‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google To Talk Openly About the Dangers of AI

? Today's (May 2) Highlights

• ?? News: “The Godfather of AI” left Google to talk openly about the dangers of AI
• ?? Funding: ODAIA, Alison, and Holocron Technologies
• ?? Tools: Natural sounding AI text-to-speech and a personalized AI teacher
• ?? Events: EmTech Digital, MIT Tech Reviews signature AI conference, starts today!

?? Today's Top Stories

‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead

(11 min read) (Source: 纽约时报 )

TLDR: Geoffrey Hinton, one of the "Godfathers of AI," who won the Turing Award in 2018, told the New York Times that he regrets aspects of his life's work due to the risks associated with AI, and recently quit his job at 谷歌 to speak freely about the dangers of AI without having to consider the impact to Google.

• Hinton was happy with Google's stewardship of the technology until 微软 launched the new OpenAI -infused Bing, challenging Google's core business and sparking a "code red" response inside the search giant.
• Hinton's immediate concern is the spread of misinformation and losing the sense of what is true on the internet. In the long term, he is worried about AI eliminating rote jobs and potentially leading to humanity's downfall as AI begins to write and run its own code.

IBM to Pause Hiring for Jobs That AI Could Do

(4 min read) (Source: 彭博资讯 )

TLDR: IBM CEO Arvind Krishna expects to pause hiring for roles that can be replaced with artificial intelligence over the next five years, particularly back-office functions that make up 26,000 positions currently.

• The use of AI and automation will replace approximately 30% of non-customer-facing roles, which amounts to 7,800 jobs lost, including not replacing vacated roles, an IBM spokesperson said.
• Mundane, repetitive HR tasks will be fully automated, while HR functions such as evaluating workforce composition and productivity will probably not be replaced over the next decade.
• IBM is hiring for software development and customer-facing roles despite recent job cuts (totalling 5000 positions this year once completed) and has added around 7,000 employees in the first quarter of this year, according to CEO Arvind Krishna.

150 African Workers for ChatGPT, TikTok and Facebook Vote to Unionize at Landmark Nairobi Meeting

(7 min read) (Source: TIME )

TLDR: More than 150 content moderators for AI systems owned by Meta , TikTok , and OpenAI met in Nairobi to establish the first African Content Moderators Union.

• The moderators, employed by third-party outsourcing companies, are among the lowest-paid in the global tech industry despite experiencing mental tolls, such as PTSD, due to their work.
• The unionization process began in 2019 when a Facebook content moderator, Daniel Motaung , was fired from his role at outsourcing company Sama after trying to convene a workers' union called the Alliance.

?? Funding Alerts

ODAIA uses AI to provide predictive insights to global life sciences companies, allowing them to more efficiently engage with healthcare providers, make data-driven decisions and develop campaigns that deliver strong business results.

• The company raised $25 million in Series B funding in an oversubscribed round led by Threshold Ventures ( Emily Melton , Managing Partner) and co-led by Monograph Capital ( Charles Conn , Co-founder and Partner). Wittington Ventures also joined, with participation from existing investors Flint Capital , BDC 's Women in Technology Venture Fund, StandUp Ventures , and Graphite Ventures .
• With the new funds, ODAIA plans to continue evolving its product and expanding its team to provide predictive tools to life science brands in today's and tomorrow's market.

Alison.ai is a start-up that analyses creative work, such as typeface characters, colors, sounds, and text. It provides a data-driven creative brief prompt to feed into a generative AI production platform like Midjourney or human creative team.

• They raised a $5.1 million pre-seed round from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz , Crescendo Venture Partners , and yellowHEAD , among others.
• Alison AI uses 10+ AI models, including text recognition, sound recognition, visual recognition, and sentiment recognition to analyze creative elements. It is capable of providing advertisers with insight into which creative elements had the biggest impact on their competitors' creatives. Alison AI currently analyses 1 billion creative elements across all social platforms, supporting YouTube, AdWords, AdMob, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, among others.

Holocron Technologies uses AI to provide a comprehensive view of science and technology information.

• The startup has raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding from investors, including New North Ventures , Winklevoss Capital and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
• Holocron plans to use the funds to revolutionize knowledge security and domain awareness in the science and technology space, securing economic competitiveness and national security for American companies and institutions.

?? Trending Tools

• PlayAI offers an AI-powered text-to-voice generator that produces natural-sounding speech using the best synthetic voices. It has a library of 907 AI-generated voices in 142 languages and accents, powered by machine learning.
• Lamini unlocks the power of generative AI for every company, enabling you to create your own LLM based on your unique data, without prompt-tuning. Rapidly ship new versions with just an API call.
• CraftAI (Built by BRACKETS by TRIAD ) is a GPT-powered Admin Panel Generator that lets you create custom admin interfaces in just 5 minutes, for free and without any coding.?
• Permar AI (built by Matthias Strafinger ) generates conversion rate optimized Landing Pages in seconds with a single prompt, without the need for developers. The model is trained on thousands of landing pages and constantly analyzes user experience and web data, making recommendations and automatically implementing changes. Save time and increase your conversion rate with Permar AI.
• Super Teacher Inc. is an adaptive learning app that listens and responds to children's skills and abilities, tailoring each lesson to the student's progress. The app uses established technologies, including speech transcription, natural language processing, and synthetic voice, to keep children engaged and ensure accuracy all while not using ChatGPT.

?? More Reading:

• A CEO is spending more than $2,000 a month on ChatGPT Plus accounts for all of his employees, and he says it's saving 'hours' of time ( Business Insider )
• Tech, AI Driving Job Changes for Nearly a Quarter of All Workers ( 彭博资讯 )
• Tech groupthink could hinder AI competition ( Reuters )
• A.I. Is Getting Better at Mind-Reading ( 纽约时报 )
• College Students Came Up With a Way to Make ChatGPT Not Evil (Popular Mechanics)
• Where to Draw the Generative AI Line ( The Information )

?? Content

1. Khan Academy founder Sal Khan recently gave a #tedtalk about the incredible potential to revolutionize education with AI. He shared many examples of how AI tools can help students and teachers alike and demos of Khan Academy’s new AI tool, Khanmigo. (YouTube)

2. ElevenLabs , the AI company creating amazing AI voice and speech tools (including the ones used to create the voice deepfakes that have been taking over social media), published a demo of their new multilingual speech synthesis model: Eleven Multilingual v1. Its ability to speak in different languages using the same voice is nothing short of mindblowing! (Twitter)

?? Upcoming Events

1. EmTech Digital (May 2-3, 2023 / In person on the MIT campus or Virtual), MIT Technology Review 's signature AI conference, provides CIOs, CPOs, and IT decision makers with the technical insight and business expertise to implement AI systems that enhance products, improve customer experiences, and ensure market success. This year’s conference focuses on the game-changing power of generative AI and how it will impact creators and clients alike. We’ll explore the models behind the technology and the legal implications of generated content. We meet leading researchers and explore hands-on case studies of amazing applications of all forms of AI.
2. Open Data Science Conference (ODSC) East 2023’s AI Expo (May 9-11, 2023 / In person at Boston Hynes Convention Center or Virtual) will be hosting talks from some of the best and brightest minds in data science and AI. Attend partner sessions that offer compelling insights on how to make data science and AI work for your industry, with topics including Machine Learning & Deep Learning Platforms, MLOps & Data Infrastructure, Data Annotation & Data Labeling, Data Analytics & Decision Intelligence Systems, Machine Learning on the Cloud & Big Data. Network with over 4,500 data science and AI experts and join the most influential Data Science community worldwide.
3. Data Innovation Summit (May 11-12, 2023 / In person in Kistam?ssan, Stockholm or Virtual through Agorify) is the largest and most influential annual Data and AI event in the Nordics and beyond, bringing together the most innovative minds, enterprise practitioners, technology providers, start-up innovators and academics, working with Data Science, Big Data, ML, AI, Data Management, Data Engineering, IoT and Analytics, in one place to discuss ways to accelerate AI-driven transformation throughout companies, industries and public organizations. It is the place to be for all professionals and organizations working with the utilization of data and AI innovation for enhancing customer experience, improving operational processes, enabling future sustainability, reinventing business models, or developing data-driven products and services.