AI leaders reach safety agreement with White House

Hello readers, before we get to today’s news, we just want to quickly update you on some changes to our newsletter that you can expect going forward.

In an effort to grow our readership and business, we will be shortening our daily newsletter to just the essential and best pieces of information across sections.

You can still expect all the same types of information, however in a new format. The top news and funding will still be delivered daily, with a bit more detail and context. The third section will rotate on a daily basis between the best events, content, and tools/demos.

Our goal is to deliver the most crucial pieces of info, at a higher level of quality. The AI industry continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace, and we think it's important to cut through the noise and focus on the things that are the most relevant.

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Head of Ops at WorkWithAI.com.

⚡ Today’s Highlights

• 📰 News: AI companies reach agreement with White House on guardrails for new tools

• 💰 Funding: Cognaize, Ati Motors, Thingtrax, Magic, and Stylib

• 📅 Events: The AI & GPT Application Innovation Challenge Hackathon is this week!

📰 Today's Top Stories

Pressured by Biden, A.I. Companies Agree to Guardrails on New Tools

(10 min read) (Source: The New York Times)

TLDR: After a meeting with their leaders on Friday, The White House announced that seven leading AI companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, Anthropic, and Inflection AI, have voluntarily committed to ensure the safety and transparency of their AI products.

• The companies will allow external scrutiny of their AI products by domain experts, share information with each other and the government about risks and vulnerabilities, and invest in cybersecurity and insider threat safeguards.

• The commitments also include deploying mechanisms like watermarking to indicate AI-generated content and prioritizing research on understanding limitations and biases in AI.

The Big Picture: The Biden administration's initiative to secure voluntary commitments from major AI companies for safety and transparency highlights the urgency of AI governance as companies introduce new AI-powered products at breakneck speeds. While these commitments are a step forward, there's a need for comprehensive legislation to address complex issues like privacy, data transparency, and workforce impact.

OpenAI had a busy week…and not all of it was good.

TLDR: In a week highlighted by the announcement of an FTC investigation and capped off with a meeting at the White House to agree to voluntary safety measures, OpenAI also made headlines in other areas…

• First, OpenAI's head of trust and safety, Dave Willner, left the company after a year and a half in the role, moving to an advisory position to spend more time with his family. (Link, TechCrunch, 6 min read)

  • Willner's departure comes at a critical time for the AI industry, with growing concerns about the regulation and safety of generative AI platforms. OpenAI is actively seeking a replacement as it aims to be an aware and responsible player in the field.

• OpenAI also acknowledged that the performance of GPT-4 may be worse in some areas/tasks, with users expressing complaints about the model being "lazier" and "dumber" compared to previous versions and even studies from Stamford and Berkely corroborating user feedback. (Link, Business Insider, 3 min read)

• It’s not all bad news though, OpenAI is launching the ChatGPT app for Android after its successful release on iOS. The Android app will be available soon on the Google Play Store (Link, The Verge, 2 min read)

Meet FreeWilly, Our Large And Mighty Instruction Fine-Tuned Models

(4 min read) (Source: Stability AI)

TLDR: Stability AI's CarperAI lab announces FreeWilly1 and FreeWilly2, powerful open access Large Language Models (LLMs) with exceptional reasoning ability and performance in varied benchmarks.

• Both models are research experiments, released under a non-commercial license to foster open research, and were trained using a novel data generation approach.

The Big Picture: The release of FreeWilly1 and FreeWilly2 represents a significant milestone in the development of open-access LLMs, along with Meta’s release of its open-source model Llama 2. These models are making AI research significantly more accessible.

Apple is already using its chatbot for internal work

(3 min read) (Source: The Verge)

TLDR: Apple is utilizing an internal chatbot for various tasks, including prototyping future features and answering questions based on trained data.

• The company is exploring ways to expand the use of generative AI, possibly integrating it into its customer support team for better customer assistance. No big announcements for now, but we should receive some significant updates in the coming year (hopefully including an upgrade for Siri).

💰 Funding News

1. Cognaize, a company utilizing AI for processing unstructured financial data, announced $18M in funding with Argonautic Ventures (Viken Douzdjian, Managing Partner) spearheaded the funding round, and participation from Metaplanet (Rauno Miljand, Managing Partner) and other investors.

• Cognaize employs a hybrid approach by combining AI algorithms with human input to refine and optimize the data processing. They aim to pave the way for advanced financial AI applications

• With the fresh funding in hand, Cognaize plans to accelerate its hiring efforts, invest in research, product development, and strengthen its business outreach.

• Viken Douzdjian, expressed enthusiasm about partnering with Cognaize, emphasizing that the massive amount of unstructured financial data calls for finance-specific, generative AI, and the Cognaize platform will enhance decision-making, risk assessment, and uncover hidden patterns and trends.

2. Ati Motors, a leading company in the field of autonomous industrial robots, raised an $10.85M Series A, with True Ventures (Rohit Sharma, Partner) and Athera Ventures Partners (Parag Dhol, Partner) leading the round, and participation from Blume Ventures, Exfinity Ventures, and MFV Partners.

• They combine AI, computer vision, and hardware to automate work in industrial environments and warehouses.

• The primary objective of this funding is to accelerate the development and deployment with plans to expand to various markets, including the US, South East Asia, Japan, and Europe.

• Ati Motors already boasts key customers like Bosch, TVS Motors, CEAT, and Hyundai in India and the US. Their autonomous mobile robots have gained popularity due to the rising demand for efficient and flexible solutions in various industries. By reducing costs, optimizing workflows, and enhancing safety, their robots offer crucial benefits for businesses aiming to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving landscape of automation.

3. Thingtrax raises £4.3M in pre-series A funding led by Concentric, SuperSeed and Puma Private Equity to accelerate expansion into Europe & US and empower manufacturers with AI-driven operational insights.

4. Magic, the London-based fitness tech startup, raises $2.5M to expand product and athlete partnerships for AI-powered virtual personal trainer mirror.

5. Stylib secures £1.5 Million in pre-seed round led by Foundamental to revolutionize design catalogues with AI and Computer Vision.

👀 More Reading:

• What Elon Musk’s AI Startup Means for Tesla’s AI Ambitions (The Wall Street Journal)

• What AI means for growth, incomes and inflation (Axios)

• What does an AI prompt engineer actually do? (Semafor)

• Foreign investors stream into Taiwan as AI stocks beckon (Reuters)

• At Startup That Says Its AI Writes Medical Records, Humans Do a Lot of the Work (The Wall Street Journal)

• Using AI to fight climate change (Google DeepMind)

📅 Upcoming Events

AI & GPT Application Innovation Challenge Hackathon (Jun 20 - Aug 15, 2023 / Virtual)

• Join global industry experts to brainstorm and exchange ideas in this AI hackathon offering $26,000 in total prizes

• Projects must be focused on AI and GPT, falling amongst 6 tracks: Virtual Assistants and Chatbots, Professional Services, Finance and Investment, Business and Marketing, AIGC + Web3, Others

The K-12 Data Science Conference 2023 (July 27, 2023 / Virtual)

• Data science is now the highest-paid job for students graduating with bachelor's degrees, with the field projected to grow from a $138.9 billion market in 2020 to a $229.4 billion market by 2025.

• This conference will introduce K-12 students, educators, and parents to foundational concepts and various careers in data science with a combo of workshops and presentations.

Infinite Possibilities: Exploring the future with Generative AI (Aug 2-5, 2023 / Bengaluru, India)

• Discover the latest AI applications through engaging sessions led by global experts in AI and ML. Engage in exclusive hack sessions and workshops, designed to challenge AI and ML practitioners with real-life data science problem-solving. Gain practical insights, elevate your skills, and leave with invaluable experiences to drive innovation.

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