26th Edition: 2/9/24

Microsoft forges ahead on AI adoption of news outlets, Sam Altman's $7 Trillion sticker shock, the Biden Admin assembling corporate leaders for "Safe AI", and more

Welcome to week #2 post-launch. Thanks for all the kind words and feedback… I’ll try to avoid the blaring typos right in the title of my inaugural post next time. ;)

Let’s get started!

PNW AI News:

• Microsoft announced collaboration with 5 different news organizations, including Semafor and CUNY's Journalism School, to incorporate generative AI into their content generation strategy with responsible accreditation

• Microsoft Copilot's Super Bowl advertising strategy highlights it as standalone product to enhance individuals’ productivity/creativity, rather than a tack-on feature of Bing or Office365 apps

Key AI Product Updates:

• OpenAI is developing two AI agents to automate diverse tasks: one focusing on device-native cross-application workflows and data transfer, the other focusing on web-based browsing tasks

• Google rebrands Bard and other AI efforts under "Gemini" namesake, and launches a paid tier called "Gemini Advanced" on its more powerful Ultra model

• Hugging Face launched a free tool to customize AI assistants on open-source LLMs like Mixtral, LLaMa 2 etc.

  • Does not yet support RAG, web search, multi-modality

• Brilliant Labs announced Frame, the first glasses with a built-in multimodal AI assistant capable of enhancing daily activities

• Roblox unveiled real-time AI chat translator that enables players speaking different languages to seamlessly communicate live in-game

  • They plan to license this SDK to other gaming studios

• GPT-4 prompts have achieved cross-compatibility with Google's Gemini, implying smooth transition and low switching cost for prompt engineers between LLMs

Key AI Business/Investment Updates:

• Sam Altman is seeking to raise $5-7 Trillion (!!!) from investors like Taiwan, Samsung, UAE, and more to transform chip/semiconductor manufacturing to tackle the hardware shortage issue, which he expects to continue ballooning on his quest to AGI

• The FCC has deemed the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls as illegal, empowering states to enact further policy to hinder scammers

  • Simultaneously: IBM researchers issue warning on "AI-powered audio-jacking", allowing for the manipulation of live conversations without detection, achieved via LLMs, voice cloning, and text-to-speech tools

• The Biden Administration introduces the US AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), a coalition of 200+ companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, to promote safe AI adoption

• UK announces $125M investment to educated regulators on AI and establish nine new AI research hubs focusing on math, healthcare, chemistry, and responsible AI

• Huawei researchers call for "embodied artificial intelligence" (E-AI) as the next crucial step towards AGI, arguing that LLMs lack the necessary real-world context/understanding

  • They claim hierarchical model structures, multi-modality, RAG, or other finetuning strategies is not enough

• Midjourney hired former Apple hardware leader Ahmad Abbas, hinting at Midjourney's potential foray into a hardware/VR form factor

PNW AI/ML Fundings:

• Formlogic (Seattle, WA) raised $20M in Debt financing from Trinity Capital

  • An autonomous manufacturing company that uses ML and physics simulation to precision parts - TFTD $35M

  • CEO: Paul Sutter

• Validated AI (Seattle, WA) raised $1.2M in Pre-Seed funding from Neo, Austen Allred (CEO of BloomTech), and other angels

  • Offers an AI-powered digital ad generator to help companies figure out what product features and messaging resonates with customers - TFTD $1.2M

  • CEO: Rahul Bhardwaj

• Cimba.ai (Seattle, WA) raised $1.25M in Pre-Seed funding led by Ripple Ventures, SeaChange, Pack VC, and angels including Chad Sanderson

  • Enables companies to develop customizable AI agents to generate insights and actions based on internal data lakes - TFTD $1.25M

  • CEO: Subu Biswas

• OpenHouse.ai (Calgary, AB) raised $1.2M in Seed funding from Trico Ventures

  • A catalog personalization platform designed to offer a customer-centric home shopping experience - TFTD$1.2M

  • CEO: Will Zhang