FOD#70: Lucky 70 (000)

we are celebrating!

This Week in Turing Post:

• Wednesday, AI 101: a new batch of cards with ML concepts!
• Friday, AI Unicorns: Eleven Labs

The main topic – lucky 70

On May 7, 2023 – we published our first article on Turing Post. Since then, it’s been quite the adventure. Today marks our 70th edition of Froth on the Daydream – a nod to Boris Vian’s surreal novel L'écume des jours, where dreams and reality blur, much like the current state of AI. And fittingly, not so long ago, we’ve also reached a milestone: 70,000 readers.

We’ve covered major ML and AI events, showcasing the practical side of these technologies while cutting through both the hype and the gloom. We spoke with OpenAI’s General Counsel, met with Microsoft’s Kevin Scott, got predictions from Yoshua Bengio, talked to Allen AI’s Oren Etzioni, uncovered TimeGPT , and haven’t heard back from DeepMind (yet!). We launched a fascinating series on the History of LLMs (soon to be a book!), and explored Foundation Models Operations and the emerging trend of task-centric ML. We also turned our focus globally, with dedicated coverage of Global AI affairs .

I’ve been immersed in AI, starting in business development and then as a publisher, for over five years now. During this time, I’ve often been asked if AI will "take over" (cue Terminator references), and my answer is always: no. But to understand why, you have to learn how machine learning really works. It’s not rocket science – and even when it is, I break it down so it’s understandable for both of us (I’m a constant learner myself).

To each of you, thank you for your support and feedback. Just as Hugging Face champions open-source ML, we at Turing Post focus on understanding the history of machine learning to better grasp where we are today and where we might be headed. It’s just a technology, after all, and it’s up to us to decide how to make the most of it.

On a personal note: when I decided to start Turing Post, I also realized I was pregnant. So my 8-month-old daughter, Reason, has been with me every step of the way – along with her four brothers! Thankfully, they’re already more independent. To all the women reading Turing Post –?don’t let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do. We’re capable of amazing things, and I’m right here with you.

I’m enormously flattered to see the top people from such companies as Arm, Nvidia, Hugging Face, Microsoft, Google, Zilliz, CoreWeave, Ernst&Young and many many more to be Turing Post’s premium subscribers. Thanks to all of you for your trust.

If you want to join them, I’m offering a 70% discount on the annual subscription ($21 per YEAR). Why such a big discount? Firstly, to honor all 70,000 of you. And secondly, money is good and all, but what’s really important to me is that people truly understand machine learning and AI – the most important technology of the 21st century.

Currently, we’re in the middle of two amazingly interesting series: AI Agents and Agentic Workflows and AI 101 – the best guide you can find out there.

Join us for this insightful journey. $21/year only

The offer ends in 7 days, on Oct 14.

Now – to all the amazing things that happened last week!

News from The Usual Suspects ?

• Cerebras Takes on Nvidia with IPO Gambit

• Cerebras Systems, the AI chipmaker known for its massive wafer-scale chips, is going public with a $7-8B valuation. Powered by 87% revenue from a single client, G42, Cerebras is gunning for Nvidia’s dominance in AI hardware. Despite a $66.6M net loss in H1 2024, CEO Andrew Feldman is bullish, claiming Cerebras could take "all" of Nvidia's market share. Check our profile on Cerebras!
• Meanwhile, two reports say AI investments are surging and not going to slow down:

CB-Insights: Mega-rounds for Safe Superintelligence ($1B), Baichuan AI ($688M), and Helsing ($488M) highlight investor confidence in AI's transformative potential. Focus areas included LLMs, GenAI, and enterprise solutions. AI integration across finance, healthcare, and defense attracted significant funding. Despite economic uncertainties, AI remains a hotbed for venture capital, reflecting its perceived long-term value and cross-industry impact. This trend underscores AI's central role in shaping future technologies.

Bain: The AI market is set to hit $780-990B by 2027, with early adopters enjoying 20% earnings boosts. But scaling up AI is straining data centers, electricity, and labor. Meanwhile, 75% of software companies struggle with declining net revenue retention despite increased spending on customer success. Tech firms investing heavily in automation and AI outperform their peers, with leaders planning to invest over 3x more in generative AI than laggards.

Bain Dives Deep into AI Waters Bain Capital Ventures leads the $500 million Series B round for poolside, the AI-first startup helmed by former GitHub CTO Jason Warner. With its proprietary tech, Reinforcement Learning from Code Execution Feedback (RLCEF), poolside aims to push AI beyond human-level coding.

• Black Forest Labs Unveils FLUX1.1 [pro] and New API

The model tops the Artificial Analysis leaderboard for text-to-image models, with ultra-high resolution features coming soon. Paired with the launch of the BFL API, developers can now integrate FLUX’s capabilities into their apps, offering customization, scalability, and competitive pricing at 4 cents per image.

• Liquid AI pioneers liquid neural networks and foundation models

Their research spans state-space models, neural operators, and DNA foundation models. Liquid AI has contributed to advancements in generative modeling, graph neural networks, and open-source LLM finetunes, driving innovation in AI scalability and performance.

• Google Search Goes Visual and Vocal with AI

Lens now supports video and voice input, letting users search by recording video or speaking while snapping photos. With 20 billion monthly visual searches, AI Overviews and shopping tools are getting smarter too. Plus, AI-organized search results are debuting in the U.S., offering more diverse content and perspectives.

• Last week dominance of OpenAI:
• OpenAI has secured $6.6B in funding – the largest VC round ever, pushing its valuation to $157B. And secured a new $4 billion revolving credit line.
• OpenAI introduced "Canvas ," a fresh tool designed to elevate collaboration with ChatGPT for writing and coding projects. Moving beyond mere chat, this beta feature lets users work on documents in real-time with their AI sidekick – highlighting, editing, and getting feedback on the go. People say they like the UI better than Claude.?
• OpenAI introduced Realtime API to enable low-latency speech-to-speech applications, perfect for natural conversations in language learning and customer service. Audio tokens are priced at $0.06/min input and $0.24/min output, available in public beta for paid developers.
• OpenAI introduced Prompt Caching with 50% discounts on reused tokens. Ideal for long or repeated conversations, it reduces costs and latency, priced at $1.25 per million cached tokens.
• OpenAI introduced vision fine-tuning , boosting applications in visual search and medical analysis.
• OpenAI introduced Model Distillation . Developers can fine-tune smaller models using outputs from GPT-4o, cutting costs while maintaining performance.
• OpenAI introduced an interesting use-case – Altera , led by Dr. Robert Yang, is pioneering “digital humans” that go beyond assisting. These AI agents, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o, collaborate with users and even exhibit emotional responses. From Minecraft pals to digital coworkers, Altera’s agents tackle long-term autonomy by solving data degradation, aiming to mimic human cognitive functions with striking realism. Mustafa Suleyman is biting his nails.
• Sam Altman expects AI agents to be a game-changer by 2025, potentially completing month-long human tasks in an hour.

• AI Ethics Loses a Leading Voice: Abhishek Gupta

Abhishek Gupta, Founder of the Montreal AI Ethics Institute and Director for Responsible AI at BCG, passed away on September 30, 2024. His work played a key role in shaping discussions around responsible AI practices. Our thoughts are with his family.

Twitter library

Serpapi – scraping the scrapers has never been easier. Meaning you can search Google maps, Youtube, Google search itself as a model tool.

We are reading

• The Exponential View argues that the future of AI lies in an ecosystem of domain-specific foundation models, which will excel in specialized tasks. We certainly think so as well, as we’ve extensively written about it in our FMOps - task-centric ML series.
• Terence Tao, a renowned mathematician, explores the potential of AI in transforming mathematical reasoning.
• Semianalysis published a fascinating article about AI Neoclouds – cloud providers focused on GPU compute rental.

The freshest research papers were published. We categorized them for your convenience ????