The return of the AI Beat: AI at the frontier

Hello, dear readers.

A belated Happy New Year to you! For those who don't recall, I'm Carl Franzen , Executive Editor at VentureBeat , the digital publication focused on transformative tech for businesses and business leaders.

This newsletter, started more than a year ago by my former colleague Sharon Goldman — who's work is now burning up the webpages of Fortune — is dedicated to a subject on most businesspeople's minds these days: AI.

If you're not already using it in some fashion, there's a strong chance you will be in the very near future — as increasing numbers of people outside the tech sphere, from bankers at 高盛 to storied filmmaker Paul Schrader — are waking up to the incredible efficiencies and powerful capabilities AI models can already perform. And that's before any company has reached the so-called "Holy Grail" of AI: artificial general intelligence (AGI), a computer program that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work, according to OpenAI 's definition.

But even as traditional businesses and artists from the analog era seek to leverage AI to help them today, there are constantly new advances happening at the frontier.

Earlier this week, my colleague and VentureBeat editorial director Michael Nu?ez reported on Microsoft's new model MatterGen, a system that can develop whole new materials at the molecular level and which someone likened to the fictional replicator device from Star Trek.

And today, MIT Technology Review broke the news that OpenAI is working on a new AI model for biosciences called GPT-4b micro that is designed to re-engineer proteins and turn human cells into stem cells, potentially extending human lifespans.

While many of these advances may be years away from commercial viability, the rapid pace at which AI is moving suggests we will have access to such technology sooner rather than later — potentially within months.

There's still much uncertainty about what unleashing such models on different industries, much less the human body, will mean for humanity. And in an era of political upheaval, horrible military conflict and climate catastrophes like the LA wildfires, it can be difficult — certainly, for me at least — to keep an optimistic mindset about the present and future.

But as a self-described "techno progressive," someone who believes in the power of technology to uplift and better the lives of every person, and ideally, every lifeform on planet Earth, I can't help but be pretty excited that we're alive in a time when advances that once seemed confined to science fiction are now coming true.

We just need to use them the right way — for the benefit of all.

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, subscribing, sharing, commenting, and engaging with this newsletter and all the great work from my colleagues at VentureBeat .

Until next week,

Carl

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