Computerspeak by Alexandru Voica

Computerspeak by Alexandru Voica

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Computerspeak by Alexandru Voica
Computerspeak by Alexandru Voica
Big Tech is now a founder factory for AI startups; Nvidia's CEO is worried; AI is changing warfare; Anthropic releases Claude 3.5 Sonnet; Europe tries to stay relevant in the AI race
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Big Tech is now a founder factory for AI startups; Nvidia's CEO is worried; AI is changing warfare; Anthropic releases Claude 3.5 Sonnet; Europe tries to stay relevant in the AI race

Ilya Sutskever starts a new company focused on safer AI; global audiences weary of AI-generated news; Perplexity feels the burn; Google DeepMind's evolution from lab to product factory

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Alexandru Voica
Jun 21, 2024
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Computerspeak by Alexandru Voica
Computerspeak by Alexandru Voica
Big Tech is now a founder factory for AI startups; Nvidia's CEO is worried; AI is changing warfare; Anthropic releases Claude 3.5 Sonnet; Europe tries to stay relevant in the AI race
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A new report published this week by venture capital firm Accel and data provider Dealroom looked at over 200 European and Israeli-founded generative AI companies and more than 500 founders to produce some interesting trends and factors driving innovation in the region.

The study paints a picture of a healthy startup landscape fueled by world-class universities. More than a third (38%) of the companies have at least one founder who holds or has held a position at an academic institution. UK universities, in particular, dominate the educational backgrounds of AI founders, with the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and University College London topping the list.

Geographically, there are also few surprises: London leads the pack as the top city for generative AI company creation, hosting 27% of the startups examined. The UK's long history in AI research and partnerships between universities and tech companies have created a rich ecosystem. Interestingly, while the UK dominates in company formation, French-founded AI startups have attracted the most funding, raising a total of $2.29 billion to date. France's strong talent pool in mathematics and computer science has attracted major AI research hubs from companies like Meta and Google. Germany's Aleph Alpha recently raised one of Europe's largest AI funding rounds, while Israel's Tel Aviv ranks second for AI company creation.

But what the report confirms with data is something we’ve all seen anecdotally over the last 12 months: AI researchers are leaving large tech companies to start new companies. A quarter of the analyzed startups have at least one founder with experience at tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google DeepMind, or Microsoft. This percentage rises to 60% when looking at the top 10 most well-funded AI companies.

This trend mirrors a similar migration that took place 2010-2015 when computer science PhDs and even professors ventured out of the academic world to work in the tech industry. Most joined the AI labs of large technology companies but some also founded startups—though most of these companies eventually ended up getting acquired by Big Tech after a few rounds of fundraising.

However, while it’s encouraging to see that Big Tech is now becoming a founder factory, it’s also important to remember the macro reality we live in. Unlike the mid 2010s, regulators have gotten a lot tougher on M&As which means that, for most of these founders, there won’t be a soft landing back into the arms of Big Tech when their startups fail. In other words, many will be left with two options: to go big or to go bust. Meanwhile, all Big Tech can do is wait around and pick up the scraps as the carnage unfolds.

And now, here are this week’s news:

❤️Computer loves

Our top news picks for the week - your essential reading from the world of AI

  • The Information: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Is on Top of the World. So Why Is He Worried?

  • CNBC: The best-funded generative AI startups in Europe have something in common: Big Tech experience

  • New York Times: Can A.I. Answer the Needs of Smaller Businesses? Some Push to Find Out.

  • The Economist: How AI is changing warfare

  • Bloomberg: Ilya Sutskever Has a New Plan for Safe Superintelligence

  • MIT Technology Review: Why does AI hallucinate?

  • Wired: Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine

  • Reuters: Global audiences suspicious of AI-powered newsrooms, report finds

  • The Atlantic: A Generation of AI Guinea Pigs

  • Fortune: Anthropic’s rivalry with OpenAI heats up with its claim new Claude AI surpasses GPT-4o

  • Fast Company: These companies want to use AI to make call center jobs less horrible

  • Wired: We’re Still Waiting for the Next Big Leap in AI

  • The Guardian: Computer says yes: how AI is changing our romantic lives

  • VentureBeat: AI is the sixth great revolution in filmmaking (and maybe the most important)

  • Wired: Europe Scrambles for Relevance in the Age of AI

  • Bloomberg: Google DeepMind Shifts From Research Lab to AI Product Factory

⚙️Computer does

AI in the wild: how artificial intelligence is used across industry, from the internet, social media, and retail to transportation, healthcare, banking, and more

  • MIT Technology Review: How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play

  • New York Times: How A.I. Is Revolutionizing Drug Development

  • TechCrunch: Perplexity now displays results for temperature, currency conversion and simple math, so you don’t have to use Google

  • The Guardian: AI-enhanced blood test may detect Parkinson’s years before onset

  • TechCrunch: SewerAI uses AI to spot defects in sewer pipes

  • Reuters: Bayer looks to AI to combat herbicide resistance faster

  • Reuters: AI can help shipping industry cut down emissions, report says

🧑‍🎓Computer learns

Interesting trends and developments from various AI fields, companies and people

  • Reuters: PayPal hires Walmart exec as chief technology officer in AI push

  • VentureBeat; New medical LLM, PathChat 2, can talk to pathologists about tumors, offer diagnoses

  • VentureBeat: GrayMatter scores $45M for robots that speed-up manufacturing with ‘physics-informed AI’

  • TechCrunch: Pocket FM partners with ElevenLabs to convert scripts into audio content quickly

  • New York Times: At Target, Store Workers Become A.I. Conduits

  • Washington Post: Can AI police itself? Experts say chatbots can detect each other’s gaffes.

  • TechCrunch: Amazon extends generative AI-powered product listings to Europe

  • The Verge: Embracer Group believes AI will ‘empower’ game developers

  • TechCrunch: Materia looks to make accountants more efficient with AI 

  • Bloomberg: Canada Needs AI Adoption to Narrow Productivity Gap, RBC Says

  • Reuters: SoftBank's Son: will ramp up US power business for generative AI

  • FT: Higher earners face greater AI exposure, study finds

  • Fortune: Generative AI is coming to the emergency room

  • BBC: How mobile phone networks are embracing AI

  • Fortune: Design software companies are giving AI a redesign

  • The Economist: How physics can improve image-generating AI

  • Business Insider: This new technology for nuclear power could help fuel the AI revolution

  • Business Insider: Awkward Chinese youths are paying AI love coaches $7 weekly to learn how to talk on dates

  • MIT Technology Review: I tested out a buzzy new text-to-video AI model from China

  • Semafor: AI models can vastly increase job candidate pools. It might also improve diversity.

  • VentureBeat: Microsoft drops Florence-2, a unified model to handle a variety of vision tasks

  • VentureBeat: ElevenLabs unveils open-source creator tool for adding sound effects to videos

  • Fortune: Microsoft’s U.K. CEO says the tech giant actually has more vacancies on LinkedIn than it did before the AI boom

  • The Telegraph: The first film written by AI has arrived – and Hollywood is terrified

  • Reuters: Dell, Super Micro providing server racks for xAI's supercomputer

  • Business Insider: Businesses are rushing to use generative AI. Now comes the messy part.

  • Reuters: Law schools boost their AI offerings as industry booms

  • The Information: Americans Are Impressed with China’s AI

  • The Verge: AIs are coming for social networks

  • Fast Company: The world’s first AI beauty pageant points to the future of social media influencers

  • Axios: Generative AI could power the next wave of self-driving cars

  • TechCrunch: Snap previews its real-time image model that can generate AR experiences

  • VentureBeat: Runway’s co-founder and CTO says Gen-3 Alpha coming in ‘days’ starting with paid subscribers

  • VentureBeat: Apple embraces open-source AI with 20 Core ML models on Hugging Face platform

  • Reuters: HPE CEO unveils 'simple' AI hardware aimed to help businesses

  • Fortune: At Cannes, the ad industry contemplates its AI future with a mix of hope and fear

  • Business Insider: BlackRock says inflation could be an unwelcome side effect of the AI-driven productivity boom

  • BBC: Could brain-like computers be a 'competition killer'?

  • MIT Technology Review: Meta has created a way to watermark AI-generated speech

  • MIT Technology Review: Why artists are becoming less scared of AI

  • MIT Technology Review: What happened when 20 comedians got AI to write their routines

  • TechCrunch: DeepMind’s new AI generates soundtracks and dialogue for videos

  • Wired: AI Is Coming for Big Tech Jobs—but Not in the Way You Think

  • Axios: Big tech companies trip in race to take AI mainstream

  • Sifted: Crème de la LLM: How language models are enhancing machine learning applications

  • TechCrunch: Runway’s new video-generating AI, Gen-3, offers improved controls

  • WSJ: OpenAI Expands Healthcare Push With Color Health’s Cancer Copilot

  • VentureBeat: Applied Intuition debuts AI software helping autonomous systems navigate across all terrains

  • Business Insider: TikTok is getting into the murky business of AI-generated avatars and influencer ads

  • Axios: Humans are warming to the idea of AI money management

  • Fortune: Microsoft’s Japan head thinks the aging country needs AI: ‘We don’t have enough people’

  • VentureBeat: Kong launches AI Gateway to help enterprises govern and scale generative AI

  • Reuters: India pulls in tech giants for its AI ambitions

  • Fortune: AI chatbots are stereotyped as for lonely men. But Replika’s CEO says the products are ‘built by women’

  • The Guardian: Reading, writing and … disinformation: should schoolchildren be taught media literacy like maths?

  • BBC: Meeting to discuss £3bn AI data centre plans

  • Fortune: The U.S. economy is the most dynamic it’s ever been as AI and infrastructure overpower Fed rate hikes, ‘Big Short’ investor Steve Eisman says

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