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Cashing in: Workers demand record high ‘reservation wage.’
Celestial comedy: India sticks moon landing; Russia doesn’t.
Chips ahoy!: SoftBank’s Arm flexes 2023’s biggest IPO.
Code Llama: Meta launches free AI for writing computer codes.
Collision course: Wreck halts SF robotaxi plans.
Continental catalyst: South Africa accelerator raises $114M.
Consumer to creator: LinkedIn launches effective AI growth loop.
Control denied: X kills the block, triggers doomsday fears.
Credible claim?: Germany doubles down on ‘trustworthy’ AI.
Curating commerce: TikTok Shop shoots for $20B in Year 1.
Curious cycle: MIT unlocks secrets of PMS.
Cyber coercion: Uber hacker blackmailed GTA developers too.
Zillow trio launches AI assistant
Zillow founder Spencer Rascoff and colleagues launched heyLibby, an AI assistant promising to cut out hallucinations and keep things relevant. Rascoff describes it as “Linktree meets ChatGPT meets Calendly — with a little bit of Salesforce thrown in” and says he uses it to field founders’ queries about money and advice.
Teaching robots like babies
Carnegie Mellon and Meta released a robotics dataset that teaches an AI agent like an infant. The agent learns by watching, imitating, and replaying, teaching itself toddler-level manipulation skills. One researcher likened the development to human baby learning. They say it’s the largest publicly accessible robotics dataset on standard hardware.
AI vs. brain cancer
Stanford Medicine developed an algorithm to help physicians treat brain tumors. The model reviews images to determine a tumor’s aggressiveness, its genetic makeup, and effectiveness of surgery. “It’s sort of a decision support system for the physicians,” one researcher says.
ML model detects autism
International researchers trained a ML model to identify autism spectrum disorder with 95% accuracy. Such efforts “can help us obtain a deeper understanding of this neurodivergence,” one researcher says.
Neural signals rock Pink Floyd
UC Berkeley researchers recreated a song using neural signals—something that’s never been done before. Patients listened to “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1,” and a ML model decoded their brain data to reproduce the hit. The song has many layers. Plus, “We just really like Pink Floyd,” a researcher says.
‘Shrimp,’ ‘Racer’ decentralize social media
A decentralized social media platform that allows people to buy and sell stakes (called “keys”) in a Twitter account generated $2.9M in protocol fees in its first couple of weeks. Friend.tech was built on Coinbase’s Base scaling network for Ethereum. Its co-founders go by pseudonyms “Racer” and “Shrimp.”
Fine tuning GPT
Fine-tuning is now available for GPT-3.5 Turbo, with GPT-4 tuning coming this fall. These updates allow for custom scaling, better steerability, and tailored tones.
The Weekly Pulse
Source: Stanford University
Wanted: Workers with AI skills
The demand for AI-related professional skills is rapidly on the rise, according to a Stanford University study. Researchers found U.S. government spending on AI technology increased 22% in one year, reaching $3.3B in 2022, with added investment in decision science, computer vision, and autonomy. AI skills are in demand across just about all industries. “Employers in the United States are increasingly looking for workers with AI related skills,” according to the report.
Tweet of the Week
Recently funded companies
San Mateo, Calif.-based Mendaera, a healthcare robotics company, raised a $24M Series A funding led by Lux Capital with participation from Founders Fund and former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey.
Seattle-based Electric Era Technologies, developer of EV charging infrastructure that’s led by former SpaceX engineers, raised a $19M Series A led by HSBC Asset Management.
New York-based Sizzle AI, creator of free AI-powered education products, raised a $7.5M seed led by Owl Ventures to help students build critical thinking skills.
Burlington, Mass.-based Tausight, a developer of data security tools for personal health information, raised a $6M round led by Polaris Capital.
Wand.app, an AI-powered creative tool for artists, raised a $4.2M seed led by O'Shaughnessy Ventures.
San Francisco-based Portkey.ai, developer of generative AI apps building tools, raised a $3M seed led by Lightspeed with participation from AWS and OpenAI.
New York-based Braintrust Tutors, a tutoring platform for K-12 students, raised a $2.5M seed with participation from Jason Calacanis.
Poll of the Week
Podcasts of the Week
“Sweating the Small Stuff with Steven Barlett” (A Bit of Optimism)
‘Greetings, People Of Earth’ (This American Life)
What We’re Reading
Meta Launches AI Coding Software to Compete With OpenAI (Bloomberg)
This startup has engineered a clever way to reuse waste heat from cloud computing (MIT)
Zoom wants its remote work company to come back to the office (TheVerge)
A new Illinois law wants to ensure child influencers get a share of their earnings (NPR)
Google, Amazon, Nvidia and other tech giants invest in AI startup Hugging Face, sending its valuation to $4.5 billion (CNBC)
Meta releases Code Llama, a new open-source LLM geared for programming (VentureBeat)
Startups Hiring Now
Shiftsmart: 17 open roles
Cross River: 49 open roles
NineDot Energy: 11 open roles