Lumian Gen AI Newsletter Issue #25

⏱️ News Flash

The 2-Minute Scoop to Keep You in the Loop

1/ OpenAI’s New Weapon in Talent War With Google

Microsoft-supported OpenAI is said to be offering salaries as high as $10 million to draw leading AI experts from their main competitor, Google. With an employee share sale on the horizon aimed at tripling its valuation to over $80 billion, OpenAI is enticing new hires with the prospect of profiting from this expected surge in value. OpenAI's aggressive recruitment strategy is proving very effective, and if this trend continues, it could make it challenging for Google to match their pace.

2/ Google in talks to invest in AI startup Character.AI

Google is planning to invest heavily, potentially in the hundreds of millions, into Character.AI, a company popular for its interactive virtual characters. Character.AI, valued at $5 billion, has grown rapidly, with its last funding round led by a16z. The company, founded by former Google employees, is already integrated with Google's cloud and computing infrastructure. This investment aligns with growing interest in AI-driven virtual characters, a field where Character.AI is a leader and where Google aims to strengthen its position. Meta, with their celebrity-inspired AI avatars, and OpenAI, with its latest GPT models, are also exploring this area. 

3/ Humane finally launches AI pin

Humane launched its AI wearable device, the AI Pin, priced at $699, offering a new approach to computing. The AI Pin features a unique magnetic battery system for continuous use, privacy-focused design with touch-based interactions, and an LED indicator for privacy assurance. It provides various functions like phone calls, music play, photo-taking, and AI-driven cloud experiences including message summarization, live language translation, and AI-assisted searches, all powered by OpenAI models. The product, although intriguing as a novel wearable technology, received a lukewarm response during its launch, highlighting it as a significant yet evolving step in the wearable tech sector. Here’s the demo.

🤖 OpenAI Dev Day

New Launches and Announcements

OpenAI’s Dev Day was fantastic! They shared dozens of new additions and improvements, and reduced pricing across many parts of their platform. Here are the key highlights:

• GPT-4 Turbo: A more capable and cheaper model that supports a 128K context window

• Multimodal AI: Text, images, and sound combined. DallE-3 and GPT-4 Turbo bring this to life

• Custom Chatbots: Easily build your own AI assistants with the GPT builder

• Whisper V3: An upcoming open-source tool for enhanced accessibility

• Personalization: Fine-tuning now available for all. Large companies can develop custom models with OpenAI

• Improved Accessibility: Faster service and lower costs across AI models

• Copyright Shield: Legal safety for API users, ensuring secure and responsible use

One big takeaway is that OpenAI faces a fundamental tension between supporting developers and prioritizing its consumer hit, ChatGPT. The company leans towards consumerization, with ChatGPT's ability to simplify programming and create chatbots, potentially overshadowing traditional developer roles but offering opportunities in providing unique, private datasets for custom GPTs.

🤑 Fundraising

The (AI) Intelligent Investor

• Aleph Alpha raises $500M Series B in one of Europe's largest AI rounds ever

• Ghost Autonomy gets $5M Investment from OpenAI Startup Fund to bring multi-modal LLMs to autonomous driving

• IBM announces a $500M enterprise AI venture fund to back AI startups focused on enterprise and business customers

🤖 Nerd Out

Technical and Business Readings

• AI and Open Source in 2023

• The dark side of competition in AI

• How much does it cost to train an LLM?

😜 Quick Fix: Crafting a Boss-Level AI!

The Quick Creation Conundrum

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Best,

Robin and Saswat