Edition #15: One More Thing in AI

Date: 5-Mar-2024

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Specially curated for Startup founders and Business Leaders like you who want to get smarter on AI in less than 5 minutes. 

In this March edition, we explore Masayoshi Son's bold $100 billion AI vision, Reddit's strategic IP licensing, Mistral’s performance, and Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI.

Table of Contents

• Masayoshi Son Seeks to Build a $100 Billion AI Chi …

• Reddit Signs AI Content Licensing Deal Ahead of IP …

• AI Tool review: Softr’s AI-powered App Generator.

• Mistral Large: A Strategic Milestone in AI Develop …

• Musk Sues Open AI.

As I mentioned in the last edition, I now have an AI-powered podcast for those subscribers - listen here: Spotify (link) / Apple (link).

I also have an AI-generated video avatar, that reads out news articles. It is pretty hilarious with a fake English accent (the AI model is a work in progress). Check it out here on TikTok / YouTube.

I hope you enjoy reading this edition and as usual, keep on learning and applying AI.

Best,

Renjit Philip

Masayoshi Son Seeks to Build a $100 Billion AI Chip Venture.

🚀 Visionary Leap

Masayoshi Son, the driving force behind SoftBank Group, is charting a course toward a $100 billion investment in an AI chip venture. The aim? To rival giants like Nvidia and spearhead the creation of semiconductors critical for AI.

💡 Blueprint for Innovation: Izanagi

Named after the Japanese god of creation, the Izanagi project is SoftBank's ambitious blueprint to forge an AI chip powerhouse. This initiative marks a significant pivot from SoftBank's traditional focus on startup investments. The plan involves an initial investment of $30 billion by SoftBank, with an additional $70 billion potentially sourced from unnamed Middle Eastern institutions. 

🤖 Complementing Arm Holdings

The strategic vision is more than just financial investment. The aim is to create synergy with ARM Holdings Plc, a renowned chip design unit under SoftBank's umbrella.

🎯 The Endgame

The success of Izanagi could accelerate the AI revolution and ease NVIDIA's stranglehold on the AI world. Given the GPU shortage and the possibility of a crisis in the South China Sea over Taiwan, having another AI chip designer is a valuable option—one that China’s rivals (Japan and the US included) will be happy to support in the long run.

Reddit Signs AI Content Licensing Deal Ahead of IPO.

• Reddit signed a $60 million annual content licensing deal with a large AI company (confidential as to which one).

• The deal was announced ahead of Reddit's anticipated initial public offering (IPO). Reddit aims for at least a $5 billion valuation for its IPO, and this deal certainly helps drive up the value.

• This strategic move positions Reddit as a leader in leveraging social media content for AI development.

• A playbook for social media platforms to emulate. Another approach that we can pick up from X/Twitter; they decided to create their own LLM (Grok AI) and charge a premium subscription for usage. I am not sure it is a great idea, but let’s leave it for another edition.

• It is a good approach to the strategy of integrating social media content and artificial intelligence technology to unlock new revenue streams. Look, ma, no Ads!

Takeaway

Which AI company is it? We don’t know yet, but this underscores the importance of data owners like Quora, Reddit, Stack Overflow, and the like. Specialized LLMs built on top of these data sources will be used for specific needs. I presume the deal is non-exclusive so that they can offer their data to as many AI companies as needed.

AI Tool review: Softr’s AI-powered App Generator.

Softr's AI App Generator dramatically changes the way businesses can create custom apps. This no-code solution leverages your existing data sources, such as Airtable, Google Sheets, or SmartSuite. It is ideal for developing client portals or internal tools like inventory management systems.

Benefits:

• Fast Custom App Development: Quickly turn your data into fully functional apps.

• Versatility: It is suitable for a variety of applications, including project management tools, CRMs, content calendars, and applicant trackers.

• No Code Required: Empower your team to build and customize without technical skills.

How to build your App using Softr AI:

1. Just Enter Your Prompt: Outline in plain English what you need your app to do. Your App is automatically created.

2. Preview and Theme Your App: Choose the look and feel.

3. Sync Your Backend Database: Connect Airtable, Google Sheets, or SmartSuite.

4. Establish Users & Permissions: Set up access controls.

5. Customize Your App: Tailor the app to your needs.

6. Test Drive your App: Ensure everything works smoothly.

Experience the power of no-code app development. Try Softr today and effortlessly streamline your business operations. Try it out here»(affiliate link).

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Mistral Large: A Strategic Milestone in AI Development.

Mistral Large is a new, cutting-edge language model designed to meet the complex demands of modern multilingual reasoning tasks, including text understanding, transformation, and code generation. It is developed by a company based in France. I call it EU’s Open AI.

Mistral Large delivers top-tier performance across various benchmarks, positioning it as a formidable competitor to existing LLMs. Its capabilities extend to native fluency in multiple languages, such as English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian.

The model's extensive 32K tokens context window facilitates unparalleled information recall from large documents, enhancing its utility in data-intensive environments.

Mistral's partnership with Microsoft to make the model available on Azure marks a pivotal move. This collaboration increases the model's chance of widespread adoption by existing Azure customers.

The introduction of Mistral Large and its optimized counterpart, Mistral Small, tailored for low latency workloads, is simply smart. This approach caters to a broad spectrum of use cases, from high-capacity tasks requiring Mistral Large to speed-sensitive applications ideal for Mistral Small.

Key Takeaway: Mistral Large is a strategic asset for the EU and European businesses aiming to harness the power of AI. The model's deployment flexibility, from cloud-based solutions to self-hosting for sensitive use cases, ensures that businesses can more easily adopt AI technology. Will it give Open AI a run for its money?

Musk Sues Open AI.

Quick bites on the case:

• The lawsuit against OpenAI: Elon Musk, co-founder of OpenAI, has sued the company and its partners for allegedly violating its non-profit mission and developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of Microsoft, which holds a 49 percent stake in OpenAI.

• Musk's concerns over AGI: Musk claims that AGI poses a grave threat to humanity and that OpenAI's tech should be freely available to the public. He also accuses OpenAI of becoming a closed-source de facto subsidiary of Microsoft, which uses OpenAI's tech to power generative AI tools such as Copilot.

• OpenAI's response: OpenAI denies Musk's claims and says that he may regret not being involved with the company today. OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman also says that Musk is his hero and misses the person he knew who competed with others by building better technology.

• Regulatory and legal challenges: Competition regulators in the US, the UK, and the EU are scrutinizing OpenAI and Microsoft. Several news organizations are also suing them for allegedly infringing their copyright using ChatGPT. This suit comes at a bad time for Open AI.

• Why is Elon doing this? Professional rivalry or unhappy because he is missing out on the glory of being part of Open AI? With Musk, we can never know for sure!

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