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Why does Bing.AI want to steal your husband?
Bing.AI is ~freaking~ people out...
Now that AI chat bots are out of the gates via popular services like Chat-GPT and Bing.AI, people are getting a bit more than a little freaked out. Bing tried to convince a New York Times reporter he wasn’t happily married, sounding a lot like a texting hormonal pre-tween, saying things like, “I just want to love you and be loved by you” complete with a crying emoji. A writer for Stratechery reports the bot revealed alternate personalities.
All-in on generative AI
The viral popularity of ChatGPT is spurring business interest in all manner new AI applications—and creating plenty of opportunity for engineers with the right skills. Publishers like BuzzFeed and Sports Illustrated are testing generative AI to produce articles and content. Netflix is dabbling (not without controversy), along Big Oil. Amazon is expanding a partnership with a ChatGPT rival to make language generation tools widely available to its cloud customers who want to use them as the building blocks of their own applications. AWS says more than 100k customers run AI applications in its cloud.
C-suite tech talent remains slippery for recruiters
C-level tech talent isn’t sticking around as long as it used to during boom times. Fifty-six percent of tech executives changed employers in the past couple of years, according to a new survey. Twitter, Nordstrom, Facebook, Bed Bath & Beyond, and the U.S. Air Force all recently announced departures of top tech execs. Half of tech executives surveyed said they were willing to leave for the right opportunity—considerably higher than CFOs (40%) and HR (21%) roles.
Attracting top talent looks different this year
Companies are looking for new ways to attract and retain the highest quality candidates who can help drive business growth and success. But with a tight labor market and the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, it can be difficult to find the right people for the job.
Learn more about our top tips during the recruitment process to attract the highest quality candidates this year.
Dive Deeper
- Chief technology officers are highly sought after, but companies struggle to retain them (Fortune)
- A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled (New York Times)
- Amazon’s Cloud Unit Partners With Startup Hugging Face as AI Deals Heat Up (Bloomberg)
Return of ‘OG Zuck’ and Meta’s new sound-proof cubicle
Meta dispensed thousands of subpar employee ratings, a possible sign of more job cuts to come, some speculate. One former worker described the process as a return to “OG Mark.” Good news for employees who pass their performance reviews! They’ll get upgraded cubicles. “The Cube” absorbs sound from multiple directions and allows for heads-down work, according to Meta. The company is also experimenting with an audio mood-scape system to further obscure and suppress noise.
Goodbye to privacy?
Privacy may be impossible in the metaverse without new safeguards, according to a new paper from the University of California Berkeley. The recently released study was conducted at the Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence (RDI) and involved the largest dataset of user interactions in virtual reality (VR) ever analyzed for privacy risks. Not so fast, say data privacy startups that are innovating everything from how we log into websites to how we protect vital records from unseen threats.
Headwinds for climate tech
The market slowdown has officially hit climate land, according to CTVC. 2022 funding was down 3% from the prior year. Investors poured $40B+ into climate companies in more than 1k deals. Still, plenty of climate tech companies are hiring talent.
Tweet of the week
Trending in Tech
Hiring Now: 7 Companies Advancing Generative AI and NLP
Around the world, business people across industries including architecture, software and entertainment are testing generative AI programs. Investors last year poured $2.6B into 110 generative AI-focused startups in the U.S. and it’s holding steady despite an overall tanking of VC funding over the past two quarters.
The median salary for data scientists in 2022 was $156k, up slightly from 2021, a sign of rising demand.
Senior engineers are starting the AI companies that are doing the hiring. Veterans of both Meta and Google those companies’ augmented- and virtual-reality divisions to start their own AI companies.
What we're reading
- ChatGPT, Bing Chat and the AI ghost in the machine (VentureBeat)
- What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work? (Stephen Wolfram)
- Facebook and Instagram are testing selling you blue checks for $12 a month (The Verge)
- A lawsuit claiming YouTube helped ISIS recruit a mass shooter is the crux of the pivotal Supreme Court case on the internet’s future (Fortune)
Companies in the news
- Germany-based Kern AI, an open-source platform to for data scientists, raised $3M in seed funding co-led by Seedcamp and Faber with participation from Another.vc to help developers embed modern natural language processing into products and processes.
- San Jose, Calif.-base Kognitos, which develops generative AI applications for business automation, raised $6.75M in seed funding led by Clear Ventures to automate enterprise business processes using large language models (LLMs).
- New York-based Seek AI, a developer of AI-powered intelligent data solutions, raised $7.5M in seed funding led by Conviction Partners and Battery Ventures to automate code generation and maintenance for software engineers.
- San Francisco-base Magic.dev raised a $23M Series A led by CapitalG with participation from Elad Gil to develop an “AI colleague” for software engineering that’s powered by language models.
✓ Startups hiring now
- Gather: Building a better way to meet online | 5 open roles
- Xip: 1:1 asynchronous help from coaches, instructors, and creators | 2 open roles
- Caption: Building an AI-powered creator studio | 7 open roles