Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.
Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders. — Read More
Monthly Archives: July 2023
OpenAI scuttles AI-written text detector over ‘low rate of accuracy’
OpenAI has shut down its AI classifier, a tool that claimed to determine the likelihood a text passage was written by another AI. While many used and perhaps unwisely relied on it to catch low-effort cheats, OpenAI has retired it over its widely criticized “low rate of accuracy.”
The theory that AI-generated text has some identifying feature or pattern that can be detected reliably seems intuitive, but so far this has not really been borne out in practice. Although some generated text may have an obvious tell, the differences between large language models and the rapidity with which they have developed has made those tells all but impossible to rely on. — Read More
It’s high time for more AI transparency
That was fast. In less than a week since Meta launched its AI model, LLaMA 2, startups and researchers have already used it to develop a chatbot and an AI assistant. It will be only a matter of time until companies start launching products built with the model.
In my story, I look at the threat LLaMA 2 could pose to OpenAI, Google, and others. Having a nimble, transparent, and customizable model that is free to use could help companies create AI products and services faster than they could with a big, sophisticated proprietary model like OpenAI’s GPT-4. Read it here.
But what really stands out to me is the extent to which Meta is throwing its doors open. It will allow the wider AI community to download the model and tweak it. This could help make it safer and more efficient. And crucially, it could demonstrate the benefits of transparency over secrecy when it comes to the inner workings of AI models. This could not be more timely, or more important. — Read More
Elon Musk’s new ‘X’ rebrand looks like a ripoff from an iconic 1984 logo
At last, we have an answer to the mystery: now we know why Elon Musk has been joyfully torpedoing Twitter’s brand at every turn. The blue bird has been exterminated and replaced with an X, as CEO Linda Yaccarino enthusiastically announced today in a tweet. And the X in question looks like a barely disguised ripoff of the classic X Windows System logo from 1984. — Read More
What Comes After SaaS?
Operating a SaaS app is like running a one-room hotel that has unlimited occupancy. It’s as if you’ve figured out how to rent the same hotel room to many guests at a time through some weird tricks of quantum superposition. It is the greatest business in the world.
Customers pay for your hotel room by the month. Each one gets the same basic setup: bed, desk, and Wi-Fi that never works when you need it. When you make changes to the core room, all guests get the new version. But they can also request customizations personal to them, like a wake-up call—5 am for the gym rats, 1 pm for the barflies. Guests tend to stay for months or years at a time, paying for the same room as everyone else.
It is an absolute license to print money. — Read More
Ai + writers/illustrators = $tartup $tudio.
In addition to building startups, I’m a writer and video-maker. This puts me in possession of a secret that I will share here: there’s not much difference between building a startup that generates cashflow and movie or book that makes money, they both require immense Founder Energy– the Ambition, Determination, Creativity, and Charisma to build something people want and inspire folks along the way to help you make it happen.
Seems to me there’s a huge opportunity for writers and illustrators, maybe even actors, to build startup studios using AI. What’s missing is a YC/FounderU-type community/acclerator/cohort learning system to attract creative founders, pair them with the latest AI tools, and help them launch, grow, and raise money to produce the content. — Read More
India’s AI newsreaders are multilingual, cost-saving and ‘never tired’. Can they replace humans?
In April, an artificial intelligence chatbot presented the news on television for the first time in India. The chatbot named Sana had fair skin and long black hair and read the highlights on the Hindi-language news channel Aaj Tak that is owned by the India Today group, one of the biggest media houses in the country.
Following Sana, Odisha TV in eastern India revealed its chatbot named Lisa that wears a sari, has dark-rimmed eyes and reads the headlines in Odia, the local language. — Read More
Cerebras Introduces Its 2-Exaflop AI Supercomputer
“Generative AI is eating the world.”
That’s how Andrew Feldman, CEO of Silicon Valley AI computer maker Cerebras, begins his introduction to his company’s latest achievement: An AI supercomputer capable of 2 billion billion operations per second (2 exaflops). The system, called Condor Galaxy 1, is on track to double in size within 12 weeks. In early 2024, it will be joined by two more systems of double that size. The Silicon Valley company plans to keep adding Condor Galaxy installations next year until it is running a network of nine supercomputers capable of 36 exaflops in total. — Read More
Seven AI companies commit to safeguards at the White House’s request
Microsoft, Google, Meta and OpenAI pledge to abide by certain measures.
Microsoft, Google and OpenAI are among the leaders in the US artificial intelligence space that have committed to certain safeguards for their technology, following a push from the White House. The companies will voluntarily agree to abide by a number of principles though the agreement will expire when Congress passes legislation to regulate AI.
The Biden administration has placed a focus on making sure that AI companies develop the technology responsibly. Officials want to make sure tech firms can innovate in generative AI in a way that benefits society without negatively impacting the safety, rights and democratic values of the public. — Read More
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