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- Alibaba released two open-sourced AI models to take on Meta’s Llama 2
Alibaba released two open-sourced AI models to take on Meta’s Llama 2
Aug 4, 2023
Made with Midjourney and Canva. Prompts: ‘a robot llama --ar 16:9 --v 5.2’ + ‘a robot wearing an orange turban --ar 16:9 --v 5.2’
⚡ Today’s Highlights
📰 News: Alibaba released two open-sourced AI models to take on Meta’s Llama 2 + IBM and NASA have teamed up to help climate research with AI
💰 Funding: Jerry, TytoCare, Tromzo, Acelab, Datasaur, Jericho Security, and GroGuru
🌎 Content: If you’re curious about AI safety, consciousness, the singularity, and the philosophy of AI you have to listen to these podcasts
📰 Today's Top Stories
(3 min read) (Source: CNBC)
TLDR: Alibaba Cloud, Chinese tech giant Alibaba's cloud computing unit, released two open-sourced LLMs, Qwen-7B and Qwen-7B-Chat, with 7 billion parameters each, aiming to compete with Meta's 70-billion parameter Llama 2 model.
The move seeks to challenge the market dominance of Meta, OpenAI, and Google by offering freely accessible LLMs to researchers, academics, and commercial institutions worldwide.
The Big Picture: The release of open-sourced AI models by Alibaba and Meta, coupled with China's strategic push to catch up with the U.S. in AI development, continues to signal ‘accessible yet controllable’ AI technologies. By making these LLMs freely available to researchers and institutions globally, these tech giants are fostering a collaborative environment that could accelerate AI adoption, drive innovation, and shape the future of various industries and societies. However, the withheld parameters in Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen and Meta's massive Llama 2 version still point to the ongoing desire for competitive advantages and strategic control.
(6 min read) (Source: IBM Research)
TLDR: IBM and Hugging Face have announced a collaboration to make IBM's geospatial foundation model, built from NASA's satellite data, openly available on Hugging Face, enabling easier access and application of AI in climate and Earth science research.
The geospatial model, trained on Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 satellite data, shows a 15% improvement over state-of-the-art techniques using half as much labeled data, offering potential for tasks like deforestation tracking and greenhouse gas monitoring.
The Big Picture: This collaboration between IBM, Hugging Face, and NASA exemplifies the growing importance of open-source technologies and data sharing in driving innovation, particularly in fields like climate science. Making AI models openly available democratizes access to advanced AI capabilities, fostering collaboration and enhancing our understanding of the planet. As the AI ecosystem continues to grow, open-source contributions are crucial in addressing global challenges and driving positive societal and environmental impacts.
(8 min read) (Source: The Wall Street Journal)
TLDR: The demand for artificial intelligence is driving the emergence of purpose-built data centers equipped with AI chips and advanced technologies to handle compute-intensive AI applications.
Spending in the global AI infrastructure market, including data centers and supporting hardware, is projected to reach $422.55 billion by 2029, with an annual growth rate of 44%.
CoreWeave, a data-center startup, secured a $2.3 billion debt facility to accelerate the construction of AI-ready data centers, anticipating increased demand in the AI market.
Existing data centers face challenges in meeting the power and cooling requirements of AI data centers, creating potential capacity shortages as businesses deploy AI tools more rapidly.
👀 More Reading:
People are becoming more robotic — and AI could make it worse (Axios)
How MIT’s Liquid Neural Networks can solve AI problems from robotics to self-driving cars (VentureBeat)
Your résumé isn’t the only thing popular job sites evaluate (The Washington Post)
What to Know About Worldcoin and the Controversy Around It (TIME)
💰 Funding News:
1. Jerry has created an AllCar™ app, which uses AI to revolutionize car ownership by helping customers find insurance rates, refinance car loans, track driving scores, and provide transparency into maintenance and repair costs, all in one place. They recently raised an additional $110M combined between a Series C2 round and debt financing.
The equity round was led by existing investor Park West Asset Management. Other participants in the oversubscribed up round include Goodwater Capital, Highland Capital Partners, and Plug And Play Ventures, among other existing investors. TriplePoint Capital led the debt facility.
Corey Mulloy, General Partner at Highland Capital Partner, commented “Jerry is delivering on its superapp promise of serving drivers’ needs beyond insurance by entering the financing, maintenance and repairs, and safety service categories.”
2. TytoCare, is a virtual healthcare company enabling remote medical exams through its Home Smart Clinic, which combines a handheld remote examination device and AI-powered diagnostic support. They raised $49M in additional growth funding.
TytoCare's Home Smart Clinic has driven utilization rates five times higher than traditional telehealth services, reduced total cost of care by an average of 5%, and diverted ED visits by an average of 10.8%, leading to improved health outcomes.
Round led by Insight Partners, TytoCare's existing investor, and included new strategic health system investors MemorialCare, and major pension funds HOOPP and Clal.
Funding is for enhancing TytoCare's offerings, developing next-generation AI capabilities, and advancing the Home Smart Clinic's longitudinal care capabilities for families managing chronic conditions with remote healthcare.
3. Tromzo, a cybersecurity startup with an AI-powered platform for Application Security Posture Management (ASPM), raised an additional $8M in an oversubscribed seed round.
Their software provides end-to-end visibility, reduces noise, and prioritizes critical vulnerabilities to eliminate friction between developers and security teams.
They’ve provided Fortune 500 customers with 100% visibility into their environments, cutting down remediation time. The Intelligence Graph and AI capabilities help manage the complexity of security data and prioritize risks.
Round led by Venture Guides, with new investors Alumni Ventures and Uncorrelated Ventures.
Funding is for accelerating growth, expanding product offerings, and solidifying Tromzo's position in the market.
4. Acelab, an ML-powered intelligent building supplies search engine for architects, raised $5.3M.
Their search engine gathers information from architects, collates it with its proprietary database, and returns the best-fitting building supplies. 8,000 architecture firms already are using the platform
Round led by Pillar VC, PJC, and Draper Associates, with participation from Alpaca, Steve Kaufer, Erik Jarnryd, and other investors.
Funding is for evolving the platform by adding more helpful features for architects, including direct procurement and generative AI for specification documents.
5. Datasaur, a platform for gathering training data for ML models to make AI accessible to non-technical users, raised a $4M Seed extension.
Datasur enables users to create models directly from labeled data.
Round led by Initialized Capital with participation from HNVR, Gold House Ventures, and TenOneTen.
Funding is for expanding the platform's capabilities and reach, making it accessible to a broader range of companies, including construction, law firms, and marketing companies.
6. Jericho Security, a cybersecurity startup that uses AI to combat sophisticated phishing attacks generated by AI systems, raised $3M in pre-seed funding.
Round led by Era, with participation from Lux Capital, FoundersXFund, MetaLabs, Alcove, Textbook, Alumni Venture Group, Thorntree, and individual investors.
Funding is for expanding product offerings, growing the team, and scaling operations globally.
7. GroGuru, a provider of AI-enabled strategic water management solutions for commercial farmers, raised $2.3M in a Seed round.
Round co-led by Cove Fund and Impact Venture Capital and joined by Integral Capital Partners, Comeback Capital, and Right Side Capital Management. Market channel partners VIGR Crop, NutraDrip, and Thunderhead Crop also invested.
Funding is for expanding sales, developing and commercializing AI-enabled solutions for continuous farm monitoring, and expanding strategic partnerships
🌎 Fresh Content
1. Joscha Bach, cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and philosopher, joined Lex Fridman for an insightful discussion. Bach, who's worked at the MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, brings vast expertise to the conversation. He's currently a Principal AI Engineer at Intel Labs Cognitive Computing group. (YouTube, 3 hrs)
This conversation delves into the intricacies of AI, including artificial consciousness and open source AI while also touching on the more philosophical aspects, like happiness, suffering, and the meaning of life. The episode offers valuable insights and lessons for all those intrigued by the intertwining of philosophy, consciousness, AI, and human evolution.
2. Coleman Hughs recently hosted a riveting AI safety discussion with experts Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Scott Aaronson, a leading figure in quantum computation currently at OpenAI, and Gary Marcus, cognitive scientist and author. (YouTube, 1.5 hrs)
The podcast deeply explores AI safety, human existential risks, the true essence of intelligence, and the intriguing concept of AI singularity. This thought-provoking conversation is a fresh take on a subject often debated on the internet, and is a must-listen for those interested in the future of AI.
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