AI is still in the early innings, though NVDA and AMD seem well positioned for it.  Intel?  Not so much.  I happen to think AI will be far bigger than people think.  I think Intel will be hard pressed to keep up.  The players as you cite have enourmous pcokets and this filed will pay off handsomely, IMO.

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......

tomshardware.com/ne...7.html

INTC has deep pockets, and I do hope they make an aggressive move into the AI field.  It promises to be a very lucrative and an highly disruptive field.  If INTC were to fail in this field, I would worry that it could lose the lead it holds in the Data Center.  This would be a big blow, it could remain stagnant for an even longer period of time.

That said, I think it will be specially hard to dislodge NVDA, it has a first mover advantage and a respectable lead.  AMD, as I understand it is not as far ahead as NVDA is.  Then you have those firms with vasts amounts of data, the Alpabets, Facebooks, Oracles, IBMs etc ...  Having the info gives them a solid knowledge foundation and have learned a vast amount to date. 

I believe that NVDA and AMD and possibly INTC (to a much lesser extent) will supply the AI hardware while Goog, FB, ORCL, IBM will be the AI software companies.

lt cap,

Thanks for your company run-down on AI. While stories like these aren't ground-shattering - and one should expect such stories from numerous companies across time, it provides some evidence that INTC is indeed producing products in the hopes of making them a player in the field (2nd story is a broader overview):  businesswire.com/ne...364/en

newsroom.intel.com/pr...gence/

In other areas, the market never fails to puzzle me - NOK down another 1% because....It's Monday the 25th, which is only 12 dates and 4 days away from Friday the 13th? (well, the whole sector looks bleak today, which seems to be the trend). And Moody's downgraded the outlook for growth in the oil and gas industry worldwide from 'positive' to 'stable', citing current growth of 27% to slow to single digits. So at the same time Chevron announced investing $4 bln to expand production, and CHV, COP, etc. soar. If Moody's is right, flooding the market with more oil and gas will....be a great idea? Well, I understand the devil may be in the details. 

And had we all invested in TTWO, EA, and ATVI at what we considered to be inflated prices, we'd have doubled or tripled our investment, and looked like genuises. I have no idea of the internal details the way Jester does, but is there something about the sector that justifies these prices?

Jamok,

Interesting technology.  Thanks for sharing it.  Glad to see INTC putting some serious R&D into AI. 

I like the fact that it's design is based on the human brain, it has a tremendous potential. 

LT Cap,

Having a dog in the fight, I am of course glad to see INTC spending serious $ on the future. Although PC sales have been in decline for years (I also would expect that, at some point, this stabilizes to some degree), it's still a main bread and butter area. So it worries me that AMD's Ryzen line does appear competitive and more, as it threatens to gain significant market share. Intel apparently feels the heat, given that on Oct. 5th it will release its 'Coffee Lake' chips, and the short intervals between Skylake/Kabylake/Coffeelake are like no other crowded release schedule I can remember, and I think part of that is to stay ahead of AMD as best they can. I can feel the rush of products personally, as I bought the parts for a Xeon 5930x gaming system around May of 2016 (still  haven't put it together), and it's appearing quite dated, significantly down the 'hierarchy charts' of INTC's chips. I am, admittedly, getting a little nervous about my significant stake in INTC - it's hard for me to imagine that competition on all sides will not affect bottom line results. Hope I'm wrong on that - INTC is still paying almost 3% on the dividend, and their price has remained relatively stable within a range in the mid-$30's for some time. But I'm less certain than ever that they can maintain that.

On another topic, but which I think may be of interest - Yellen is admitting that she's essentially clueless as to why inflation is behaving so weakly, and yet is groping towards rate hikes while being in the dark about explanatory data. The NY Times story appears here -  nytimes.com/20...p-news

and a more focused version of her lack of insight is here:  nytimes.com/20...rticle

Personally, I'm glad to have the rate hikes, as savings/MM and CD rates are starting to lift off the dead bottom, and one can earn at least more than a pittance by parking money in them, waiting for a better use for it. (BTW, I *think* I've mentioned this before, but there's a site that is just tremendous for rate hunters, featuring everything from the best rates from institutions on different financial products, reviews of the institutions, and even down to granular data, such as a calculator that tells you if you invest in a long-term CD to get a higher rate, what actual rate the Early Withdrawal Penalty (EWP) will result in if you break the CD. It has lead to some interesting places - there was (now dead) a 30 month CD yielding 1.85%, but with no early withdrawal penalty - liquid money, essentially. The best no early withdrawal penalty CDs are now in the 1.5-1.6% range. The rise in interest rates does nothing but encourage those rates, of course.)

depositaccounts.com/