🦾AI Automates 700 Jobs. Is it Sustainable?

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Hello Everyone,

Microsoft broadens its AI horizons through strategic investment in a leading open-source LLM enterprise. Concurrently, Klarna revolutionizes its operational efficiency by “allegedly” automating hundreds of roles. And, AI insights from industry pioneers, shedding light on the future of technology and business.

This is what we got today…

• Microsoft Diversifies its AI Investments.

• AI Automates 700 Jobs. Is it Sustainable?

• AI Insights from Leaders.

Our Sections:

• ❓Quiz of the Day

• 📰 News and Trends

• 🤔 What I Found Interesting

• 🧰 AI Tools (LLMs)

❓Quiz of the Day

Which of the following is a potential benefit of AI in healthcare?

• A) Increasing diagnostic errors

• B) Reducing time in developing new drugs

• C) Replacing all human doctors

• D) Decreasing patient engagement

Please give us your answer in the comments below.

The correct answer will be given in the next newsletter - Last Week’s Quiz correct answer: “B”

Leave a comment

📰 AI News and Trends

• Microsoft alone will spend somewhere in the ballpark of $50 billion this year (on AI), compared to the Chips Act, which is $52 billion over five years (Bloomberg)

• Sora has some competition and this is just the beginning - Lightricks, the Israeli startup behind Facetune and Photoleap, announced a new AI video tool called LTX Studio that can generate characters, scenes, storyboards, and even entire movies using only text descriptions.

• Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools (404)

• Putin has new cyber-tools that threaten democracy, Ukraine warns (Times)

🌐 Other Tech news

• Apple Kills Its Electric Car Project (NYT)

• The UK Is GPS-Tagging Thousands of Migrants (Wired)

• Is battery swapping a better way to recharge electric cars? (NS)

• Apple Vision Pro’s components cost $1,542—but that’s not the full story (ARS)

• Bitcoin price hits $64K as traders anticipate new all-time high before halving (CoinTelegraph)

• Meta is aiming to reveal and demo Orion, its first true AR glasses, at its fall developer conference (BI)

Microsoft Diversifies its AI Investments

Microsoft has announced a strategic partnership with French AI startup Mistral, aiming to diversify its AI portfolio beyond its ~$13 billion investment in OpenAI. This multiyear agreement supports Mistral in bringing its AI models, which are open-source, to market, contrasting with OpenAI's proprietary models. Microsoft's investment details in Mistral were not disclosed, but it's significant (~$16.3M) as Mistral becomes the second provider of commercial language models on Microsoft's Azure platform.

Amidst regulatory scrutiny of its OpenAI collaboration, Microsoft continues to invest in AI, including a $5.6 billion boost to its AI data centers in Europe, and plans to innovate in AI chip development. This move underscores Microsoft's broader strategy to foster an "AI economy," ensuring open competition and innovation in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

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AI Automates 700 Jobs. Is it Sustainable?

Klarna, the Swedish fintech pioneer, has announced its AI assistant, developed with OpenAI technology, now does the work of 700 employees. This comes after laying off an equal number of staff, highlighting AI's growing role in streamlining operations. The AI handles two-thirds of customer service chats, allegedly achieving high satisfaction rates, and is expected to boost Klarna's profits by $40 million in 2024.

Despite concerns over job displacement, Klarna emphasizes that AI enhances rather than replaces human work, maintaining an option for human interaction. This move signals a shift towards more AI-dependent customer service models, driving efficiency and satisfaction. Interestingly enough, Klarna has done this on the eve of its public offering. Many believe this will boost its price to entice investors and please shareholders while sacrificing quality and efficiency. This can be a great test for companies’ AI adoptance as we will see how their AI enhancements unravel shortly.

🤔 What I found interesting this week

• What Podcasts are people listening to? - Find out Here

• Nobel Prize Winner Cautions on Rush Into STEM After Rise of AI (Bloomberg)

📰 Publications I am currently reading and recommending:

• BookBub - We help millions of readers save up to 95% on bestselling ebooks. Join for free and get incredible ebook deals, straight to your inbox.

• 1-Minute Question - Based on Neuroscience Science Practices to rewire your brain for success.

• How Brands Win - Distills the strategies behind great brands. And gives you actionable insights for your business.

AI Insights from Leaders

Ten AI Insights from Databricks, Anyscale, and Microsoft.

1. AI's Integration into Software: Ali Ghodsi of Databricks highlights AI's future role as intrinsic to data platforms, foreseeing a shift where AI and machine learning become core to software, akin to the relational database revolution led by Oracle in the late '70s.

2. Targeting Early Adopters: Ghodsi advises founders to initially focus on startups and innovators, leveraging their quick adoption and feedback to refine AI products before approaching larger, more traditional enterprises.

3. LLMs as Reasoning Engines: Matei Zaharia, also from Databricks, emphasizes the importance of using large language models (LLMs) for their ability to reason and interpret language over being mere repositories of information, advising to externalize factual knowledge.

4. Shifting Problem Perspectives: Naveen Rao discusses the significance of approaching emerging technology with a mindset that challenges and redefines problem-solving, drawing from his experience in founding AI companies.

5. AGI's Distant Future: Rao offers a tempered view on the advent of artificial general intelligence (AGI), predicting its arrival might be decades away, contrary to more immediate expectations.

6. Rise of Open-Source Models: Robert Nishihara of Anyscale observes a shift towards open-source AI models as businesses seek to quickly deploy and iterate on generative AI applications, predicting a future where custom, task-specific models become prevalent.

7. Specialization and Routing Architectures: Nishihara foresees the development of specialized AI models for specific tasks, complemented by routing architectures that efficiently manage query complexity.

8. Evaluation Challenges: He also identifies the growing difficulty in evaluating generative models, noting the subjective nature of their outputs and the inadequacy of traditional benchmarks.

9. Workflow Integration for AI Adoption: Bobby Yerramilli-Rao from Microsoft stresses the importance of embedding AI technologies into existing user workflows to enhance adoption, drawing parallels with the rapid integration of video conferencing technologies.

10. Focusing on Enduring Problems: Yerramilli-Rao advises AI founders to concentrate on solving persistent, valuable problems that remain relevant despite rapid advancements in AI capabilities, highlighting the opportunity in vertical applications and model management.

These insights encapsulate strategic considerations for AI startups, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, user-focused development, and a long-term perspective on technology's evolving landscape.

🧰 AI Tools

LLMs

• LeChat - The Mistral LLM model is here and ready to compete with ChatGPT.

• Inflection PI - Conversational AI that's designed to chat with people and provide information, recommendations, and emotional support.

• Claude - Claude is a state-of-the-art language model developed by Anthropic.

• Gemini - Google’s LLM.