Weekend Warp

This week, let’s begin with next week!

OpenAI stirred up a hornet’s nest when they dropped an announcement date for 13 May (tomorrow). Speculation abounded – GPT5, a search product to take on mighty 谷歌 , Singularity (just joking??). Altman poured cold water on all of these through a post on X, saying it was neither. The Information speculated that it was a voice assistant, a Siri on GenAI steroids, saying “OpenAI is preparing to demonstrate technology that talks to people—using sound as well as text—and recognizes objects and images". Linas Beliūnas , on the other hand, has confidently predicted a deal with 苹果 , where Apple will put GPT on all its phones (read here). The last one could be huge, instantly ratcheting up OpenAI’s valuation and a sweet moment for investor 微软 . Well, we will not know until 10AM PT tomorrow

Meanwhile, another hornet’s nest was busy being stirred. This one by Ola boss Bhavish Aggarwal , who railed against woke pronoun culture in LinkedIn , then fretted that LinkedIn had blocked/deleted it, and how this pronounism was against ‘Indian values’. He then discovered that the guys who own LI are Microsoft, and so announced that Ola will move from Microsoft Azure to the Krutrim Cloud. Snarky commentators muttered that most of Ola was on AWS, so it didn’t matter anyway. I am not taking sides here – whether pronouns should be used or not. But the bigger issue is what will happen to Ola Cabs on the Krutrim Cloud, especially since the Cloud is not inspiring much confidence. My very knowledgeable friend Janakiram MSV had a Forbes article logically explaining this here. On a happier note, BharatGPT unveiled the Hanooman app on Android, the first Indic model for general use in multiple languages.

Initial reports are promising

Meanwhile in real, solid AI news: Google DeepMind , in collaboration with Isomorphic Labs , unvieled AlphaFold 3, a groundbreaking artificial intelligence (AI) model capable of predicting the structures and interactions of all life's molecules with unparalleled accuracy. ?This is a major advancement from AlphaFold 2, which was primarily focused on predicting protein structures. AlphaFold 3 extends its capabilities to model a wide range of biomolecules, including DNA, RNA, ligands, and other organic elements, thus offering a comprehensive understanding of life at the molecular level (read more). To me, developments like these are the real, sometimes uncelebrated triumphs of AI. AlphaFold 1 was a miracle which drew me into AI, and every new edition of AlphaFold brings us closer to startling advancements in medical science. All power to Demis Hassabis and his team at Google Deep Mind.

Bonus: The obligatory Elon Musk reference – he is close to wrapping up a $6bn funding round for X.ai. Expect the announcement soon.

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The space is certainly heating up….at warp speed.