The scramble for a new EU leader
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chinese companies are resorting to chips repurposed from standard PC gaming products to develop artificial intelligence tools, and Charles Michel’s run for European parliament is causing a scramble to replace him. Plus, a new TV show is firing Brits up over a decades-old post office scandal.
Mentioned in this podcast:
Chinese companies resort to repurposing Nvidia gaming chips for AI
How Charles Michel’s parliament plan fires up the EU’s top job battle
How a Post Office drama galvanised Britain
The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson, Kasia Broussalian and Marc Filippino. Additional help by Sam Giovinco, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.0 | Learn more at equinore. |
| 0:10.0 | Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, January 10th, and this is your |
| 0:17.1 | FT news briefing. Chinese companies are using repurposed chips to get around US sanctions. |
| 0:24.0 | And the European Union is scrambling to replace Council President Charles Michel. |
| 0:29.0 | Plus, a UK television drama has put the spotlight on injustice against post office workers. |
| 0:34.6 | I mean it's like Kafkaesque I think you enter into this situation and then you're having to |
| 0:39.8 | prove your innocence. You just see how you get deeper and deeper into the quick sound of it. |
| 0:43.8 | I'm Mark Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day. Chinese companies are struggling to get their hands on the chips they need to develop |
| 1:06.0 | artificial intelligence. |
| 1:07.6 | The US has banned exports of high performance semiconductors to the country. |
| 1:12.2 | So these Chinese companies are now taking NVIDIA graphics cards made for computer games |
| 1:17.8 | and repurposing them. |
| 1:19.8 | Industry experts say this strategy is a pretty rough work around. |
| 1:23.9 | These gaming chips have a lot of raw computing power, |
| 1:26.4 | but they can't do the kind of high precision calculations |
| 1:29.9 | that you need to train AI. |
| 1:32.1 | As one analyst put it, it's like using a kitchen knife |
| 1:34.8 | to create artwork. It's doable, but the results aren't great. Now I've never made |
| 1:40.0 | art with a kitchen knife before, but it just goes to show how desperate Chinese companies |
| 1:44.4 | are to find workarounds to sanctions. The Battle for the European Union's top job has just gotten a little bit more |
| 1:57.6 | interesting and a little bit more high stakes. The current European Council |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Forhecz Topher, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Forhecz Topher and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.