Answer.AI is a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on foundational research breakthroughs.
Jeremy Howard (founding CEO, previously co-founder of Kaggle and fast.ai) and Eric Ries (founding director, previously creator of Lean Startup and the Long-Term Stock Exchange) today launched Answer.AI, a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on foundational research breakthroughs. The creation of Answer.AI is supported by an investment of USD10m from Decibel VC. Answer.AI will be a fully-remote team of deep-tech generalists—the world’s very best, regardless of where they live, what school they went to, or any other meaningless surface feature. – Read More
Tag Archives: Strategy
Meta-IBM alliance promotes ‘open’ approach to AI development
The 50-member AI Alliance aims to push for responsible AI. Notably, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are not involved.
Artificial intelligence is one of the technologies that’s seen the most growth this year, but as a certain famous arachnid knows, with great power comes great responsibility. As AI continues to grow, different sectors, organizations, and companies are calling for stronger regulations and transparency regarding the development and use of AI. Meta and IBM are now allied in this cause. — Read More
Why do AI Wrappers get a bad (w)rap?
AI wrappers are tools that send info to an AI API and give you the output. That’s the simple version.
There’s a lot of hate (and jealousy) out there that you shouldn’t build one, they’re not real businesses, you’re not providing value, yadda yadda yadda.
But, plenty of people are making a ton of money from them. That’s business. — Read More
Oopsies: How OpenAI pulled off Sam Altman’s return? ‘72 intense hours of work,’ reveals interim CEO Shear
The Twitch co-founder was appointed as interim OpenAI CEO on November 20, three days after Altman’s ouster.
Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear, who joined OpenAI as interim CEO following Sam Altman’s ouster, on Wednesday revealed it took ‘72 very intense hours of work’ for the company to pull off Altman’s return, adding that he himself was ‘glad to have been a part of the solution.’ — Read More
OpenAI’s Misalignment and Microsoft’s Gain
I have, as you might expect, authored several versions of this Article, both in my head and on the page, as the most extraordinary weekend of my career has unfolded. To briefly summarize:
- On Friday, then-CEO Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI by the board that governs the non-profit; then-President Greg Brockman was removed from the board and subsequently resigned.
- Over the weekend rumors surged that Altman was negotiating his return, only for OpenAI to hire former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as CEO.
- Finally, late Sunday night, Satya Nadella announced via tweet that Altman and Brockman, “together with colleagues”, would be joining Microsoft.
This is, quite obviously, a phenomenal outcome for Microsoft. The company already has a perpetual license to all OpenAI IP (short of artificial general intelligence), including source code and model weights; the question was whether it would have the talent to exploit that IP if OpenAI suffered the sort of talent drain that was threatened upon Altman and Brockman’s removal. Indeed they will, as a good portion of that talent seems likely to flow to Microsoft; you can make the case that Microsoft just acquired OpenAI for $0 and zero risk of an antitrust lawsuit. — Read More
AI Hallucinations
Sam Altman, Mira Murati, Emmett Shear — 3 CEOs in 3 Days
A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft
Ihave always taken it for granted that, just as my parents made sure that I could read and write, I would make sure that my kids could program computers. It is among the newer arts but also among the most essential, and ever more so by the day, encompassing everything from filmmaking to physics. Fluency with code would round out my children’s literacy—and keep them employable. But as I write this my wife is pregnant with our first child, due in about three weeks. I code professionally, but, by the time that child can type, coding as a valuable skill might have faded from the world.
I first began to believe this on a Friday morning this past summer, while working on a small hobby project. A few months back, my friend Ben and I had resolved to create a Times-style crossword puzzle entirely by computer. In 2018, we’d made a Saturday puzzle with the help of software and were surprised by how little we contributed—just applying our taste here and there. Now we would attempt to build a crossword-making program that didn’t require a human touch.
… Something strange started happening. Ben and I would talk about a bit of software we wanted for the project. Then, a shockingly short time later, Ben would deliver it himself. At one point, we wanted a command that would print a hundred random lines from a dictionary file. I thought about the problem for a few minutes, and, when thinking failed, tried Googling. I made some false starts using what I could gather, and while I did my thing—programming—Ben told GPT-4 what he wanted and got code that ran perfectly. — Read More
Ten Ways AI Will Change Democracy
Artificial intelligence will change so many aspects of society, largely in ways that we cannot conceive of yet. Democracy, and the systems of governance that surround it, will be no exception. In this short essay, I want to move beyond the “AI-generated disinformation” trope and speculate on some of the ways AI will change how democracy functions—in both large and small ways.
When I survey how artificial intelligence might upend different aspects of modern society, democracy included, I look at four different dimensions of change: speed, scale, scope, and sophistication. Look for places where changes in degree result in changes of kind. Those are where the societal upheavals will happen.
Some items on my list are still speculative, but none require science-fictional levels of technological advance. And we can see the first stages of many of them today. When reading about the successes and failures of AI systems, it’s important to differentiate between the fundamental limitations of AI as a technology, and the practical limitations of AI systems in the fall of 2023. Advances are happening quickly, and the impossible is becoming the routine. We don’t know how long this will continue, but my bet is on continued major technological advances in the coming years. Which means it’s going to be a wild ride. — Read More
Google DeepMind boss hits back at Meta AI chief over ‘fearmongering’ claim
The boss of Google DeepMind pushed back on a claim from Meta’s artificial intelligence chief alleging the company is pushing worries about AI’s existential threats to humanity to control the narrative on how best to regulate the technology.
In an interview with CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal, Hassabis said that DeepMind wasn’t trying to achieve “regulatory capture” when it came to the discussion on how best to approach AI. It comes as DeepMind is closely informing the U.K. government on its approach to AI ahead of a pivotal summit on the technology due to take place on Wednesday and Thursday.
Over the weekend, Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, said that DeepMind’s Hassabis, along with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei were “doing massive corporate lobbying” to ensure only a handful of big tech companies end up controlling AI. — Read More
Stopping Innovation is how companies are trying to get ahead in AI
Ben Thompson (Stratechery) discusses how big tech companies and AI researchers are lobbying the government to heavily regulate AI development, likely to lock in their market positions.
What’s going on here?
Large tech companies and AI labs are urging the government to regulate AI development in the name of safety. However, their calls for regulation align closely with their business interests, indicating an ulterior motive of stifling competition. — Read More
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