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| Here's a look at today's AI briefing: - Google DeepMind co-founder to lead Microsoft consumer AI unit.
- Saudi Arabian government creating $40B AI fund.
- Elon Musk's AI company open-sources Grok model.
- Two investment companies settle "AI washing" charges from SEC.
- Denmark to build one of world's most powerful supercomputers.
Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | Microsoft has hired DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to lead a new team focused on its consumer AI products, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge. Suleyman is stepping down as CEO of Inflection AI, a startup he co-launched alongside tech billionaire Reid Hoffman and scientist Karén Simonyan, who is also moving to Microsoft. More: - Suleyman will join Microsoft as CEO of the new consumer AI unit and executive VP of AI.
- As a senior leadership team member, he will report directly to CEO Satya Nadella.
- Microsoft is hiring other Inflection employees, including Simonyan, who will be the chief scientist of the consumer AI group.
Background: - Suleyman co-founded U.K.-based AI research lab DeepMind in 2010, which Google acquired in 2014.
- However, he was put on leave from DeepMind in 2019 amid project-related controversies and complaints about his management style.
- Following this, Google appointed Suleyman as an AI VP before he left in 2022.
- That same year, Suleyman, Simonyan, and LinkedIn's Hoffman co-founded Inflection AI, known for its Pi consumer chatbot.
Zoom out: - Inflection raised $1.3B last summer at a $4B valuation, making it among the best-funded AI startups.
- Investors included Microsoft, Hoffman, Bill Gates, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Nvidia.
- However, Suleyman admitted to Bloomberg that Inflection has failed to establish a successful business model.
- The startup is now shifting from its Pi chatbot project to focusing on selling AI software to businesses.
- It recently launched Inflection-2.5, a large language model, to rival GPT-4 and Google's Gemini.
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| 2 | | Saudi Arabia's government plans to establish a $40B fund for AI investments, sources told the New York Times. If successful, the tech fund would position Saudi Arabia as the world's top AI investor, surpassing U.S. venture capital and second only to SoftBank in tech startup investments. More: - Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, has been exploring a partnership with Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and other financiers, sources told the Times.
- Andreessen Horowitz and PIF's Al-Rumayyan have discussed opening a Riyadh office and the U.S. firm's role in a fund, though the plans could change, the sources said.
- The Saudi AI fund, set to launch later this year with help from Wall Street banks, could include other venture capitalists as well.
Zoom out: - Saudi Arabia is "well positioned" to become an AI hub outside the U.S., PIF governor Al-Rumayyan said last month.
- He noted that AI demands a significant amount of energy, highlighting the kingdom's leadership in both fossil fuels and renewable energy.
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| 3 | | Elon Musk's xAI has made its large language model open source, allowing developers to view and modify its source code. As promised by Musk, the AI company released Grok-1's base model weights and network architecture on the code-hosting platform GitHub. More: - The release covers Grok-1, a 314-billion-parameter "Mixture-of-Experts" large language model that was trained from scratch on a "large amount of text data, not fine-tuned for any particular task."
- Companies and developers can adapt and reuse the code when developing their own chatbots and AI systems.
- The code is available under the Apache 2.0 license, allowing for commercial use, and does not include any training data.
Zoom out: - xAI, founded by Musk last year, trained Grok to have a "sassy" rebellious tone as inspired by "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
- Trained on user posts from X/Twitter, Grok is available as a chatbot to paid subscribers of X's premium features.
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| 4 | | Two investment companies agreed to pay $400,000 to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that they engaged in "AI washing," or making unfounded AI claims to the public. The SEC accused Toronto-based Delphia and San Francisco-based Global Predictions of making "false and misleading statements" about their AI use. More: - As part of the settlement, the investment advisers neither admitted to nor denied the civil charges.
- The SEC accused Global Predictions of making false AI claims on its website and social media last year.
- Delphia was accused of making false AI and machine learning claims in SEC filings, press releases, and its website from 2019 to 2023.
- Delphia agreed to pay $225,000 and Global Predictions $175,000.
Zoom out: - The cases are only the beginning of the SEC's enforcement actions against AI misuse, said enforcement chief Gurbir Grewal
- SEC Chair Gary Gensler warned companies about "AI washing" last month, saying that publicly traded companies need to detail how they use AI, along with its risks, and not lie about their AI model or applications.
- Misleading or false promotion of AI adoption can violate securities laws and harm investors, he said.
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| 5 | | Denmark has partnered with Nvidia to build a national AI innovation center, which will house one of the world's most powerful AI supercomputers. Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk is involved in the project, having awarded France's Eviden a contract to build the supercomputer to accelerate research in medicine, healthcare, and the life sciences. More: - The Danish Center for AI Innovation will be home to the "Gefion" supercomputer, which is expected to come online for pilot projects before the end of 2024.
- Eviden's Cédric Bourrasset said Gefion has "unprecedented potential" for accelerating scientific discoveries in drug development, disease diagnosis, and treatment.
- Denmark's public and private researchers will have access to the supercomputer, which is based on the Nvidia DGX SuperPODTM architecture.
Zoom out: - On the Danish side, the Center for AI Innovation project is owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark.
- The foundation has a controlling stake in drugmaker Novo Nordisk, known for the diabetes drug Ozempic and weigh-loss drug Wegovy.
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| 6 | | Who's hiring in AI: - Senior Director, Product for Agent AI
- Senior AI Cloud Developer — Knowledge Graph
- SAP | Palo Alto, California
- Staff Software Engineer, Generative AI, Chrome Intelligence
- Google | Seattle, Washington or Mountain View, California
- GenAI Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Platform
- Databricks | San Francisco, California
- Distinguished Engineer, Generative AI Systems
- Capital One | Multiple locations/Remote eligible
- Applied Scientist, Applied AI
- Amazon | Bellevue, Washington
- Solution Manager — AI
- Super Micro Computer | San Jose, California
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 | AI and technology writer | | Beth is a contributing editor and writer of Inside's AI and Tech newsletters. She has written for publications including USA Today, the Arizona Business Gazette, and The Arizona Republic, where she received recognition with a Pulitzer Prize nomination and a First Amendment Award for collaborative reporting on state pension cost increases. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Aaron Crutchfield | |
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