI. After all, AI, which requires accelerated computing to run, is seen by many as a natural progression, or a phase step up, of the internet’s own foundational computing and information layers.” Read the whole thing.
   
• Apps are direct-to-consumer health technologies. As such, they represent a new folk medicine. That’s the view of academic psychologist Jordan Richard Schoenherr, PhD. “Users adopt these [healthcare AI] technologies based on trust rather than understanding how they operate,” Holznagel writes at The Conversation. “App store ratings and endorsements can replace the expert review of healthcare professionals.” Read the rest.
   
• Regulatory frameworks to govern AI in healthcare are works in progress. It can be no other way, because, as noted repeatedly in this space, regulators can’t keep pace with the innovators they’re charged with regulating. What they can do, suggests Dubai-based business journalist Praseeda Nair, is prioritize the risks that call for immediate attention. “As the regulatory landscape evolves, legal teams and industry players must navigate complexities,” Nair writes at Omnia Health Insights. “Pioneering regulation introduces short-term compliance burdens but can offer clarity, reduce litigation risks and instill [long-term] confidence in the technology.”
   
• An AI startup that’s still three months from celebrating its first birthday is already valued at more than $2 billion. And it just got hitched to Microsoft as a preferred partner. Paris-based Mistral is led by a 31-year-old CEO named Arthur Mensch who worked for Google until leaving to do something different with two like-minded 30-something engineers from Meta Platforms’ AI lab in Paris. The Wall Street Journal reports the trio and their colleagues plan to “outmaneuver Silicon Valley titans” on nimbleness. One way they’ll do this is by making their AI software open-source and handing it out for free. “We want to be the most capital-efficient company in the world of AI,” Mensch tells WSJ. “That’s the reason we exist.”
   
• Training surgeons-to-be in laparoscopic procedures they’ll need to master: There’s an AI for that. The teaching module is more than a computerized version of the classic board game Operation, explains a professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where the program is under development. The project “steps outside the bounds of the generative AI hype and into the domain of helping humans learn better,” says the professor, Usman Roshan, PhD. “We expect broader usage of our software in surgical training programs nationwide and ultimately into other areas of human learning where physical activity is involved.” Details here.
   
• Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos is leading a $675M funding round to help an AI startup get its humanoid robots on their own two feet. The startup, Figure AI, is unique for its “aggressive incorporation of AI” into its robots, which bear a passing resemblance to C3PO of Star Wars fame, as Inc. magazine notes. Figure AI figures the droid-like machines will relieve human workers of all sorts of workplace tasks. “The dexterity with which the robot picks up [a coffee] capsule and can wiggle it if it hasn't fallen into place properly is very impressive—and very human-like,” Inc. reports. More here.
   
• From the AI research beat:
   
  • University of Alabama at Birmingham: Five grand challenges for the future at the interface of engineering and medicine
     
  • AVIA: AVIA’s Generative AI Strategic Collaborative Highlights Six-Month Milestones And Outlines Next Steps For Pioneering Initiative
     
  • New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai: Artificial Intelligence Matches or Outperforms Human Specialists in Retina and Glaucoma Management, Mount Sinai Study Finds
     
  • American Chemical Society: ‘Artificial tongue’ detects and inactivates common mouth bacteria
     
  • Medscape: AI Tool May Help Predict Psychosis Before It Occurs
     
• From AIin.Healthcare’s news partners:
   
  • Health Imaging: AI enhances diagnostic accuracy of breast cancer lesions found on ultrasounds
     
  • Radiology Business: Radiology AI firm focused on visualizing dense breast tissue raises $1.7M
     
  • Cardiovascular Business: Cleerly’s AI software for noninvasive FFR estimates receives a Category 1 CPT code