AI Beat Newsletter: AAIA India Chapter online event, “AI in Healthcare,” Philadelphia Chapter President Spotlight: Sunish Vengathattil, and this week’s handpicked stories/reports: Nvidia’s GTC 2025 keynote, Human Brain Project founder develops 'digital brains' with Microsoft, AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead

In today’s newsletter:

• Recent and upcoming chapter events and other events of note (AAIA India Chapter’s 3/31/25 online event, “AI in Healthcare”)

• AAIA news, chapter updates, member news (Philadelphia Chapter President Spotlight: Sunish Vengathattil)

• Recent AI news stories that caught our (and Perplexity AI’s!) eye

• Become an AAIA member

AAIA Chapter events and other events of note:

• AAIA India Chapter Online Event: AI in Healthcare - A Panel Discussion

  • Monday, March 31, 2025, 8PM - 9:30PM IST

  • AI is rapidly transforming healthcare, from clinical diagnostics to patient care, reshaping the way healthcare professionals use technology, make decisions and improve patient lives.  To explore these advances, we have put together an outstanding panel of experts who are at the forefront of AI-driven innovation in medicine.

    • Panelists:

      • Ranganathan Chandrasekaran, Professor and Director, University of Illinois at Chicago

      • Karl Kochendorfer, MD, Clinical Professor, University of Illinois Chicago and Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief Health Information Officer, University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System

      • Dr. Leena Salunkhe, Head Reference laboratory, Suburban Diagnostics India

      • Anand Sivaraman, Chief Executive Officer, Remidio

    • Learn more and register*

      • *AAIA Members: Email [email protected] to receive a coupon code for complimentary access to the online event

• Watch recordings of recent online events:

  • Charlotte, NC, USA Chapter: Navigating the IP Frontier: Intellectual Property in the Age of AI

  • India Chapter: The Future of AI In ERP Systems

• Save the date:

  • AAIA Global Online Event

    • Tuesday, April 8, 2025; details to follow

  • STACKxDays, the premier event for senior developers, presented by the VR/AR Association and the Applied AI Association

    • October 28-30, 2025

    • UC San Diego Park & Market

    • STACKxDays is looking for speakers for three different conference tracks:

      • Technical Talks Main Stage: Dive deep into AI & XR projects, case studies, best practices, and workflows

      • Mindset Stage: Inspire with talks on developer well-being, ethics, personal experiences, and the creative process

      • Workshop Leaders & Demos: Lead hands-on sessions and teach new tech stacks (Workshop spaces available for purchase)

      • Ready to share your knowledge and connect with fellow innovators? Apply to speak

      • Interested in purchasing workshop space or exploring sponsorship opportunities? Let us know in your application!

• Sign up for the (free) 5-Day Gen AI Intensive Course with Google (Kaggle)

  • “It’s a 5-day online course on March 31 - April 4 designed to help developers dive deep into the basics of the technologies and techniques behind Generative AI (Gen AI). Created by a team of Google’s ML researchers and engineers, this program includes both conceptual in-depth analyses and hands-on coding examples so you can tackle new Gen AI projects with confidence.”

• View the complete AAIA Events calendar

• Have an event you would like to share with AAIA members? Email details to: [email protected].

AAIA news, Chapters updates, member news:

• Introducing AAIA Philadelphia Chapter President Sunish Vengathattil

  • Position: Sr. Director, Software Engineering, Clarivate

  • Bio: Sunish Vengathattil is the Philadelphia Chapter President of Applied AI Association, dedicated to advancing AI innovation and fostering a strong community of AI professionals. With over 18 years of experience in software engineering, he specializes in AI/ML, cloud computing, and scalable software solutions, driving impactful technological advancements across industries. As an active AAIA member and a professional member of IEEE and ACM, Sunish is committed to promoting ethical AI practices and knowledge sharing. Under his leadership, the Philadelphia chapter aims to hosts events, mentorship programs, and research collaborations, empowering professionals to push the boundaries of AI-driven solutions. His contributions to AI research have been recognized in IEEE conferences and technical journals, further solidifying his role as a thought leader in the field.

  • Why I am excited to be an AAIA Chapter President: Becoming the Chapter President of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Applied AI Association (AAIA) is both an honor and an exciting opportunity. AI is transforming industries, driving innovation, and shaping the future, and I am thrilled to be at the forefront of this movement in Philadelphia - my home town and one of the fastest-growing AI hubs in the country.

  • What I hope to accomplish in the upcoming year in my Chapter: As the Chapter President of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Applied AI Association (AAIA), my goal is to establish our chapter as a leading hub for applied AI innovation, collaboration, and professional development. Over the next year, I aim to drive initiatives that create impactful connections between industry, academia, and AI enthusiasts while positioning Philadelphia as a key player in the global AI ecosystem.

AI in business and the enterprise news:

Here’s news that caught our and Perplexity’s attention as notable stories over the last week:

• Nvidia’s GTC 2025 keynote: 40x AI performance leap, open-source ‘Dynamo’, and a walking Star Wars-inspired ‘Blue’ robot (VentureBeat, March 18, 2025)

  • “Huang delivered a comprehensive vision of Nvidia’s future, emphasizing a clear roadmap for data center computing, advancements in AI reasoning capabilities, and bold moves into robotics and autonomous vehicles. The presentation painted a picture of a company working to maintain its dominant position in AI infrastructure while expanding into new territories where its technology can create value.”

  • Watch the keynote presentation

• Alden newspapers slam OpenAI's, Google's AI proposals (Axios, March 17, 2025)

  • “Last week, OpenAI and Google submitted letters to the White House in response to calls for AI "action plans." Both plans broadly called for the government to allow Big Tech firms to legally train their models on publicly available data, even if it's copyrighted.”

    “In response to both proposals, the Alden editorials called on the government to reject OpenAI's and Google's "self-serving proposals" and said it should "protect the work of artists, authors, photographers, journalists and all other creators and copyright holders who have been the victims of these companies."”

• Apple’s Siri Chief Calls AI Delays Ugly and Embarrassing, Promises Fixes (Yahoo! Finance/Bloomberg, March 14, 2025)

  • “The frank discussion shows the extent of Apple’s crisis in the field of artificial intelligence, where it’s struggling to catch up with peers. Siri — less advanced than rival systems — has become a symbol of Apple’s AI challenges. And the company’s woes boiled over last week, when it acknowledged publicly that critical features would be delayed indefinitely.”

• Apple Shuffles AI Executive Ranks in Bid to Turn Around Siri (Yahoo! Finance/Bloomberg, March 20, 2025)

  • “Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development, so he’s moving over another top executive to help: Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. In a new role, Rockwell will be in charge of the Siri virtual assistant...”
    “The moves underscore the plight facing Apple: Its AI technology is severely lagging industry rivals, and the company has shown little sign of catching up. The Apple Intelligence platform was late to arrive and largely a flop, despite being the main selling point for the iPhone 16.”

• Research: Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks (h/t The Rundown AI newsletter, METR, March 19, 2025)

  • Research summary

    • “We propose measuring AI performance in terms of the length of tasks AI agents can complete. We show that this metric has been consistently exponentially increasing over the past 6 years, with a doubling time of around 7 months. Extrapolating this trend predicts that, in under five years, we will see AI agents that can independently complete a large fraction of software tasks that currently take humans days or weeks.”

  • Full report

• AI Search Engines Invent Sources for ~60% of Queries, Study Finds (Gizmodo, March 14, 2025)

  • “The researchers fed various models direct excerpts from actual news stories and then asked them to identify information, including the article’s headline, publisher, and URL. Perplexity returned incorrect information 37 percent of the time, while at the extreme end, xAI’s Grok made details up 97 percent of the time. Errors included offering links to articles that did not go anywhere because the bot even made up the URL itself. Overall, researchers found the AI models spat out false information for 60 percent of the test queries.”

• Human Brain Project founder develops 'digital brains' with Microsoft (h/t Superhuman AI newsletter, The Decoder, March 19, 2025)

  • “Microsoft and Lausanne-based startup Inait announced a partnership on Tuesday to develop AI models based on brain simulations. According to the announcement, Microsoft plans to use Inait's technology to expand its AI offerings for business customers.”

    “The technology promises a key advantage: unlike conventional AI systems, it's designed to learn from real experiences rather than just existing data. According to Henry Markram, founder of Inait, the technology is built on 18 million lines of code that simulate mammalian brains.”

• Is SaaS Dying for Good? A Look at How AI Is Reshaping the Future of Software (The VC Corner, March 19, 2025)

  • “AI is shaking up the software sector in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago. At its heart, the conventional SaaS model is being challenged by AI-powered agents, automation tools, and specialized AI solutions. SaaS, according to some, is dying. Others claim it's just changing. The truth? The future of corporate software will be determined in the upcoming years, and whether SaaS adapts or gets left behind.”

• AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead (ArsTechnica, March 13, 2025)

  • “According to a bug report on Cursor's official forum, after producing approximately 750 to 800 lines of code (what the user calls "locs"), the AI assistant halted work and delivered a refusal message: "I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly."”

Have a newsworthy story or industry report/insight to share with AAIA members and community? Email details to [email protected].