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- #34 Altman's Worldcoin gets $100M funding
#34 Altman's Worldcoin gets $100M funding
AND: Big pharma capitalizing on AI
The AI Plug
May 15, 2023
Welcome to mid-May. Where does the time go, hey?
Also, welcome to the 1,324 new subscribers from last week - stoked to have you guys with us.
Some big news over the weekend. We’ve also got a winner from our Lucky Dip from last issue - Congrats, Pat!
Without further ado, let’s dive.
In today’s newsletter:
Top News: Altman secures $100M for Worldcoin, AI offers big pharma $50B opportunity, and Google’s new AI to hurt website traffic
The Rundown: Anthropic calls itself an “AI safety” company, can bots own IP, and AI catching retail store thieves
Tool of the day: Out-of-this-world
AI or real result: Congratulations Pat!
Claude is his own man: No identity crisis for Claude
Top News 🔝
Three biggest stories if you’re in a rush
Despite the current crypto winter (sorry, crypto bros), Sam Altman has successfully secured $100M in funding for his iris-scanning cryptocurrency Worldcoin. With an aim to launch a “worldwide eyeball-scanning identification system that would let every person in the world access cryptocurrency”, the coin, and others in the same space, hope to make cryptocurrency transactions as simple and familiar as possible, making sure anyone can use them. If Altman manages to do a fraction of what he’s done with OpenAI to Worldcoin, it just might be the next Bitcoin 2010 opportunity. Only time will tell.
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Investments in AI-driven drug discovery companies have increased by 300% since 2019. Hardly a surprise, given the current process of ideation, testing, and analysis costs pharma companies around $3B per new drug they launch. But just like automating writing tasks, AI can also optimize drug discovery. By using AI in the early stages of drug development, biopharma companies can massively reduce the number of trial-and-error lab tests required to find the formula they’re looking for, cutting hours and spending. Take Takeda Pharma, for example; they purchased a drug formula from a Boston startup this February for $4B - AI selected that drug in a 6-month trial period. Not only will AI be writing out emails and driving our cars - it’ll also be creating the next generation of drugs.
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90% of Google users click on the top 3 links on the results page - which is why ranking in the top 3 is so important. That website traffic is hugely valuable to website owners, enabling them to generate revenue through advertising and also sales. But Google’s latest update to search, “Search Generative Experience (SGE)”, could rob websites of that traffic, thus their revenue. As per CNBC:
“SGE will use AI models to combine and summarize information from around the web in response to search queries…showing users paragraphs of AI-generated text and a handful of links at the top of the results page.”
And because we’re all lazy, wanting answers as quickly as possible (why wouldn’t we?), having this information on Google’s results page means we won’t click through to the website that hosts that information, meaning they don’t get money for adverts. As so the Google monopoly expands.
The Rundown 🐂
Summary of note-worthy trending articles
Everseen raises over $70M for AI technology to catch thieves in retail stores. (link)
Future laws for copyright law and IP with AI-generated content are a minefield. Can bots have IP ownership? (link)
How AI might influence writing, art and culture, according to UCLA professors Jacob Foster and Danny Snelson. (link)
Landing AI, a new computer vision training company, uses visual prompting to simplify the whole process. (link)
Claude, Anthropic’s AI Chatbot, can digest an entire book, such as “The Great Gatsby”, in seconds. But, literature like that should be savored, not digested. (link)
Thousands of dollars have been stolen by scammers using AI-generated Frank Ocean songs. (link)
IBM unveils it’s new AI services, which mainly revolve around generative AI. (link)
AI2 Incubator’s new $30M fund triples down on early-stage AI startups. (link)
Of that $30M, AI2 is also developing an LLM optimized for science. (link)
Anthropic calls itself an “AI safety” company, building “steerable” systems, unlike OpenAI, which they believe focuses too much on commercial gain. (link)
Google’s new AI-powered Magic Editor tool promises to ‘make complex edits without pro-level editing tools’. (link)
Researchers discover AI models often fail to accurately replicate human decisions regarding rule violation, and tend towards harsher judgements. (link)
Tool of the Day ⚒️
AI tools we’ve used, loved, and highly recommend
Today’s tool is Magic Slides.
For all the students, lecturers, and team heads out there - this one’s for you. Magic Slides takes your ideas to professional presentations in seconds (with the help of AI).
You can create whole presentations from just a single topic. You can copy, paste, and summarize text and make your presentation look incredible - all with AI integrated into Google Slides. Can’t express how helpful this is.
AI Or Real Result
And the winner is….
Pat!
Congratulations. We’ve emailed you directly - let us know your payment details, and we’ll send you your prize.
Pat was one of many who correctly answered “AI” to the image in last Friday’s issue. @ARTiV3TSE generated the image, using this prompt:
A close up photograph of the most beautiful 21 year old woman alive, dramatic and stunning award winning photo, dramatic linear delicacy, shot on Sony aiii high resolution digital camera, hyper realistic skin, global illumination, very natural features, TIME cover photo, f/11 --uplight --ar 2:3 --q 2 --style raw --v 5.1
We’ll be running lucky dips regularly but randomly - make sure to check each issue for your chance to win the easiest $5 of your life.
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Identity isn’t an issue for Claude
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