Amazon enters the AI game

Hey Readers, Happy Sunday!

In today's edition, I'll cover the following:

1. My blog of the week: The AI Boom in Y Combinator

2. AI news update: AutoGPT, x.ai from Elon Musk and Amazon enter the Generative AI game.

3. Interview: A Chat with Nirman from Obviously.ai

Let's dive in!

📚 My AI post of the Week: The AI Boom in Y Combinator

The most recent Y Combinator winter batch is filled with startups utilizing AI to develop innovative technologies and applications. As AI models continue to advance, we're seeing a rise in creative AI-powered solutions. In this blog post, join me on a journey as I explore and dive into the world of AI-focused startups that are part of the Y Combinator family.

🗞️Top News of the Week

1. Auto-GPT: self-sufficient AI that doesn't need human interaction

Auto-GPT is an open-source project that can perform tasks like market research, writing headlines, generating blog posts, scheduling social media posts, and responding to customer queries in any language. It operates more independently than ChatGPT, which requires specific instructions and human refinements.

The rise of Auto-GPT has sparked debate about the impact of AI on the job market and society. They warn against the risks of uncontrolled AI development, such as misinformation and job automation. Some governments, like Italy, have banned ChatGPT, while others, like the UK, are more cautious about regulating AI, fearing it could stifle innovation.

2. Elon Musk Plans New AI Startup to Rival ChatGPT-maker OpenAI

Elon Musk is reportedly planning a new artificial intelligence (AI) startup to compete with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. Musk has assembled a team of AI researchers and engineers and is in talks with investors about funding the new venture. He has incorporated a company named X.AI and secured thousands of high-powered GPU processors from Nvidia. The goal is to build a large language model similar to the technology behind ChatGPT. Musk is recruiting engineers from top AI labs, including DeepMind, and has hired former DeepMind employee Igor Babuschkin, among others. The new company would allow Musk to challenge OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 but left in 2018 due to disagreements with management.

3. Amazon Enters Generative AI Arena with the Bedrock Service and CodeWhisperer Enhancements

Amazon has launched Amazon Bedrock, a platform that enables the creation of generative AI-powered apps using pre-trained models from startups such as AI21 Labs, Anthropic, and Stability AI. Bedrock offers access to Titan FMs, a family of models trained by AWS. The platform aims to help large customers build enterprise-scale AI apps, and it includes third-party models, as well as Amazon's own Titan FM family. Bedrock lets AWS customers customize models with a few labeled examples in Amazon S3. Amazon has also made its AI-powered code-generating service, CodeWhisperer, free for developers while launching its AWS Trainium chip for AI training and the AWS Inferentia2 chip for AI inference.

🎙️ Interview of the week: Learn about explainable AI with Maleeha from IBM

I interview Maleeha Koul, a data scientist from IBM who specialized in Trustworthy AI systems and she demoed the IBM Watson capabilities for Explanaible AI (XAI).

Explainable AI helps users understand and trust machine learning outputs. It addresses the "black box" issue in AI algorithms, ensuring system functionality, meeting regulations, and enabling outcome challenges. XAI promotes trust, auditability, and responsible AI use while mitigating risks. Responsible AI implementation involves embedding ethical principles for trust and transparency.

Thank you for taking the time to read! When you subscribed to this newsletter, my commitment to you was to be your helpful guide in navigating the world of AI. How did you find today's issue? Please reply to this email with your feedback and any suggestions for future topics.

See you next Sunday!

Armand 😎