š® Weekly Dose of AI: āGod-like AI could be a force beyond our control or understanding, and one that could usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human raceā
Elonās new AI company / BabyAGI / AI Drake goes viral
Good morning,
Hereās your weekly dose of signal in the noisy world of AI.
Letās get to it.
š Things to know
1ļøā£Ā Elon founds a new company to take on OpenAI
Elon was one of the founders of Open AI, and donated over 100m to OpenAI in the early days. But after resigning his board seat in 2018, after reportedly trying to take over the company, Elon has become increasingly critical, calling it a āclosed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoftā. Now, he is reported to be gearing up his own rival. The business was incorporated in March and has Elon as its sole director. Details are sparse, and Musk has so far Tweeted just one letter on the subject.
2ļøā£Ā AutoGPT and BabyAGI integrate recursion into AI
You are by now familiar with ChatGPT. You input a question, it gives you an answer. With AutoGPT, it runs on a loop (recursively, in computer science speak). You give it a task, and it will come up with all the sub tasks that need to happen, and then go and do those tasks. So it could:
Order your coffee at Starbucks
Perform market analysis
Find and negotiate a lease
Both of these projects shot up in popularity on Github. Shortly after came Godmode, which adds a nice user friendly interface to this terrifying development.
3ļøā£Ā AI-generated Drake and The Weeknd song goes viral
Is this the first time an AI generated song has gone viral? I believe so. The viral hit Heart On My Sleeve features cloned voices of Drake and The Weeknd, generated using AIe. The track showcases the two artists singing about their past flame, Selena Gomez, and has gained popularity on social media.
On Instagram last week, Drake responded to an AI-generated cover of him rapping Ice Spiceās āMunchā, writing: āThis is the final straw AI.ā
šĀ Things to read/watch
1ļøā£Ā What kind of mind does Chat-GPT have?
People paying attention seem to be dividing into two camps. One camp is not so worried about the current crop of AI. This New Yorker author is in that group, writing that Chat-GPT is following the āwell-worn digital logic of pattern-matchingā taken to a āradically larger scaleā.
2ļøā£Ā We must slow down the race to God-like AI (paywalled)
In the other camp, in addition to the thousands of people calling for a pause on AI experiments, this article from the Financial Times. Hogarth argues that AI alignment is not progressing nearly fast enough, with leading companies such as Deepmind and Open AI allocating just 2% and 7% of their headcount respectively to work on this critical area. He compares the current AI race to previous nuclear arms races and urges labs working on AI to slow down.
š¼Ā Jobs to consider
š ļøĀ Engineering
NVIDIA is hiring a Senior Solutions Architect
Striking Distance Studios is hiring an AI Engineer
Snorkel AI is hiring Applied Machine Learning Engineer
Synthesized is hiring a Machine Learning Engineer
š¦ŗĀ AI Safety
OpenAI is hiring for a Governance, Risk and Compliance Lead
Anthropic is hiring Software Engineers for Trust and Safety
BCG is hiring for a Senior Solutions Analyst
šØāš©āš¦Ā Product and Management
Lightmatter is hiring a Director of Product Marketing
Hyperscience is hiring a Senior Product Designer
Cambridge University Press is hiring a Strategic Programme Director, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
š°Ā Companies that have raised funds
Customers.ai, an AI-powered sales outreach automation platform based in Boston, MA, secured $4.99 million in a Series A funding round.
Chroma, an open-source embedding vector database for generative AI headquartered in San Francisco, CA, raised $18 million in a Seed funding round.
Fetcherr a Netanya, Israel-based company offering demand prediction and AI-native algorithmic pricing optimization solutions for airlines, received $12.5 million in pre-Series B financing.
Native.ai a customer intelligence platform located in New York, NY, obtained $3.5 million in Seed funding.
Covariant a robotics company in Emeryville, CA that focuses on AI-first technology, secured $75 million in funding.
I hope you enjoyed the digest this week. Let me know what you think by hitting reply or one of the feedback buttons below.
Until next week
Jamie
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