Biden may impose more restrictions on sales of AI chips to China
⚡ Today’s Highlights
📰 News: Biden administration might impose even more restrictions on the sale of AI chips to China
💰 Funding: Celestial AI, Gleamer, and Parabola
🦾 Tools: This AI voice library is perfect for content creators
📰 Today's Top Stories
Biden Administration Weighs Further Curbs on Sales of A.I. Chips to China
(9 min read) (Source: New York Times)
TLDR: The Biden administration is considering imposing additional restrictions on the sale of high-end chips used for AI to China due to concerns about national security threats posed by China's AI capabilities.
China's AI capabilities, including weapon guidance, cyber warfare, and surveillance systems, raise concerns about national security, but restrictions would also affect semiconductor manufacturers and their revenue in China.
The proposed curbs would have major impacts on companies like Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Intel, which provide chips for data centers powering AI applications. Nvidia’s stock fell almost 5% on Wednesday as a result of the news.
Nvidia's CFO expressed concerns that such restrictions would permanently limit opportunities for the U.S. industry, while other chip companies like Qualcomm and Intel also face potential impacts.
Introducing OpenAI London
(2 min read) (Source: OpenAI)
TLDR: OpenAI has chosen London for its first international office, signaling the UK's competitiveness in the artificial intelligence race.
The London office will focus on research and engineering, aiming to attract world-class talent and drive innovation in the development and policy of artificial general intelligence.
The expansion is seen as a vote of confidence in the strength of London's AI ecosystem and will further attract investors and talent, aligning with the UK government's goal of making the country a global AI powerhouse.
Databricks rolls out AI assistant to help analyze business data
(3 min read) (Source: Reuters)
TLDR: Databricks, valued at $38 billion, has unveiled LakehouseIQ, an AI assistant that allows business users to ask complex questions about corporate data using natural language, eliminating the need for coding and data manipulation by data scientists.
LakehouseIQ is trained on a company's specific data, enabling it to quickly understand domain-specific jargon, industry nuances, and contextual information. This personalized training enhances the AI system's ability to provide accurate answers and insights tailored to the user's business needs.
Big News Publishers Look to Team Up to Address Impact of AI
(4 min read) (Source: The Wall Street Journal)
TLDR: Several major news and magazine publishers including notable publishers such as the New York Times, News Corp, Vox Media, Condé Nast, Axel Springer, and Dotdash Meredith are discussing the formation of a coalition to address the impact of generative AI on the industry, as the rise of AI technology poses an existential threat and raises concerns about content usage and compensation.
Publishers are examining the extent to which their content has been used to train AI tools, exploring compensation and legal options, and discussing how AI tools provide information directly to users, potentially bypassing articles and original sources. Collaboration among competitors is rare but indicates the significance of the challenge posed by generative AI.
💰 Funding Alerts
1. Celestial AI, a company that specializes in Photonic Fabric tech which transfers data using light-based interconnects, has raised $100 million in Series B funding led by IAG Capital Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), and Temasek’s Xora Innovation fund, with participation from other major investors including Samsung Catalyst, Smart Global Holdings (SGH), Porsche Automobil Holding SE, and more.
Celestial AI provides advanced optical connectivity solutions for scalable compute and memory resources.
With the funding, Celestial AI plans to further develop and deploy its Photonic Fabric technology platform. They aim to leverage optical interconnectivity to advance AI workloads, enable disaggregation of memory and compute resources, and drive significant advancements in accelerated computing systems.
2. Gleamer, a company at the forefront of AI-powered medical imaging solutions, raised €27 million in a Series B funding round, with Supernova Invest (Rémi Spagnol, Investment Director) leading the round and co-led by Heal Capital. Existing partners such as XAnge, Elaia, Bpi France, and others also participated. In total, Gleamer has raised €35.5 million to date.
With the funding, Gleamer aims to expand its solutions portfolio, strengthen its teams in Europe and America, and accelerate its international expansion. They plan to develop disruptive technological solutions, increase diagnostic accuracy, improve patient care, and enhance the efficiency of clinical practices for healthcare professionals globally.
3. Parabola empowers non-technical users to leverage automation and AI for operational excellence. They raised $24 million in a Series B round led by OpenView, Matrix, Thrive Capital, and other existing investors. New partners, including Flexport Ventures, also participated in the round.
Parabola helps businesses streamline their processes, solve problems, and standardize data using advanced AI models.
Parabola intends to use the funds to expand its solutions portfolio, strengthen its teams in Europe and America, and accelerate international expansion. They aim to bring the power of Parabola to more companies and operators, enabling them to pursue operational excellence and benefit from the advantages of automation and AI.
🦾 Trending Tools
Respeecher Marketplace is an AI voice library for content creators. Change your voice while preserving emotions and volumes. Ideal for filmmakers, game creators, voice actors, YouTubers. Choose from a gallery of voices or localize speech with various accents.
Goodmeetings creates AI-curated moments and summaries from customer calls. Condense hours of meetings into key moments with AI-curated reels. Easily searchable library, meeting summaries, and action items. Focus on the customer while AI handles the rest. Great for sales and customer support teams.
Ambient from Twine is an AI Chief of Staff, delivering business updates from multiple systems in a single newsfeed. Using Generative AI, Ambient summarizes key information from Zoom, Slack, Teams, Jira, Hubspot, and more, helping teams connect the dots.
Sembly Team leverages AI to optimize meetings, enabling teams to extract valuable insights and streamline workflows. By harnessing the power of AI, Sembly enhances communication, productivity, and overall meeting effectiveness.
Layer transforms your browser into a collaborative workspace with its AI powered Chrome Extension. Explore websites together, leave feedback, notes, and ideas in real-time. It's like Figma's collaboration, but across the entire web!
👀 More Reading:
Scared tech workers are scrambling to reinvent themselves as AI experts (Vox)
3 Steps to Prepare Your Culture for AI (Harvard Business Review)
The AI buying spree is on (Axios)
New Gen Z graduates are fluent in AI and ready to join the workforce (The Washington Post)
These simple changes can make AI research much more energy efficient (MIT Tech Review)
🌎 Fresh Content
1. Marc Andreessen was recently on Making Sense with Sam Harris to discuss the future of AI. The two covered many topics including the primary importance of intelligence, possible good outcomes for AI, the significance of evolution, the Alignment Problem, the current state of LLMs, AI and war, dangerous information, and regulating AI. (Spotify)
2. Maja Mataric, a computer scientist, roboticist and AI researcher at the University of Southern California, pioneered the field of socially assistive robotics: the design of robots to help humans—especially vulnerable people such as kids with autism, the elderly, and people struggling with illness—navigate complicated social needs. She joins the Possible podcast, hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, to discuss a future in which each of us might have our own personal robot. (Spotify)
🧠 Prompts
Harness ChatGPT's proficiency to reinvent your business model. Through this prompt, ChatGPT will aid you in strategizing a transition to a subscription-based business model. This involves focusing on vital factors like retaining customers and ensuring a consistent revenue stream. Tailor the details and equip your business with a sustainable model that’s built to thrive in the modern market.
Transitioning to a Subscription Business Model
Prompt: "ChatGPT, I need your help in creating a game plan for changing my business to run on subscriptions. Can you ask me questions to get a better idea of what my business does, and then give me advice on how to keep customers coming back and making steady income?"