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Microsoft Gives Bing and Edge a Major Upgrade With AI

02-08-2023

February 08, 2023

⚡ Today’s Highlights

  • 📰 News: Microsoft Bing and Edge get an AI facelift

  • 💰 Funding: Renewable energy/sustainable infrastructure and automating customer experiences

  • 🦾 Tools: AI-powered job recruiting

  • 🧠 Resources: Tech layoffs are rampant but AI is opening up new jobs everywhere

  • 📅 Events: The World AI Cannes Festival is this week! (February 9-11, 2023. Cannes, France + Virtual)

  • 💼 Jobs: Amazon and Block

📰 Today's Top Stories

(8 min read) (Source: Microsoft Blog)

TLDR: Microsoft and OpenAI have jointly launched a new AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser, available in preview on Bing.com. The new Bing offers a better search experience with more relevant results and a new sidebar that provides more comprehensive answers. Bing provides complete answers by reviewing results from across the web and summarizing the answer you are looking for. The new Bing also offers a new interactive chat experience for more complex searches, and a creative spark to help you write an email, create an itinerary, prep for a job interview, or generate content.

The Edge browser has also been updated with new AI capabilities, including Chat and Compose functionalities, and a new Edge Sidebar that can provide summaries and help you compose content. The new Bing is powered by a next-generation OpenAI large language model that is faster, more accurate, and more capable, and Microsoft has committed to implementing safeguards to defend against harmful content. The new Bing is available in a limited preview on desktop, with a mobile experience to follow soon.

The Big Picture: The world of search engines is changing forever. There’s a new sheriff in town. Its name is Bing and it can answer questions in full sentences. Your move Google.

(7 min read) (Source: IBM Research)

TLDR: IBM built its own AI supercomputer, called Vela, to support its foundation model training research and development initiatives. It’s a cloud-based system that utilizes standard hardware such as x86 silicon, Nvidia GPUs, and ethernet-based networking. The software stack includes open-source technologies like Kubernetes, PyTorch, and Ray. Some features of Vela have been (privately) online since May 2022 and have been designed to be cloud-native and optimized for AI. IBM is using machine-learning frameworks to manage performance and efficiency with economical hardware to gear the tool toward enterprises (and their budgets).

Vela is being used to work on a variety of projects, including its partnership with NASA, MoLFormer-XL, to structure new molecules for life sciences, and Project Wisdom to help enterprises deploy code using plain language. IBM is focused on creating foundation models for enterprise use cases and is not directly competing with general foundation models like OpenAI's GPT-3.

The Big Picture: High-performance computing tools like these could become commercially available at a bigger scale as the hardware used to build them and the massive amounts of power they use become cheaper, renewable, and more widely available.

(12 min read) (Source: Scientific American)

TLDR: Want to know how your cat really feels about you? Scientists are using advanced technology, known as "digital bioacoustics", to study animal communication and understand it better. They are installing digital recorders all over the world to capture and analyze the sounds that different species make. The sounds are then analyzed using artificial intelligence to detect patterns in the communication of different species.

Egyptian fruit bats and honeybees were studied using deep-learning algorithms to analyze their communication. Bats have a much more complex language than previously thought, with individual "signature calls" and the ability to learn complex sounds and signals as they grow. Honeybees use vibrational and positional communication. The algorithms were able to track individual bees and decode their language, identifying specific signals such as "toot," "quack," and "danger", which direct both collective and individual behaviour in the bee colony.

The Big Picture: Digital bioacoustics, paired with artificial intelligence, has given us a planetary-scale hearing aid that allows us to listen to sounds beyond our normal hearing range. This tech provides new insights into the complexity of non-human communication and raises philosophical questions about the concept of language. The ability for computers to communicate back to these species has many potential applications, from protecting honeybees to domesticating wild species by enabling humans to understand and communicate with animals like never before.

(15 min read) (Source: Harvard Business Review)

TLDR: Younger job seekers are seeing more AI-led video interviews (AVIs) for their first job, placement, or internship. A bot asks a limited number of pre-defined questions and makes an immediate decision about the candidate based on their responses. You can tell if AI might be involved during the hiring process if the early interview instructions and process include terms like machine learning, predictive analytics, decision algorithms, recommendation engines, and data-driven decision-making.

AVIs can be unsettling for job seekers due to the lack of human interaction. The glamorization of AI often leads people to believe that it can make better decisions than a human. In reality, the technology is imperfect and is not advanced enough to track all the human nuances it should be measuring. It suffers from bias and poor accuracy and interviewees should not let it affect their self-confidence before or during the interview.

The biggest factor for success is preparation and practice. The main difference is to be aware of the psychological pressure that technology and the potential lack of another human being can bring.

  • To avoid behaving in a rigid and unnatural way, practice speaking to a screen. Have a friend use a video call to ask you pre-arranged questions with your cameras on. This will help build confidence and make the experience feel more natural.

  • Then, repeat the first step, but with the camera turned off. This will be a bit more difficult, but it will help you become familiar with the AVI experience. Record yourself to figure out what works and what needs adjusting.

  • Finally, try again by yourself. Speak to your computer screen and record your answers. Watch the recording back to fund things you like and if anything changed with a person on screen vs. without.

It is important to prepare both psychologically and physically for an AVI. Ensure that your environment looks professional and is well-lit, with good sound quality. Block out enough time for the interview and practice in the same setting before the interview.

💰 Funding Alerts

  1. DroneBase, now known as Zeitview, is a company aiming to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure through inspection software that delivers insights, lowers costs, and improves asset performance and longevity. They raised $55 million in a round led by Valor Equity Partners along with Union Square Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Euclidean Capital, Energy Transition Ventures, and Hearst Ventures. The funds will be used to support its AI-enabled software and global presence.

  2. Ushur is a startup that automates aspects of companies’ customer experiences with AI-powered workflows for tasks like claims processing, customer support and appointment scheduling. They raised $50 million in a Series C round led by Third Point Ventures with participation from investors Iron Pillar, 8VC, Aflac Ventures and Pentland Ventures. The funds will be used to expand their product portfolio.

  3. Therma is the provider of a cooling intelligence platform combating food and energy waste. They raised $19 million in Series A funding led by Zero Infinity Partners, along with Deciens Capital, CityRock Venture Partners, Homecoming Capital, Ananta Capital, Kindergarten Ventures, Collaborative Fund, and Govtech Fund. The funds will be used to expand operations and business reach.

  4. MindsDB is an open-source applied machine learning (ML) platform. They raised $16.5 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark. It is currently one of the most widely used developer platforms.

  5. Rembrand is an AI product placement platform that embeds photo-realistic products into digital videos. They raised $8 million in a seed funding round led by Greycroft and UTA.VC. The funds will be used to support its beta launch.

🦾 Trending Tools

  • Moonhub seamlessly blends AI and automation technology with HR knowledge to find the best talent for your company by considering more than just keywords on resumes.

  • Cargo, the “AI for Sheets”, is an OpenAI-based addon that streamlines sales and marketing tasks by using AI-powered pre-built templates to write emails, follow-ups, ad copy, and blog posts, reducing workload by auto-filling spreadsheets with inputs.

  • Cody is an AI assistant designed for businesses, offering personalized support from training on your specific processes and sources. With features like document upload, question answering, and brainstorming suggestions, Cody offers a superior solution to generic AI tools like ChatGPT. Cody is currently free in beta to allow for user feedback and improvement.

🌎 Popular Content

1. This lecture by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman from 8 years ago is a masterclass in cooking up, refining, and bringing your wildest business ideas to life. His points ring true to this day and AI is the tool that levels the playing field for entrepreneurs from all walks of life to succeed in the new age of the internet. (YouTube)

2. Old but gold. It seems like ChatGPT might still not be as smart as everyone thinks. (Twitter)

3. Seems like baby Yoda is getting into his rebellious teens. Check out more from the music venue far far away here. (Reddit)

5. Tech investing legend Paul Graham shares some insights about how investing is shifting during this AI boom. (Twitter)

👀 More Reading

🧠 Resources

  1. This infographic from Bain and Company highlights the huge demand for tech workers with specialized skills (a lot of whom were recently laid off). Their 2022 tech report outlines the many factors that have shaped the chaotic tech industry we see today. The number of AI/ML, Data Science, and WEB3 job postings is constantly growing as companies integrate new AI technology. We have to think creatively about the big picture because every industry is trying to adopt these new technologies and they need experts to help them do it.

  2. The Two Minute Papers channel made a great playlist outlining the many scientific advancements that brought OpenAI to where it is today. Check it out here. (Youtube)

 📅 Upcoming Events

  1. The World AI Cannes Festival (February 9-11, 2023. Cannes, France + Virtual), where decision-makers and AI innovators meet, where the most promising innovations and technologies get into the spotlight, where those who are currently building the world’s most game-changing AI strategies and use-cases will be on stages.

  2. The Gen AI Conference (February 14, 2023. San Francisco, CA) hosted by Jasper AI, is the first-ever generative AI conference. Attendees can learn about the many recent developments in the field of AI from experts and network with like-minded individuals in AI, business, and marketing. Online registration will close on February 13th at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.

  3. RE•WORK AI Summit West, Deep Learning Summit (February 15-16, 2023. San Francisco, CA), a chance to hear the latest technology advancements, practical examples of how to apply AI to solve challenges in cross-industry settings, business and society, and delve deeper into the work of leading AI experts in a series of presentations, panel discussions, interviews and fireside chats.

  4. Data Science Salon Austin (February 21-22, 2023. Austin, TX + Virtual) is a two-day 500-person conference focused on AI and machine learning applications in the enterprise. The intimate event curates data science sessions to bring industry leaders and specialists face-to-face to educate each other on innovative new solutions in artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics and acceptance around best practices.

 💼 Jobs

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