neither saves money nor saves resources

The rejection of the new Coca-Cola’s AI Christmas ad It has been basically unanimous: although their bet has technically and visually improved the very promising 2024 bet, the complaints are no longer about the theoretical as much as about something more intangible. An advertisement that appeals to traditional and artisanal things should not be made with a tool that ignores human creativity. Or has it not been like that? Some recent data that has come to light after the first negative reactions casts doubt on whether it was just a matter of pressing a button for an ad to appear. The announcements so far. In November 2024, Coca-Cola became the internet’s quintessential corporate villain. Its Christmas ad was recreated with artificial intelligence the iconic ‘Holidays Are Coming’ spot from 1995and was received with a wave of criticism, especially for its multiple errors: rigid truck wheels, faces of people frozen in an inhuman rictus… Artists such as Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls, dedicated to the corporation such strong phrases like “Coca-Cola is ‘red’ because it’s made with the blood of out-of-work artists.” A year later, Coca-Cola does not back down, but launches a new version of the advertisement, more technically advanced and starring less risky entities: anthropomorphized animals. Pratik Thakar’s quoteglobal vice president and head of generative AI at Coca-Cola, “the genie is out of the bottle and no one is going to put it back in,” has become a symbol of these new times. No matter how much these types of decisions are criticized, the savings in energy and personnel are so significant that these types of changes are here to stay. Or not? Less effort? There are some figures, made public by Coca Cola itself and by Jason Zada ​​of Secret Level (the company that developed the ad) that cast doubt on the effectiveness of the entire effort. For example, it took approximately 70,000 AI-generated video clips before arriving at the final result of 60 seconds. Behind them, an army of professionals: approximately 100 people distributed between Coca-Cola, the WPP agency, and the Silverside AI and Secret Level studios. And among them, at least 5 AI specialists worked specifically on technical refinement and content generation. Zada talks about a direct team of 20 people dedicated to this announcement. It is not a revolution in efficiency, but an amount comparable to that of any traditional animation spot. The difference: no physical equipment, locations or cameras were needed, but all the usual production apparatus in this type of ads: creative direction, design, narrative construction, artistic supervision… Zada ​​states that there is “a lot of human craftsmanship involved. Hand-drawn character designs, world-building… it’s not just about writing words and pressing buttons.” The paradox of money. If we talk about video generation tools like Sora, Runway or similar, each clip has an associated cost. Multiplied by 70,000 generations, the expenditure on server infrastructure, processing and rendering time reaches considerable figures. To this we must add the cost of a hundred people working for approximately a month (this is what Coca-Cola claims is an advantage in terms of time, compared to the several months that traditional production would require). We don’t know how much the ad cost, but Manolo Arroyo, the company’s marketing director, is limited to stating which was “cheaper and faster than traditional methods” But the important thing here, perhaps, is not how much we save in money, but… is that saving worth the reputational cost? What is the difference. The type of work, not the amount. Where a traditional studio would spend weeks on 3D modeling and animation, this project invested that time in a process of mass video generation, selection and refinement. Instead of building a 3D model of a herd of seals and animating them, the team generated thousands of different versions of seals until they found the ones that worked. And then, and here is the key, it is able to multiply the result. Zada says, “We could create a 90-second version in addition to the 60-second spot, and a custom version. We couldn’t do that without the efficiencies of AI.” That’s the secret: not to do the same thing cheaper, but to do more things with the same budget. Coca-Cola doesn’t save money, it redistributes it. Instead of one definitive version of the ad, they got multiple versions tailored to different markets. Instead of investing in filming equipment and physical locations, they invested in management capacity and immediate multiplication: the industrialization of factories that we experienced at the beginning of the last century is now the industrialization of content. The genie in the bottle. Generative artificial intelligence is already part of the daily life of audiovisual production. And the controversial Coca-Cola ad exemplifies what companies want to get out of this new situation: it is not just about greater speed, or saving money, something that we already see is not being achieved, but rather a commitment to the future, perhaps to a different economic model, perhaps to some spots that are still to come, indistinguishable from those made in a traditional way, and that do not unleash the pejorative comments that, for the moment, these ads made with AI are collecting. In Xataka | The “divorce” between Coca-Cola and Nestlé leaves a big question: who owns the “formula” of the soft drink

For resources at stake

The phrase “a small step for man” is recorded in collective memory such as the zenith of space exploration. The United States won the race to the Soviet Union when Neil Armstrong marked the lunar soil with his footprint. However, 56 years later, Washington looks at the moon again with concern. The rival has changed, and the prize is much greater than the simple feat of arriving. The new space race against China is not for glory, but for the control of the resources that will define the future in space and the balance of power on earth. Sean Duffy’s promise. Hours after Starship will complete its tenth flightthe first successful of the last four attempts, NASA’s acting administrator made a resounding statement: “In 2027, we will send American astronauts to the Moon. We won yesterday’s space race, we will win today’s space race against China, and we will always win tomorrow’s space race.” Artemis delays. The initial date set by NASA for a new moon -deduction with humans was 2024. As noted Alejandro Alcantilla de NSFby then they were neither the central stage of the SLS rocket, nor the Orion ship, nor the spatial suits of the astronauts, much less the HLS Aunidation module: a spacex starship adapted to land on the moon. The last date planned for the Mission Artemis III It is August 2027. It is possible that the other elements of the mission are ready by then, but more and more analysts question that the Starship ship arrives on time, since it accumulates its own delays. The “lost” year of Starship. The gigantic Spacex ship is the only US trick to pose its astronauts on the moon, at least until The Blue Origin alternative Be ready. But its development has suffered a significant break. After a successful flight in June 2024, Elon Musk’s company has needed more than a year to channel the program. This year of scarce advances in Starbase has kept NASA in suspense. Especially because Spacex still has to demonstrate the transfer of propellants in space on a scale never seen before moving forward with a crewless -rating in 2026. The Methodic Lunar Conquest of China. Far from political fluctuations that often affect Western space programs, China has followed a persistent plan for decades. The Robotic Missions Chang’e have already logged First samples of the hidden face of the moon. But they have been only the beginning. China’s goal is create a huge base on the moon with its partnersfor which it has been developing its own manned lunar program. China plans Send your first astronauts to the moon in 2030and their engineers are advancing like a clock towards that goal. In recent weeks, the state company CASC has successfully tested a prototype of its Lanyue lunar module and completed a static ignition of the CZ-10 heavy rocket. For experts in the Chinese space program, Like Dean Chengit is “quite likely that the Chinese terrify on the moon before NASA can return.” The Wild West of Lunar Resources. China’s hypothetical victory in space would be an unprecedented geopolitical defeat for the United States, but not for the fact of reaching the moon, something that after all already made between 1969 and 1972. American senator John Cornyn exposed it bluntly: “Those who control the last border control the future. If the United States does not take advantage of the non -exploit resources of the Moon, China will do it.” According to him Scientific Policy Professor Kazuto Suzukithis is not a race to put your feet on the moon. It is a career to find and control lunar resources. “China wants to be the first to have the right to dominate and monopolize resources, it is the wild west.” What resources do we talk about? Although the 1967 ultra -resort treaty prohibits the national appropriation of celestial bodies, the reality is that whoever arrives first and establishes the infrastructure will have an advantage to exploit the vast treasures offered by the moon: Ice water: concentrated in the perpetual shadow craters of the lunar poles. Not only is it vital for life, but it can decompose in hydrogen and oxygen, the basic components to produce rocket fuel. A base in the South Lunar Pole would be, in effect, a “gas station” for future missions to Mars and beyond. Helio-3: A light and weird isotope on Earth that is abundant in the lunar regolite. It is considered a clean and efficient fuel potential for nuclear fusion, the energy of the future. Metals and minerals: The lunar surface is rich in iron, titanium, aluminum and the most crucial material, silicon. These materials could be used to build and maintain a base using local resources, from make bricks with lunar dust to print solar panels. Solar energy: Without an atmosphere that dispenses it, solar energy in lunar poles is constant and abundant, a reliable energy source to feed a human base. The nuclear reactor and its exclusion zone. The fear in Washington is that the first country to establish a functional base can, in practice, claim the territory. This concern became explicit a few days ago when the US administration urged NASA to install a nuclear fission reactor on the moon by 2030anticipating the plans withoutorruse. A nuclear reactor is indispensable to survive icy and long two -week lunar nights, where solar energy is not an option. The directive made it clear: “The first country to do so could declare an exclusion zone, which would significantly limit the United States.” In addition, the highest land control is at stake, key to master communications, navigation and military intelligence on Earth. A lot of power at stake. If China manages to alunize before the United States, we would be before the end of American exceptionalism. Arriving first translates into a decisive influence to establish the technical standards and communication protocols of the cislunar space. The United States has the advantage of its experience and a more advanced private sector, but … Read more

All the resources that we can potentially extract from the moon, illustrated in this graphic developer

Mars has become the long -awaited objective of space exploration. So much that the New “Manifest Destination” of the United States. This is something that has sown doubts about the future of Ambitious Artemis mission for go to the moonbut beyond to satisfy scientific curiosity, our satellite has a lot to offer as far as resources are concerned. And in this graph prepared by Visual Capitalist We can what resources we can get from the Moon and what is the degree of confidence we have for each of them. Scenery. The graph is more informative than attractive, that must be recognized, but clearly exposes not only what are the main resources of the moon, but the possibilities we have to take advantage of our current technology. Thus, we can see that there are resources that we have well measured, such as the amount of regolito or solar energyothers not calculated so precisely, and we can see clearly if they are resources that we can recover for land use right now or if they are resources that are out of our reach. Because, of course, one thing is to collect resources, and another very different to be able to pack them correctly and return them to the earth. Resources. The data that they have used for the elaboration of the graphic respond to those of the geological study that the United States developed in 2022 and there is something important that must be taken into account: we are at the dawn of something that seemed science fiction, the Mining on the Moon. There is a large presence of metals on the moon such as iron, titanium, aluminum or magnesium, but also the coveted silicon, which is the Base of our technology industry and solar panels. There are also ice-3, which is a Fuel potential for nuclear fusionrare metals, oxygen, and it is estimated that there is water, but not in a liquid state, but present in the form of ice in the craters that are permanently shaded. The main resources and their status are clearer in this table: resource Current classification Recoverable with our technology Reserve in 30 years Solar energy Measured Yeah Yeah Helio-3 Dear No A stranger Regolito Quantified No Yeah Oxygen in Regolito Quantified No Yeah Hydrogen retained water Quantified No Likely ice -shaped water Minimal or without evidence No A stranger Lunar mining. Before Elon Musk’s arrival to revolutionize space exploration at the governmental level, there were Plans For NASA to send drilling equipment to the Moon to establish a permanent extraction plant for 2032. It is an objective that may have been complicated taking into account recent events, but it is also something that would conflict with the Treaty of ultra -resters. That mining on the Moon is, as we say, very interesting due to the deposits we believe we have located in the satellite, but article 11 of the 1967 Treaty establishes that all the natural resources of the Moon are “common heritage of humanity.” In addition, “it cannot be subject to national appropriation through claims for sovereignty” and those resources “cannot be owned by any state, intergovernmental or non -governmental international organization, national organization or non -governmental entity or any natural person.” Interpretation of lunar soil by ESA Regolito. Returning to the graph, there are two resources that stand out on the rest, both because we know of their existence and because they are the simplest to take advantage of current technology. One of them is lunar dust, curiously. It is called a regolito And it is a carpet of rocky materials that has a couple of useful applications. The first thing is that it is composed of a large amount of oxygen and metals, elements that could be separated from dust to use them in other purposes. Through electrolysis, we can separate oxygen from metals and, although oxygen on Earth is a byproduct, on the moon it can be vital as a source of life. The dust obtained as waste can be used as construction material for brick or roads. There are other projects to take advantage of this abundant lunar resource: Improve regolito fertility through bacteria to be able to grow on the satellite floor. In fact, this soil fertilization is key not only for the colonization of the moon: also for the Martian adventures. Solar energy. Now, from the resources that we can extract from the moon and on the moon, solar energy is the most interesting. The reason is that we could start extracting in the short term because we have the technology to do so. In lunar poles, the sun is visible for long periods, so energy could be generated continuously because there is no rain with rain or clouds (this rainy March we have learned The price of rain in the generation of solar energy). To transmit that energy captured to Earth, lasers or microwave could be used. Projects. There are some in progress. On the one hand, we have Luna Ring, a Japanese project that wants to place a 400 -kilometer wide solar panel belt and 11,000 kilometers long (an absolute barbarity) around Ecuador lunar to send 13,000 theravats to the earth continuously. Is more than we currently need. On the other hand, the European Space Agency had the GE⊕-LPSa project that would consist of a lunar station with panels manufactured from lunar resources. Because yes, the regolito also has silicon and other metals that could be used in situ to make panels. Here the idea is to use that energy to feed the lunar bases. And another project is Blue Alchimist de Blue Origin. Again, taking advantage of the regolite to create panels, it also seeks to generate energy in an unlimited and constant way. Challenges. Now, they are not simple or cheap programs. Focusing on the most accurate project, which would be to produce energy because we know that there is light and we know how to send that energy to the earth, we … Read more

Deepseek does the same as Openai’s most advanced models with much less resources. The key: “Reinforcement Learning”

The entire world is wondering how it is possible that the models of AI of Deepseek They have become overnight the great protagonists of today in the field of artificial intelligence. The answer is relatively simple. These models have managed to demonstrate that You can do more with much less. Both Deepseek V3 and Deepseek-R1 are comparable to GPT-4 or O1 OPENAI respectively, but it is estimated that their training has been much less expensive and its inference, of course, is: the prices of the Deepseek API are up to 35 sometimes lower than those of OpenAi, but that makes one wonder how it is possible. The answer is clear, and it is because we have at our disposal the technical reports of these AI models. Precisely his study has allowed us to clarify What are the techniques that this Chinese R&D laboratory has used to develop these models so efficient and capable. Many techniques, a single objective: efficiency There are several differences that make Deepseek’s new model especially efficient. Its creators explain in detail in the detailed Technical Report that is publicly available. Here are the most relevant: Deepseekmoe (“Mixture of experts”): In models such as GPT-3.5 the entire model was activated in both training and inference (when we use it). However, not all model components are necessary for our requests. The MOE technique – already introving with Deepseek V2 – precisely divides the model into multiple “experts” and only activates those that are necessary according to the request. GPT-4 is already a MOE model. But as we said, Depseekmoe even went further and differentiated between even more specialized experts, in addition to using some somewhat more generalist experts that could contribute value in certain requests. Managing all those specialized or generalist experts not only benefits inference, but also the training phase, making it more efficient. This technique is similar to the so -called “Time Scaling test” that also adjusts the size or complexity of a model during efficiency. Deepseekmla (Multi-Head Latent attention): It is another substantial improvement-even more than the previous one, and also introduced with Deepseek V2-that affects the way in which memory is managed in these models. Normally it is necessary to load both the model and the entire context window – the one that allows us to write prompts and include long texts, for example. Context windows are especially expensive because each token requires both a key and their corresponding value. With the improvement introduced with this technique, what was made possible was to compress that warehouse of keys and values, dramatically reducing memory use during inference. Auxiliary -los-Free Load Balancing: If we imagine a model like a great orchestra, each musician is an “expert” within the model. To play a complex piece, not all musicians are necessary all the time. Traditionally the so -called “auxiliary losses” were used to make sure that all musicians played enough, but these losses could interfere with that interpretation of the musical piece (model training), which could degrade general performance. With Deepseek V3 the model is able to balance the work of each expert dynamically. That does the simplest, direct and efficient training by eliminating “auxiliary losses.” In addition, the elimination of interference allows the model to learn better and with less resources … and get better results. Multi-Token Prediction Training Objective: Often predicting the following word depends on several previous words or context. With this technique instead of predicting only the following word, the model learns to predict several words at the same time. That makes more natural and understandable and less ambiguous texts generate, but also accelerates training by reducing the number of steps necessary to generate the complete text sequence. FP8 Mixed Precision Training: The use of Numbers FP8 allows significantly reducing memory consumption and accelerates calculations. Some critical parts of the model continue to use FP32 training to guarantee precision, but there is another additional benefit of FP8: the size of the models is reduced. Other models use techniques such as quantization or parameter pruning. Although Openai does not give data on GPT-4 in this section, the assumption is that it works with BF16, more expensive in terms of memory. Although FP8 theoretically leads to less precise models, other complementary techniques such as fine-grained quantization are used to reduce the negative impact of values ​​that come out of the common, which makes a stable training possible. Cross-Node All-to-Lall Communication: During training it is necessary to constantly exchange information between all nodes (computers) connected in training data centers. That can become a bottleneck, but these new Deepseek V3 techniques include efficient communication protocols, data traffic reduction and efficient synchronization to accelerate training and, once again, reduce the costs of that process. Reinforcement and “distillation” learning as keys But in addition to all these techniques, those responsible for Deepseek V3 explain how they pressed it with 14.8 billion tokens, a process to which a supervised adjustment followed (Superved Fine-Tuning, SFT) and several stages of Reinforcement Learning (Reinforcement Learning, RL). The SFT phase-which is mentioned in the Deepseek V3 report-was completely omitted in the case of Deepseek-R1. However, learning by reinforcement is an absolute protagonist in the development of both models, especially in R1. The technique is well known in the field of artificial intelligence, and it is as if we trained a dog with prizes and punishments. The model learns to respond better by giving rewards if you do well. Over time, the model learns to take actions that maximize long -term reward. In Deepseek, learning for reinforcement is used to break down complex problems in smaller steps. In it Deepseek R1 technical report It also indicates how this model makes use of RL techniques directly on the base model, without the need for supervised training. That saves computing resources. The call also comes into play here Thought chain (chain-of-though)also mentioned in the technical report. This refers to the ability of a language model to show the intermediate steps of its reasoning. The model not only … Read more

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