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- #50 Bill Gates backs another AI unicorn
Issue #50, guys. It’s been an incredible journey thus far, and we’re just starting! We look forward to bringing you many more editions of The AI Plug, and we can’t do it without YOU. So thank you for opening our emails. Thank you for clicking on links (which are the metrics that matter in a newsletter - open rates and clicks).
So, to celebrate issue #50, give us a click and take your pick:
In today’s newsletter:
Top News: Bill Gates helps mint a unicron, China’s AI chip black market, and Sam Altman’s infuriating hypocrisy
TL;DR Rundown: Why Nolan loves AI, AI Jesus and his advice, and finally, The Chicken or The Egg?
Tool of the day: Sure-fire pickup lines
What did you say?: Asked the human of the bat
Hate the playa: Not the game
Top News 🔝
Three biggest stories if you’re in a rush
Bill Gates - a name synonymous with success. A name that sounds like “wealth” and a name that most tie to Microsoft (one that some also tie with the Coronavirus 🙄). He’s personally worth $116.9B, and among philanthropy and Settlers of Catan, one of his main loves in life is investing. And invest in AI he has.
Breakthough Energy Ventures, a Bill Gates-backed VC firm that supports clean energy companies, has just dropped close to $200M on KoBold Metals, a mining company that mines rare earth minerals using AI (rare earths, namely lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper, are fundamental to building the batteries for electric vehicles). With this round of funding, KoBold Metals is now valued at more than $1B, making it yet another AI unicorn.
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The U.S. and China don’t see eye to eye. We all know this. We also know that U.S. companies aren’t allowed to export certain goods to China - AI processing chips being among such goods. As with any restricted/regulated product or substance, there’s competition for them. Normally, Nvidia A100 chips go for around $10K per piece. In Shenzhen, a southern Chinese city close to Hong Kong, vendors sell these for $20K a piece. While buying or selling US AI chips isn’t illegal in China, the export restrictions mean the supply is minimal, sending prices through the roof. Good luck creating AI unicorn startups with those barriers…
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If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy. Saying one thing, doing another. “Do as I say, not as I do.” Pisses me right off. Given OpenAI’s position at the forefront of the AI revolution, it’s indeed infuriating to witness the hypocrisy with which the company conducts itself.
These past few months, we’ve publically heard nothing out of Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) other than “the responsibilities of large tech companies to control AI” and ”how it falls to governments to regulate this new technology.“ Sounds great. It sounds responsible. Even philanthropic. But after some digging by TIME, we discover that Altman and OpenAI have been lobbying for:
“Significant elements of the most comprehensive AI legislation in the world - the E.U.’s AI Act - to be watered down in ways that would reduce the regulatory burden on the company.”
So, in a nutshell, Altman is doing PR to paint OpenAI as a responsible tech leader, while trying to secure regulation that would prevent smaller AI startups from developing and challenging them, while AT THE SAME TIME, working to remove guardrails to maximize the companies profitability over in Europe. What a wonderful example.
TL;DR Rundown 🐂
Summary of note-worthy trending articles
OpenAI calls for stronger guardrails in public, but on paper, lobbies to weaken EU regulation. (link)
A bot known as AI Jesus is giving advice on dating and gaming. (link)
President Joe Biden visits San Francisco, and examines the dangers of AI while he does so. (link)
How Christopher Nolan stopped worrying about and started loving artificial intelligence. (link)
A new internet bane is born: AI-generated child sex images. Pretty bad stuff. (link)
OpenAI is considering opening an ‘app store’ for various AI models and tools. (link)
AI is biased, and that bias includes finding conservative women more attractive and happier in photographs. (link)
What came first, the chick or the egg? AI gives us the answer to the age-old question. (link)
How “Hidden Door,” an AI storytelling platform, creates adventures based on players’ favorite literary universes. (link)
Gladia, a French AI startup, turns any audio into text in near real-time. (link)
Vimeo introduces a trio of AI-powered editing features. (link)
Open-source AI chatbots are booming - what does this mean for researchers? (link)
Existential risk is the biggest meme in AI. Found out how it came to be. (link)
Tool of the Day ⚒️
AI tools we’ve used, loved, and highly recommend
Today’s tool is pickup-lines.ai.
As Adam Sandler taught wee Julian in “Big Daddy,” when meeting new women, “initiating the conversation is half the battle” (same goes for you too, ladies.)
With pickup-lines.ai, you’ll never be left looking for a ludicrously good opener again. If you’ve got a match, tell pickuplines something about their profile, and it’ll give you a list of great openers guaranteed to at least make her look at some words.
But an, really, some of them are pretty good. It’s worth a look.
What Did You Say?
We can now ask animals this question
Communicating with animals has long been a fascination of humanity. Now, thanks to AI and language models, two-way communication with another species, where we undertand what they say, and they understand what we say, is closer than ever. Discover more in this 4 minute BBC documentary.
Don’t hate the player; Hate the game
Like it or not, these new AI models are pretty sharp
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