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Elon Musk and Others Call for a Pause on AI Progress

March 30, 2023

March 30, 2023

⚡ Today’s Highlights

  • 📰 News: Elon Musk and many others call for a pause on AI progress due to “profound risks to society”

  • 💰 Funding: Fetch.ai, Genialis, Stratyfy, Deep Render, and Impact Observatory

  • 🦾 Tools: AI-powered search for iPhone and custom AI tool stacks to fit your business

  • 📅 Events: Sign up for The Data Dividend and Healthcare NLP Summit, they’re happening next Tuesday (April 4)!

📰 Today's Top Stories

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

TLDR: More than 1,000 tech leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Yuval Noah Harari, and Stuart Russell have signed an open letter asking AI labs to pause the development of systems more advanced than GPT-4 for 6 months, warning that the tools present profound risks to society.

  • Over the past few months, the push to develop more powerful chatbots has led to a race that could determine the next leaders of the tech industry.

  • These tools have been criticized for getting details wrong and their ability to spread misinformation about contentious issues like COVID-19, government propaganda, and conspiracy theories.

  • The letter asks that the development of powerful AI systems should advance “only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” and asks for increased government regulation and transparent testing practices.

  • Check out the open letter here.

The Big Picture: It seems like the biggest concern should not be stopping companies from training models but rather stopping them from releasing them publicly without the appropriate guardrails in place. Training advanced models without releasing them offers an opportunity to proactively research and address cases of misuse before they can reach the public. 

These guardrails are what need to be discussed openly between AI developers and policymakers so that obvious problems like misinformation can be addressed before they become an issue. AI companies should work together to develop countermeasures for AI misuse and implement them before releasing more advanced models.

(5 min read) (Source: Bing)

TLDR: Microsoft is exploring the placement of ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response.

  • This will include an expanded hover experience where hovering over a link from a publisher will display more links from that publisher giving the user more ways to engage and drive more traffic to the publisher’s website.

  • The ads are clearly labelled as sponsored responses, but their presence raises questions about the evolution of search engines and their monetization models.

The Big Picture: This new and potentially more subtle form of advertising may not be easily distinguishable, and users may wonder whether the chatbot was paid to give certain responses, leading to distrust and skepticism.

(4 min read) (Source: The Information)

TLDR: Google's Brain AI group and DeepMind are collaborating on software (internally known as "Gemini") to compete with OpenAI's chatbot after Bard’s less-than-stellar launch.

  • The joint project between Alphabet's AI research teams represents a significant shift from their previously intense rivalry, which has forced them to work together to compete with OpenAI and Microsoft’s current marketplace dominance.

💰 Funding Alerts

  1. Fetch.ai is a startup that is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to create digital assistants that can help people communicate and take action between different AI apps and services. The company announced $40 million in funding provided by DWF Labs, an incubator connected to Digital Wave Finance. The funding will be used to accelerate the development and deployment of their platform.

  2. Genialis, a computational precision medicine company, has raised over $13 million in Series A funding to transform disease diagnosis and treatment decisions. Taiwania Capital and Debiopharm Innovation Fund led the funding round, with participation from previous investors and new investors such as P5 Health Ventures and Angels. Genialis uses machine learning and data to develop next-generation patient classifiers to predict how patients will respond to targeted therapies. They plan to use the funding to expand their ResponderID™ platform and build their collection of clinically validated biomarker models for cancer diagnosis.

  3. Stratyfy, an AI company that creates solutions for financial institutions, has raised $10 million in funding to support innovation in credit risk assessment, fraud detection, and bias mitigation. The round was led by Truist Ventures and Zeal Capital Partners and also included investors such as Mendon Venture Partners, FIS, and Barry J. Glick. Stratyfy's technology allows financial institutions to make better-informed credit decisions while mitigating risks, without adding regulatory or operational risks.

  4. Deep Render, a machine learning startup focused on shrinking video file sizes, raised $9 million in funding, including a $6.3 million Series A round led by IP Group and Pentech Ventures, plus a $2.7 million competitive grant from the European Innovation Council. Deep Render's technology offers video compression that shrinks video sizes without sacrificing streaming quality and can be scaled with AI hardware that is already used in millions of devices. The company plans to use the funds to double its team, accelerate commercial engagement, expand to the US, and roll out the technology further.

  5. Impact Observatory is a company that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to create high-resolution maps of the world for governments and commercial customers. They recently closed a seed funding round, raising more than $5.9 million, with investment from Esri International LLC, a partner of Esri, the global leader in mapping and location intelligence. The funding will be used to accelerate their go-to-market strategy and to further research and development for additional monitoring capabilities utilizing commercial space-based data sources.

🦾 Trending Tools

  • Perplexity is an AI-powered app that instantly provides accurate answers and cited sources on any topic. With voice input, users can quickly search, discover, research, and learn on the go. The app's advanced AI technology and up-to-date sources make it a powerful tool for knowledge-seekers. As Perplexity continues to expand and improve, it's set to become the go-to resource for information on-the-fly.

  • AppSumo’s AskSumo is an AI chat platform that finds software deals for businesses. Using OpenAI’s GPT3.5-Turbo, it creates personalized recommendations for live software deals based on the user's query, providing solutions to help grow the business.

  • Taskade AI is a productivity and writing tool that uses AI to generate task lists, mind maps, and notes. Powered by ChatGPT and GPT-4, it offers writing suggestions, intuitive mind-mapping, and collaboration tools, and a delightful interface to make work fun.

  • Klavier is an extremely useful shortcut to reading/understanding long texts. Upload a document or web page URL and Klavier will use GPT to answer any questions you may have about it.

  • Truebase’s ChatGPT LinkedIn Email Generator creates hyper-personalized emails tailored to a business prospect's LinkedIn profile to increase email response rates and sales.

  • Podsqueeze is an AI-powered tool that repurposes podcast content into customized transcripts, show notes, timestamps, newsletters, and social posts.

👀 More Reading

🌎 Fresh Content

1. There’s a very interesting discussion happening on Reddit about how AI will affect capitalism. Sam Altman says A.I. has the potential to “break capitalism.” AI is now changing the way work is done in nearly every industry and more tasks are being automated as the tech gets more advanced. How do you think capitalism will fare in the face of evolving AI? Let us know on Twitter! (Reddit)

r/Futurology - Sam Altman says A.I. will “break Capitalism.” It’s time to start thinking about what will replace it.

5,591 votes and 1,990 comments so far on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/125k7ro/sam_altman_says_ai_will_break_capitalism_its_time/

2. Faizal Westcott made a great video on how he believes generative AI will affect photography and shares some insightful takes on its role in media. (YouTube)

r/weirddalle - Gorilla let loose on a High School Graduation.

1,126 votes and 51 comments so far on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/weirddalle/comments/125tzlc/gorilla_let_loose_on_a_high_school_graduation/

🧠 Resources

1. Discover how to create and apply Artificial Intelligence in real life with Part II of the Elements of AI course: Building AI. Suitable for anyone interested in practical AI methods, this online course covers machine learning, neural networks, and real-world applications. With three levels of difficulty, you can choose your pace, from multiple-choice exercises to programming with Python. By the end of the course, you will be ready to share your newfound knowledge and ideas. Plus, as a bonus, you can purchase a Building AI certificate to showcase your newfound skills. Best of all, the course is completely free!

2. In this video from All About AI, you'll discover the top 5 tips for creating successful prompts for tools like ChatGPT. Learn how to add context, set tasks, be specific, and iterate to maximize your results. Whether you're new to prompt engineering or have already taken a generative AI for a spin, these tips will help you get the most of what you want out of these amazing tools.

 📅 Upcoming Events

  1. Introducing The data dividend: harnessing the power of people, processes and technology to unlock value from data (April 4, 2023 / Boston, MA, USA) a forum that brings together leaders in government and industry to discuss how to establish the strategy, culture and skills needed to foster a data-driven enterprise and cultivate new ways of thinking and working. They’ll explore questions like: 

    1. What is top of mind for data and analytics leaders in 2023? What key challenges are they facing?

    2. How is the regulation of data and AI evolving, and how will it affect your industry and organisation to bring new opportunities and challenges?

    3. Can we trust decisions and recommendations made by AI? How can tech leaders mitigate risk, bias and harm?

  2. Healthcare NLP Summit (April 4-5, 2023 / Virtual) is a two day event consisting of immersive, industry-focused content including over 30 technical sessions, focusing on NLP applications in healthcare and life sciences. Join live Q&A sessions with the speakers, connect with others through networking features, and access all content on-demand after the event. The second week will feature beginner to advanced live training workshops and certifications. Learn, share, and apply best practices for putting AI to good use! Register for this free online event today!

 💼 Jobs

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