Latest In Web3, AI & Emerging Tech

Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of my weekly newsletter, where I bring you updates on the latest happenings in the world of Web3, AI, and Emerging Technologies.?

In this week's edition, I bring you the latest updates on LAION's OpenFlamingo, Google and Replit's challenge to Microsoft's GitHub, SoundSwap's new feature for music NFT editions, and an open letter from prominent AI experts, scientists, and tech entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, urging a pause on the development and testing of AI technologies more powerful than OpenAI's language model, GPT-4.?

So, let's dive into this week's news and explore the latest happenings in the world of technology.

LAION announces OpenFlamingo

LAION, a tech company specializing in machine learning, has recently unveiled a new product called OpenFlamingo. OpenFlamingo is an open-source framework based on DeepMind's Flamingo model, which allows for the training and evaluation of large multimodal models (LMMs) in vision-language tasks. The framework comes with a Python-based system to train Flamingo-style LMMs, a large-scale multimodal dataset containing image and text sequences, and an in-context learning evaluation benchmark for vision-language tasks.

OpenFlamingo-9B, the first version of the model based on LLaMA, is now available on the company's GitHub repository. LAION has also committed to building fully open-source models that can democratize access to state-of-the-art LMMs. The company believes that transparency is crucial for fostering collaboration, accelerating progress, and democratizing access to advanced machine learning technology.

LAION encourages the community to participate in the development process by providing feedback and contributing to the repository. The company's ultimate goal is to develop a multimodal system that can tackle a diverse range of vision-language tasks and match the power and versatility of GPT-4 in handling visual and text input. By sharing the first checkpoint of OpenFlamingo-9B, LAION hopes to work with the community to improve LMMs and advance the field of multimodal machine learning.

Google and Replit Team Up to Challenge Microsoft's GitHub with AI-Driven Ghostwriter

Google has announced a partnership with startup Replit to combine its AI language models with Replit's software, Ghostwriter, which helps programmers write code. This partnership is seen as a direct challenge to Microsoft's GitHub and OpenAI. Ghostwriter will use Google's language-generation AI to improve its ability to suggest code blocks, complete programs, and answer developer questions. The customized combination of systems will address different tasks like chat and code-generation.

Replit CEO Amjad Masad has expressed admiration for Google's technology and hopes that the partnership will help the startup win over larger corporate customers. Previously, Replit had built its product with its own AI, but now Google's cloud services will be integrated into Ghostwriter. The partnership also includes Google distributing Replit's software.

The collaboration between Google and Replit is part of a larger trend of competing AI product releases and improvements from tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. GitHub's Copilot, which is based on OpenAI's language-generating AI, is the main competitor to Ghostwriter. However, Replit aims to improve on Copilot by providing a greater understanding of all the different pieces of software a developer uses to write code. The goal is to create an end-to-end solution that helps programmers with all aspects of coding, from writing to deployment and collaboration.

Replit, which has raised more than $100 million and has customers like Stripe and Shopify, sees this partnership with Google as an opportunity to expand its reach and capabilities. Google plans to partner with other AI coding tools besides Replit in the future.

Introducing SoundSwap

Sound has unveiled a new feature for music NFT editions called Sound Swap. With Sound Swap, collectors can mint editions even after the primary sale has ended. Funds are stored in a liquidity pool, allowing others to sell their editions at the current market price as well.?

Sound Swap starts with a 24-hour open edition release, where each edition is priced at 0.005 ETH. After the first day of minting, the drop switches over to the bonding curve format, where every new buy raises the price of an edition and every sale lowers the price. Each secondary mint brings 7.5% to the artist(s), 2.5% to Sound, and 90% to the drop’s associated liquidity pool. Sound Swap makes it easier for musicians to offer flexible supplies that can expand over time as their audience grows. The new feature strikes a balance between UX simplicity and optimizing artist reach and earnings.?

Reo Cragun's new song "Spent" will be the debut track for Sound Swap.

Tech Leaders Urge Pause on Development of Powerful AI Systems: An open letter to AI developing companies

A group of prominent AI experts, scientists, and tech entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, have signed an open letter calling for a pause on the development and testing of AI technologies more powerful than OpenAI's language model, GPT-4. The letter argues that language models like GPT-4 could be used to spread misinformation and automate jobs, and it raises concerns about the distant prospect of AI systems replacing humans and remaking civilization. The Future of Life Institute, an organization focused on technological risks to humanity, wrote the letter.

The signatories urge AI labs to pause the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months, with the pause being “public and verifiable.” The letter calls for a halt on development as the pace of change is happening faster than society and regulators can come to terms with. However, it does not suggest how a halt on development could be verified. The signatories include people from numerous tech companies, including Microsoft and Google.

The letter comes as AI systems continue to make increasingly impressive and bold leaps. GPT-4, which was announced two weeks ago, has stirred up considerable enthusiasm and concern due to its capabilities. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google have begun a profit-driven race to develop and release new AI models as quickly as possible, according to the letter.

The pace of change and scale of investment is significant, with Microsoft pouring $10 billion into OpenAI and using its AI in its search engine Bing as well as other applications. The letter argues that such developments are happening faster than society and regulators can come to terms with. While some signatories of the letter are parts of the current AI boom, others reflect concerns within the industry that the technology is moving at a potentially dangerous pace.