EU agrees to historic AI act, establishing framework for global AI regulation

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News: EU agrees on historic AI Act, setting global standards for AI regulation + Elon’s xAI AI chatbot Grok is now available and already creating controversy

💰 Funding: Mistral AI raises $415M Series A from Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed to further advance open-source AI models

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. EU lawmakers agree on historic AI act, setting global standards for AI regulation w/ comprehensive framework for ethical and safe AI development.

• EU lawmakers reach a political deal on a risk-based framework for regulating AI, known as the EU AI Act

• The Act includes prohibitions on AI for biometric categorization, untargeted scraping of facial images, emotion recognition in workplaces and educational institutions, social scoring, AI that manipulates human behavior, and AI used to exploit vulnerabilities.

• The use of remote biometric identification technology in public places by law enforcement is not completely banned, but is subject to safeguards and narrow exceptions, requiring prior judicial authorization.

• The act also addresses "high risk" AI systems, requiring mandatory fundamental rights impact assessments, and introduces a two-tier system of guardrails for general AI systems, including transparency requirements.

•  Penalties for non-compliance can lead to hefty fines and increasing penalties

2. Elon Musk's xAI startup rolls out their AI chatbot Grok to all U.S. Premium+ subscribers, while sparking conversations due to its unexpected "woke" responses.

• Grok is currently exclusive to X's Premium+ subscription, priced at $16/month.

• Japanese users, X's second-largest user base, will be next, with a goal to reach all languages by early 2024.

• After roll out it was quickly criticized for being "woke" after users found it supporting progressive views.

• Musk promised to take "immediate action to shift Grok closer to politically neutral" in response to a chart showing Grok as left-leaning compared to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

3. Sam Altman is named TIME's 2023 CEO of the Year, as he faces allegations of manipulative behavior which caused the recent internal turmoil at OpenAI.

• OpenAI, under Altman's guidance, has become an $80Bn company, leading the charge in the development of AGI.

• The release of ChatGPT and GPT-4 under Altman’s leadership has been instrumental in OpenAI's success.

• New reports now suggest Altman may have been a manipulative leader which led to his temporary ousting in November.

• He faced allegations of psychological abuse and creating chaos at the company. 

• Senior leaders at OpenAI raised concerns about Altman's behavior, including allegations of pitting employees against each other, creating a toxic work environment, and not being "consistently candid in his communications with the board."

4. A group of MIT scholars have released a set of policy briefs outlining a comprehensive framework for the governance of AI using existing U.S. government entities.

5. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and Microsoft have formed a partnership to integrate worker perspectives in AI development and policy, a first of its kind partnership between a labor organization and tech company.

6. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened an investigation, following the recent governance changes at OpenAI, about if the Microsoft and OpenAI partnership constitutes a "relevant merger situation."

7. OpenAI is working with Rishi Jaitly, former Twitter India head, as a senior advisor to facilitate talks with the Indian government about AI policy.

8. New research from Anthropic finds 'Asking Nicely' reduces AI bias and can significantly mitigate AI discrimination in decision-making.

💰 Top Funding News:

1. Mistral AI, the French AI startup focused on advancing open-source AI models and software, raised a €385M (~$415M) Series A co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures along w/ Salesforce Inc., BNP Paribas, CMA CGM, General Catalyst, Elad Gil, Emerson Collective, Conviction, Bpifrance, La Famiglia, Eric Schmidt, New Wave, Motier Ventures, and Sofina.

• This round values the company at ~$2Bn

• The recently launched their developer platform in beta, offering access to its models via APIs, including the new Mixtral 8x7B model,, a new open-source LLM that outperforms OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and Meta's Llama 2 in benchmark tests.

2. MineOS, an AI-powered privacy management company focused on transforming how enterprises handle privacy and data governance, raised a $30M Series B, co-led by PayPal Ventures and Battery Ventures, w/ Nationwide Ventures.

3. Armada, a mobile edge computing platform that delivers internet connectivity, computing, and AI anywhere on the planet, raised $55M in funding led by Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Shield Capital, and 8090 Industries, w/ Felicis, Contrary, Valor Equity Partners, Marlinspike, 137 Ventures, Koch Real Estate Investments, 8VC, and other investors.

4. Citrusx, a software service to help companies ensure their ML models are in compliance with internal company rules and broader government regulations, raised a $4.5M Seed Round, led by Canadian VC Awz w/ angel investors.

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