🔮 Weekly Dose of AI: “we are a little bit scared of this”
Good morning,
There’s a lot happening in AI and technology at the moment. Every week, I try to sort the signal from the noise, and to help you make sense of how the world is changing under exponential progress.
Let’s get to it.
I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this - Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO
👀 Things to Know
1️⃣ The new release of Midjourney can produce stunning photorealistic images.
The latest version of AI image generator Midjourney was released on Wednesday, and can now create images that are very close to photorealistic. Check out the image above for an example - would you have been able to tell that was generated by AI?
Another improvement is with hands, specifically getting the right number of fingers, something that image generators previously struggled with. I think this version is better, but I still don’t think it’s perfect.
2️⃣ Microsoft introduces Copilot, integrating AI across Office.
Microsoft continues to ship AI into it’s existing products as fast as possible. First it was Bing, now hundreds of millions of Office users will experience “Clippy 2.0” with GPT-4 helping you draft documents, prepare presentations and …do stuff in excel.
Check out the launch video here, and explore how it will change office work forever here.
3️⃣ Open Philanthropy, Mozilla and the UK Government announce AI prizes.
With AI moving so quickly, safety and AI risk are also becoming big topics. Even the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, said recently that they were a “little bit scared of this”.
Well if he is scared, probably we should be too.
This week saw (separate) announcements from Open Philanthropy, Mozilla and the UK Government on AI prizes worth up to £1m ($1.2m). Check them out and help avert an AI crisis…
💼 Work in AI
Senior Frontend Engineer at Potion AI
Deep Learning Research Scientist at Luma Labs
Prompt Engineer and Librarian at Anthropic
💰 Funding Highlights
Prescient AI, a Miami, FL-based marketing attribution platform for DTC brands, raised $4.5 million.
Seldon, a London, U.K.-based machine learning operations platform provider, raised $20 million.
Adept, a San Francisco, CA-based startup building AI that “enables humans and computers to work together creatively to solve problems,” raised $350 million.
I hope you enjoyed the digest this week. Let me know what you think by hitting reply or one of the feedback buttons below.
Cheers,
Jamie
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