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By Stephanie Palazzolo

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Recent Editions

Thomas Kurian. Photo via Google Cloud.

Why Google Still Needs Nvidia; The AWS-OpenAI Marriage That Could Have Been

By Jon Victor · Aug 30, 2023 7:00am PDT

Google unveiled its next-generation artificial intelligence chip at its annual enterprise software conference, Google Cloud Next, on Tuesday. But it still felt the need to tout a different kind of win: a partnership with Nvidia to offer that company’s state-of-the-art AI chips through Google Cloud alongside its own hardware. Nvidia CEO Jensen... Google unveiled its next-generation artificial intelligence chip at its annual enterprise...

Photo by Midjourney.

WTF is RAG? It Could Solve LLMs’ Biggest Weaknesses

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 29, 2023 7:40am PDT

You may have noticed artificial intelligence researchers have a gift for coming up with new acronyms seemingly every week. We’re sorry to inform you of another one you need to remember: RAG, which stands for retrieval augmented generation.It’s a method to help AI software such as chatbots answer questions about information they’ve never seen... You may have noticed artificial intelligence researchers have a gift for coming up with new...

Photo by Midjourney.

A Sequoia Capital-Backed AI-Video Startup Raises Nearly $20 Million; Eight Startups Taking on Nvidia

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 28, 2023 7:00am PDT

We’re starting the new week with fundraising news about a fast-evolving part of generative artificial intelligence: video.Tavus, a two-year-old startup whose software helps companies customize videos they can then send to prospective customers, job candidates and others, has raised about $18 million in Series A funding at a $80 million... We’re starting the new week with fundraising news about a fast-evolving part of generative...

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Photo via Shutterstock.

Five Takeaways From Nvidia’s Earnings Call

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 24, 2023 7:00am PDT

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Photo via Shutterstock.

Five Takeaways From Nvidia’s Earnings Call

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 24, 2023 7:00am PDT

Nvidia stock is trading up Thursday morning, as investors applaud Wednesday evening’s blowout quarterly earnings report. Of course, that quarter is history now: what’s more important is what comes next. On that subject, CEO Jensen Huang was less than illuminating on Wednesday’s call. Nevertheless, we learned a lot from listening to comments from... Nvidia stock is trading up Thursday morning, as investors applaud Wednesday evening’s blowout...

Anna Bofa, founder and CEO of Crate. Photo via Crate.

Ex-Pinterest Staffer Launches AI App to Beat Pinterest, Raises $5 Million

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 23, 2023 7:00am PDT

A smattering of artificial intelligence apps have emerged recently to help consumers organize their lives. Some, like Rewind, help people keep track of all their digital activity so they can always remember what happened in the past. Others, such as HyperWrite, aid users with tedious web tasks like booking restaurant reservations or flights.The... A smattering of artificial intelligence apps have emerged recently to help consumers organize...

Photo via Midjourney.

Why Midjourney and Runway Are Suddenly on Shaky Ground; Nvidia’s Upcoming Blowout

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 22, 2023 7:16am PDT · 1 comment

A recent court ruling may put rocket-ship AI startups like Midjourney and Runway on shaky ground.United States District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled on Friday that art completely generated by artificial intelligence cannot be copyrighted, the latest update in a string of controversies surrounding the technology’s usage in art. The ruling... A recent court ruling may put rocket-ship AI startups like Midjourney and Runway on shaky ground....

Photo via Getty

Beware of Fear-Mongering in AI Regulation; Meta Scores Another Point for Open-Source

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 21, 2023 7:00am PDT

It’s no secret politicians are worried about artificial intelligence. And while AI executives suggest they’re just as concerned, they may have another agenda in creating that perception.Recent proposed federal legislation with cheery names like the “Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act of 2023” or the “Artificial... It’s no secret politicians are worried about artificial intelligence. And while AI executives...

Photos courtesy of Llion Jones and David Ha.

A Godfather of Transformers Launches Lab Developing More Adaptable AI Models; Databricks and OpenAI in Dealmaking Mode

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 17, 2023 7:00am PDT

Photos courtesy of Llion Jones and David Ha.

A Godfather of Transformers Launches Lab Developing More Adaptable AI Models; Databricks and OpenAI in Dealmaking Mode

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 17, 2023 7:00am PDT

Much to the dismay of antsy bankers and investors, it doesn’t look like Databricks, which has aided the rise of artificial intelligence software in the business world, will be going public anytime soon.Instead, the company, which sells tools for building machine-learning models, has been chatting with investors about potentially raising hundreds... Much to the dismay of antsy bankers and investors, it doesn’t look like Databricks, which has...

Chart by Shane Burke.

How Eight AI Coding Assistants Stack Up

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 16, 2023 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

Hello!One of the earliest companies to commercialize generative AI was GitHub, the Microsoft-owned code repository, which released its AI coding assistant Copilot under preview in June 2021. Powered by OpenAI’s technology, the assistant quickly captured the hearts of developers by giving them a tool that suggests code fragments while they type,... Hello!One of the earliest companies to commercialize generative AI was GitHub, the Microsoft...

Photo via Midjourney.

Google Gemini’s Strength May Be Its Greatest Weakness; Don’t Hop on the AI Hiring Train

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 15, 2023 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

Historically (and much to the dismay of people born in May and June), the word “Gemini” has been associated with being “two-faced” or having dual personalities. So it’s somewhat fitting, then, that Google’s upcoming collection of large machine-learning models using that name was born out of the forced marriage of two AI teams, Google... Historically (and much to the dismay of people born in May and June), the word “Gemini” has been...

Left: Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere. Photo via Cohere. Right: Edo Liberty, CEO of Pinecone. Photo via Pinecone.

Pinecone and Cohere CEOs Warn About Leaving the GPU ‘Faucet’ Running in the Age of AI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 14, 2023 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

You know those horror stories of people who leave a faucet running in their house while on vacation for a week, returning to a flooded residence? That kind of thing is happening in AI.Edo Liberty, founder of Pinecone, a buzzy infrastructure startup which helps developers build AI applications using their own data, says he heard about an intern... You know those horror stories of people who leave a faucet running in their house while on...

Art by Shane Burke.

Revenue Is a Dirty Word in the Land of AI; Biden Takes a Swing at China

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 10, 2023 7:00am PDT

Art by Shane Burke.

Revenue Is a Dirty Word in the Land of AI; Biden Takes a Swing at China

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 10, 2023 7:00am PDT

It’s been a tough year for tech startups. In the midst of down rounds and deep layoffs, tech CEOs and VCs have been careful to emphasize profitability and strong financials above all else. Except, that is, for startups having anything to do with generative AI. The most recent example, as my colleagues Natasha Mascarenhas, Erin Woo and I ... It’s been a tough year for tech startups. In the midst of down rounds and deep layoffs, tech CEOs...

Art generated by Midjourney.

Author Paranoia About AI Finds New Targets

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 9, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

AI founders need to watch out. It’s no secret that publishers and writers are sensitive about large-language models using their data for training. But just how sensitive became clear in the recent shuttering of a six-year-old publishing dataset called Prosecraft.The service, created in 2017 by Benji Smith, founder and CEO at word processor ... AI founders need to watch out. It’s no secret that publishers and writers are sensitive about...

Chart by Shane Burke.

OpenAI Quietly Releases Web Crawler; ChatGPT Flounders, Bard Flourishes in Latest Usage Data

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 8, 2023 7:30am PDT · 5 comments

One of the biggest complaints that ChatGPT users have is the lack of up-to-date information from the web in its models and chatbot. OpenAI’s announcement on Monday night of GPTBot, a web crawler that scrapes sites for data that may be used to improve its future models, could be the company’s answer.It might not be a coincidence that the... One of the biggest complaints that ChatGPT users have is the lack of up-to-date information from...

Photo via Midjourney.

Hype About AI ‘Agents’ Rises Again; Why GPUs Are So Hard to Find

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 7, 2023 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

Like many others, I dream of having my own personal artificial intelligence-powered assistant to answer texts I’ve been avoiding or land that impossible-to-get reservation at a restaurant blowing up on TikTok. So like seemingly everyone else in AI-land, I was excited when a young startup, HyperWrite, publicly launched an AI-powered assistant... Like many others, I dream of having my own personal artificial intelligence-powered assistant to...

Photo via Shutterstock/Shane Burke.

Developers Ask GPT-4 What it Thinks About Google’s AI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 3, 2023 9:22am PDT

Photo via Shutterstock/Shane Burke.

Developers Ask GPT-4 What it Thinks About Google’s AI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 3, 2023 9:22am PDT

It’s a question on the mind of every artificial intelligence startup founder and developer: Can I trust my large-language model?This deceptively simple inquiry has become more difficult to answer, as recent research shows OpenAI’s GPT-4 and other LLMs can improve in some ways over time but also get worse too.For startups using these models, it... It’s a question on the mind of every artificial intelligence startup founder and developer: Can I...

Photo by Shane Burke/generated by Midjourney.

What Happened at the Big Machine Learning Confab

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 2, 2023 7:20am PDT

Thousands of machine learning researchers, founders and venture capitalists flooded the sandy beaches of Oahu last week for the International Conference on Machine Learning. Notable attendees included John Schulman, an OpenAI co-founder and head of its reinforcement learning team; OpenAI researcher Noam Brown, known for creating the first AI to... Thousands of machine learning researchers, founders and venture capitalists flooded the sandy...

Photo generated by Midjourney.

The Bear Case Against Large-Language Model Developers

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 1, 2023 7:00am PDT · 3 comments

When Axios on Monday reported on Google’s plan to revamp Assistant—its voice assistant that competes with Apple’s Siri—with technology based on large language models, it got us thinking about a trillion-dollar question that has consumed the tech industry for months. Which software companies will benefit most from the LLM boom: upstart LLM... When Axios on Monday reported on Google’s plan to revamp Assistant—its voice assistant that...

Swami Sivasubramanian. Photo by Getty.

The AWS Empire Strikes Back; A Week of LLM Jailbreaks

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 31, 2023 7:00am PDT

Amazon Web Services, the king of renting cloud servers, is facing an unusually large amount of pressure. Its growth and enviable profit margins have been dropping, Microsoft and Google have moved faster—or opened their wallets—to capture more business from artificial intelligence developers (TBD on whether it will amount to much), and Nvidia is... Amazon Web Services, the king of renting cloud servers, is facing an unusually large amount of...

The skyline of Kuwait City. A Kuwaiti royal family member is reportedly backing a stealth cloud startup. Photo by Getty.

AI Agenda: The Mysterious AI Data-Center Startup Hiring From AWS, Azure, Meta

By Anissa Gardizy · Jul 27, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

The skyline of Kuwait City. A Kuwaiti royal family member is reportedly backing a stealth cloud startup. Photo by Getty.

AI Agenda: The Mysterious AI Data-Center Startup Hiring From AWS, Azure, Meta

By Anissa Gardizy · Jul 27, 2023 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Save the Date: Next Thursday, Aug. 3, join Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, an OpenAI rival valued at $2 billion, and Edo Liberty, founder and CEO of Pinecone, one of the hottest young AI infrastructure startups, for a live audio chat with subscribers. The CEOs will talk to AI Agenda author Stephanie Palazzolo and take your questions... Save the Date: Next Thursday, Aug. 3, join Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, an OpenAI...