lt cap,

The question of INTC and where it is in regards to AI is puzzling to me, and I've got nothing but speculations to go on. On the one hand, one might infer from some of the partnerships announced - (I'm pretty sure that INTC and Ford have partnered on 'smart cars', and I *think* NVDA may be another partner to the deal - if so, then the upshot may be that INTC doesn't have the AI chops to be without another player (NVDA) who clearly is a mainstream player in the field.) Added to that, I really can't think of other stories or announcements I've seen regarding INTC where they're talking about or displaying AI advancements. They are, after all, mainly a hardware company, rather than a software company. NVDA seems much more like a true hybrid, as they've publicly announced both hardware and software related AI endeavors.

On the other hand, INTC is certainly a 'deep pockets' player.  And altho companies like Google both talk and show AI implementations, all the serious AI developments, including 'moonshot' programs, are 'underground', in the sense that they're not spoken of, but likely will burst upon the scene 'fully developed' when/if their efforts have bourne success. It's a bit like AI development for battlefield weapons - you don't read many stories about it, but at least 60 countries have battlefield AI programs active, and about the only time you hear about specifics is when things go awry - such as the (2009? 2006?) incident in S. Africa where the battlefield AI mistook friendlies for foes - and shot a fair number of soldiers in a fraction  of a second. (And if I think about it, every instance of computer catastrophe, from Three Mile Island to the Fukisima melt-down, has not been a result of computer error - rather, it's been either human error, or poorly written code that was to blame - a good argument to employ machine learning and let the computer AI write and revise its own programs - at least until that results in AI deviating from its objective function and programming itself for new, self-interested functions that may be quite unfriendly to humans. And if I think harder on it, it's scary that the now-surfaced story about the Russian officer who was in charge of ordering a nuclear response during the cold war got a computer generated 'positive' reading on incoming US missiles, and was able to reason that it most likely wasn't a real attack, is likely the most code-buggy instance of human mistakes almost croaking us for good.)

But I digress - my point was that INTC is deep-pockets, and certainly could have a 'skunkworks' active AI project. But likely not, I'd think not - while mgmt. seem now more pro-active, they're playing 'catch up' in a number of vital areas, and other companies - Apple, IBM, Google, etc. seem better positioned to have a head start in advanced AI projects. And I wish IBM's Watson sales division wasn't such a flop - And they didn't have such a keen amount of competition for cloud hosting and computing. They're paying a very nice dividend, but that's in part due to their being near the low end of their 52 week hi- low. Not the 'value trap' that GME is (dividend = 7%+), but not a pretty picture.

Just read this.....every company has some 'failures' or otherwise knows when to pull the plug (INTC made a good choice, IMO, when it sold its set-top box inititive, as it became apparent that the field was already over-crowded), but publicly 'surrendering' is never really welcome......

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