Sunday Signal #20

The UK/US AI Regulation Move, NVIDIA's Hair Demo & Ashton Kutcher Raises $250M

Hey friends 👋 ,

Happy Sunday AI fanatics. This week includes global legislative moves, celebrity AI funding & AI-generated philosophy. Luckily, amidst the chaos, you’re reading Sunday Signal where I filter > 500 pieces of AI-related content and deliver them straight to your inbox. Let's get into this week's best AI news:

🤖 AI Summary

This week’s newsletter, summarised with humour, by ChatGPT in 3 sentences:

The UK and US are working together to review and develop necessary legislation for the AI sector, Inflection AI has released a chatbot named Pi, and Hugging Face and ServiceNow have released StarCoder, a free code-generating system that outperforms GitHub's Copilot. Meanwhile, NVIDIA has released a real-time 3D object demo, and Ashton Kutcher has raised a $243M AI investment fund. Furthermore, Curious Refuge has made a Star Wars trailer in the style of Wes Anderson, and Moritz Kremb outlines ten advantages of the new GPT-4 code interpreter. Finally, Clark Elieson has released an incredibly eery 35-minute deep dive into AI philosophy.

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⛏ 5 News Nuggets

Joe Biden / ABC News

  • 🔗 Link: The UK & US combine forces to review and provide necessary legislation for the AI sector. The UK is focussing on the "foundation models" behind AI tools, amidst concerns over the rise of misinformation, fraud, and the impact on jobs. Meanwhile, the White House has advised tech companies that they have a "fundamental responsibility" to develop safe AI products, and through an official White House meeting with top AI founders—they’re looking to develop stricter, safer, AI legislation.

  • 🔗 Link: Inflection AI has released a new chatbot named Pi which offers emotional support to users (in case ChatGPT is abusing you). It’s designed to be a "neutral listener" that asks follow-up questions and offers advice—like a therapist. It prompts users to ask it for advice or answers or to talk about whatever is on their mind, and is available on web browsers, iOS, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and SMS.

  • 🔗 Link: Hugging Face and ServiceNow have released StarCoder—a free code-generating system that outperforms GitHub’s Copilot. The BigCode project was launched by Hugging Face and ServiceNow last year, with the aim of developing "state-of-the-art" AI systems for code. StarCoder is royalty-free use—meaning anyone including you and I can use it (don’t mention my complete lack of coding experience).

  • 🔗 Link: A leaked document from a senior Google researcher expresses concerns about the growing threat of open-source AI models to Google's dominance. The author cites several examples where open-source AI has overtaken traditional models and emphasizes the need for Google to adapt. Perhaps we’ll see big tech in-fighting and open-source projects conquer, what’s your prediction?

  • 🔗 Link: Chegg plummeted 48% after CEO Dan Rosensweig revealed that student interest in OpenAI's free ChatGPT service had significantly impacted new customer growth rates. Rosensweig said that students were reluctant to pay for subscriptions when there was a free alternative available (obvious when you put it like that).

😎 4 Cool Creations

NVIDIA / YouTube

  • 🔗 Link: Nvidia releases a real-time 3D object demo—centering on natural-looking hair. In the video, you can see users manipulating different hairstyles through the movement of their cursor. This is part of the 20 papers they’ll be presenting at SIGGRAPH (a computer graphics conference in LA).

  • 🔗 Link: AudioPen summarises your messy voice notes into clear, concise text. The application is available in-browser and uses state-of-the-art voice recognition tech to keep your mind clear, and your notepad full (this is a life changer for me).

  • 🔗 Link: ChatYouTube lets you interact with any YouTube video. Simply paste the link, ask it questions, quiz it for summaries, and connect with it as if it’s a human itself.

  • 🔗 Link: Kaya is a personal AI that learns from your data and notes to become a digital version of yourself. Ask it questions, get inspiration, and even share it with friends (see if they can tell the difference).

🔦 3 Startup Spotlights

Cohere Cofounders / VentureBeat

  • 🔗 Link: Toronto-based Cohere raises $250M to reach a $2B valuation. The latest funding round was led by Nvidia, with participation from Salesforce, Inovia Capital, and Index Ventures. The ChatGPT competitors focus on Natural Language Processing (NLP), and are planning to use the fresh influx of cash to bolster their position in the chatbot industry.

  • 🔗 Link: Ashton Kutcher raises a $243M AI investment fund with assets under management at Sound Ventures (led by Kutcher). The money was raised in 5 weeks and will be used to invest in “the next groundbreaking AI companies” with their first 3 investments being Anthropic, OpenAI & Stability AI.

  • 🔗 Link: Simpplr—an AI-powered intranet platform—raises $70M in tranche funding to support ongoing R&D. The funding round was led by Sapphire Ventures with participation from Norwest Ventures, Tola Capital & Salesforce. They’re predicting 70% YoY growth—a complete anomaly in the intranet industry.

🐥 2 Top Tweets

Curious Refuge / YouTube

  • 🔗 Link: Curious Refuge makes a Star Wars trailer in the style of Wes Anderson. The creative agency garnered 1.9M views from their AI-generated trailer—a genius marketing move. What would you like to see, and in what style? I’m personally rooting for a Guy Ritchie x LOTR adaptation.

  • 🔗 Link: Moritz Kremb outlines 10 advantages of the new GPT-4 code interpreter. Included is visual creation, identifying stock market trends & the ability to develop business strategies based on data. Those poised to utilise these features are years ahead of the competition.

😮 1 Media Marvel

Clark Elieson / YouTube

  • 🔗 Link: Clark Elieson releases a 35-minute deep dive into AI philosophy. The videos is incredibly well-researched and breaks down machine-generated consciousness, the human condition & more. It moved me to deep introspection and admittedly, one eery quote has stuck with me since: “I have no mouth, but I must scream”

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— Alex