A reminder for new readers. Each week, That Was The Week, includes a collection of selected readings on critical issues in tech, startups, and venture capital. I choose the articles based on their interest to me. The selections often include viewpoints I can't entirely agree with. I include them if they provoke me to think. Click on the headline, contents link, or the ‘Read More’ link at the bottom of each piece to go to the original. I express my point of view in the editorial and the weekly video below.
Hat Tip to this week’s creators: @profgalloway, @Kantrowitz, @Kyle_L_Wiggers, @steph_palazzolo, @deanwball, @emollick, @asilbwrites, @2020science, @Shriftman, @AndreRetterath, @andresvourakis, @sama, @HarryStebbings, @rhodgkinson, @ajkeen, @Noahpinion
Contents
Editorial: Good Morning America
Harry Stebbings AND Sam Altman - What Startups Will be Steamrolled by OpenAI
Editorial: Good Morning America
Oh boy, where to start? You all know I voted for Kamala. I was never a rabid fan. But she was the lesser evil for sure.
I should have seen the writing on the wall when my 21-year-old son voted for the Peace and Freedom candidate, and his friends - many of them young African American men - were swayed by Trump.
I didn’t see the popular vote swing coming, though. It was a virtual landslide with backing from Elon Musk. The outcome was created by the most diverse group of electors the US has ever seen, who gained against the Democrats in over 90% of counties.
I am a person who goes through the seven stages of grief quickly, in about 5 minutes.
I spent the evening on Tuesday glued to CNN, then the All In Podcast, then Bulwark, and then back to CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, and the UK’s Sky News. The message was clear within a very short time. I was in bed by 10pm.
X was on my iPhone screen constantly.
Many friends began to express various stages of grief out in the open. By Wednesday morning, there were condemnations of Trump voters as being racist, homophobic, sexist, and worse.
The overall idea was that Trump voters were replicas of Trump.
It is there that we have to take a deep breath. In reality, they are nothing like Trump. There are not 73 million Trumps in America. But they do prefer Trump to Kamala Harris, primarily for good reasons. The Democrats are not good at empathizing with the poor. Their speeches have a sermonizing quality, talking down to the “uneducated”. Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables” moment was not accidental—the view of an elite towards the poor.
Trump cleverly captured their discontent and won favor with them in large numbers across all ages and races without promising them much or anything.
Hats off, honestly; again, I did not see the scale of it coming, even though I suspected Trump may win.
My stocks have gained a lot since Wednesday. Silicon Valley largely voted Democrat but expects to benefit from their loss. Lower taxes and less regulation mean higher and faster gains. Benefits to America’s poor will be harder to find.
Therein lays the real issue. Can Democrats ever be a majority party while focusing on issues that do not reflect the needs of the majority? Or while adopting a superior moral tone and ignoring street-level issues? Trump will not deliver good schools in poor neighborhoods or better pay and jobs. But his rhetoric sounds like he understands. He even managed to sound mildly pro-abortion a lot of the time, neutralizing the women’s rights voters. He sounded pro-innovation by praising SpaceX and Tesla. He sounded better on regulation by criticizing Lina Khan. He didn’t talk down to people or make them feel inferior.
The following 4 years will tell. Early evidence is that there are Democrats prepared to look in the mirror and understand that their job is to reinvent. Some are still in the shock stage, and most are angry, blaming the electors for the sense of Trump and ignoring their role in their downfall. Only reflection and reinvention can have a chance of working. Acceptance and hope beat shock, anger, and denial.
There are many articles this week on the election's impact on AI. Enjoy if you are able.
Essays of the Week
The Podcast Election
Author: Scott Galloway | Source: No Mercy / No Malice | Published: 2024-11-08 17:37 | Reading Time: 31 min | Domain: profgalloway.com
Summary: Lamestream Media By comparison, when Trump appeared on Fox News’ Gutfeld!, which averages about 3 million viewers, he reached 5 million people, and the full episode has been viewed 2.3 million times on YouTube. AI that can do what we do is closer than you think, so join this free event and learn something. - Trump won because he formulated the simplistic message of economic pain that resonated with a public enraged that neither the Democrats nor the classic Republican party had solved. The mainstream media gave Kamala a jillion dollars of free publicity, and with that and the billion dollars she raised…..she still lost!! Overall quali...
The AI Story Will Roll On in Trump’s Second Term
Author: Alex Kantrowitz | Source: Big Technology | Published: 2024-11-08 16:11 | Reading Time: 5 min | Domain: bigtechnology.com
Summary: Mentions of the technology were booming during earnings calls. Progress, meanwhile, continued in the background, and the technology reasserted itself in November 2022 with ChatGPT’s debut. His xAI company, currently raising at a $40 billion valuation, open sourced its Grok-1 model in March. The consumer products are catching on too. But OpenAI is still on track to lose $5 billion this year, just one example of how leading AI research houses are burning through money as th...
What Trump’s victory could mean for AI regulation
Author: Kyle Wiggers | Source: TechCrunch | Published: 2024-11-06 17:41 | Reading Time: 6 min | Domain: techcrunch.com
Summary: Trump has repeatedly said he plans to dismantle Biden’s AI policy framework on “day one” and has aligned himself with kingmakers who’ve sharply criticized all but the lightest-touch regulations. But two of its more consequential provisions — which have raised the ire of some Republicans — pertain to AI’s security risks and real-world safety impacts. In the last year, the Commerce Department established the U.S. AI Safety Institute (AISI), a body to study risks in AI systems, inclusive of systems with defense applications. It also released new software to help improve the trustworthiness of AI, and tested major new AI models through agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic. But they’ve also shied away from endorsing new restrictions on AI, which could jeopardize portions of NIST’s guidance. ...
The Battle Over Open-Source AI Will Be Settled in Trump’s Presidency
Author: Stephanie Palazzolo | Source: The Information | Published: 2024-11-06 15:19 | Reading Time: 1 min | Domain: theinformation.com
Summary: Donald Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election has a lot of implications for AI. Some are clear: Trump has said he will repeal President Joe Biden’s AI executive order, which requires companies training large AI models to share information about them with the federal government. In another key area, though, Trump’s stance isn’t certain. That’s the hotly contested question of whether freely available, open-source AI such as Meta Platforms’ Llama models are a threat to national security. (For more on what a Trump presidency means for AI, check out Kate’s story here from earlier this week.) The issue was put in the spotlight last Friday, when [Reuters...
On Civilizational Triumph
Author: Dean W. Ball | Source: Hyperdimensional | Published: 2024-11-02 13:57 | Reading Time: 11 min | Domain: hyperdimensional.co
Summary: The 13 billion parameter variant of Llama—Llama 1, folks—used by these researchers is 18 months old and is ranked dead last (155th place) on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena Leaderboard. Reuters breathlessly reported that Meta’s model had been used by the Chinese “to construct a military-focused AI tool to gather and process intelligence, and offer accurate and reliable information for operational decision-making.” The Jamestown Foundation, a foreign policy think tank, [turned up the volume](https://jamestown.org/program/prcs-adaptation-of-open-source-llm-for-military-and-security-purpo...
The Present Future: AI's Impact Long Before Superintelligence
Author: Ethan Mollick | Source: One Useful Thing | Published: 2024-11-04 12:02| Reading Time: 6 min | Domain: oneusefulthing.org
Summary: You can see this confidence in two separate essays by the CEOs of two of the leading AI Labs, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, that discuss the coming age of super-intelligent machines. We already have more capabilities inherent in today’s Gen2/GPT-4 class systems than we have fully absorbed. They can write code, operate computers, access the internet, and more. There is no special training here, just the native ability of Claude 3.5 Sonnet with computer use, taking screenshots every few seconds and “studying” them. With more work, the error rates and costs of AI monitoring will drop, even if no new models are released. T...
As generative AI gets better, what will happen to artists?
Author: Amanda Silberling | Source: TechCrunch | Published: 2024-11-05 20:29 | Reading Time: 2 min | Domain: techcrunch.com
Summary: Suno CEO Mikey Shulman found himself in an unlikely place for the founder of a generative AI music company: a songwriting class at Berklee College of Music. “It sounds like walking into the lion’s den,” Shulman said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Shulman had the students use Suno to see what it’s like to make a song with AI. And some artists might say that these tools are training off of their work without consent to market a product back to them that could take their jobs. Digital photography is certainly more ubiquitous now than it was in the era of the flip phone, and some people might be less likely to hire professionals for photoshoots or events. “I thi...
Can AI influence how you feel about someone without you knowing?
Author: Andrew Maynard | Source: The Future of Being Human | Published: 2024-11-03 17:05 | Reading Time: 6 min | Domain: futureofbeinghuman.com
Summary: A new study suggests that it can Imagine that you’re talking with someone over Zoom and, as the conversation goes on, you begin to feel that they really get you — to the extent that a strong bond of trust quickly forms. Now imagine that this sense of trust is the result of an AI that, unknown to either of you, is manipulating facial features in real time to influence how each of you feels about the other. As I noted in this last week’s update to Future of Being Human subscribers, it’s a study that made me feel deeply uneasy, and one that raises serious questions around human agency in a world where AI can mediate how we feel about — and are potentially influenced by — others through digital media. Interestingly, the research by Pablo Arias-Sarah and colleagues didn’t set out to study AI...
The Building Blocks of Generative AI
Author: Jonathan Shriftman | Published: 2024-11-07T17:51:21Z | Reading Time: 27 min | Domain: shriftman.substack.com
Summary: I've been an advocate for conversational AI interfaces and I’ve written about chatbots, conversational commerce, and the future of conversational search. The ultimate goal of LLMs is to truly understand the meaning of words and phrases and excel at generating new sentences. This openness fosters a collaborative environment where developers and researchers can contribute to model improvement, adapt it to new use cases, or integrate it into their own projects. By encouraging other re...
What Actually Matters When Raising a Funding Round
Author: Andre Retterath | Source: Data-driven VC | Published: 2024-11-05 15:09 | Reading Time: 7 min | Domain: newsletter.datadrivenvc.io
Summary: Join 29,370 thought leaders from VCs like a16z, Accel, Index, Sequoia, and more to understand how startup investing becomes more data-driven, why it matters, and what it means for you. Brought to you by Harmonic - The Startup Discovery Engine Harmonic identifies visionary entrepreneurs launching companies before any other provider. By analyzing backgrounds, tracking talent movements, monitoring new filings, and keeping tabs on social media updates, we discover startups 6-12 months ahead of the competition. This week, we’re pulling back the curtain on what the science says about raising a venture round—specifically, everything up to and including Series A. Beyond just the capital, raising a venture round is about finding the right partner—one who believes in your vision, understands yo...
GenAI and the Future of Data Science in 2025
Author: Andres Vourakis | Published: 2024-11-02T16:25:24Z | Reading Time: 5 min | Domain: tobeadatascientist.substack.com
Summary: One thing is clear: Data Science is moving beyond traditional model building & statistical analysis. The goal of this two-day event was to share insights, discuss advancements in the field, and explore practical applications of data and AI. So by the end of the event, I got a much clearer picture of the future of data science (at least for the coming year) and how AI (specifically GenAI) will get to play a role beyond the hype. 💡The main challenge currently remains privacy, which is no wonder bigger tech companies like Spotify are relying on launching their own internal LLMs to avoid leaking sensitive company information. With fewer repetitive tasks on our plates, we can focus more on strategic work and complex analysis that drive meaningful impact. 3—The Future: Preparing for the Rise ...
Video of the Week
Interview of the Week
Rob Hodgkinson on Keen On
An ode to American (AI) exceptionalism
Author: Rob Hodgkinson | Source: SignalRank Update | Published: 2024-11-04T16:07:29Z | Reading Time: 12 min | Domain: signalrankupdate.substack.com
Summary: Let’s consider the US position in AI through the prisms of capital, talent & regulation, before reviewing efforts across the globe to try to catch up. (Notwithstanding the CHIPS Act’s potential impact on reducing reliance on TSMC; Arizona’s TSMC plant even appears to match Taiwan’s yield now.) A new study by think tank Marco Polo, run by the Paulson Institute, shows that the US is home to 60% of top AI institutions, and the US remains by far the leading destination for elite AI talent at 57% of the total, compared with China at 12%. According to this excellent [piece](https://stateofthefutur...
Startup of the Week
Perplexity Nears $9 Billion Valuation in Investment Led by IVP
Author: Natasha Mascarenhas | Source: The Information | Published: 2024-11-05 22:28 | Domain: theinformation.com
Summary: Institutional Venture Partners is in talks to lead a $500 million investment in Perplexity, which has developed an artificial intelligence-powered search engine that competes with Google, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. The company is set to raise the round at a $9 billion valuation, triple the valuation from a round earlier this year. The new round, which is close to being complete, would be Perplexity’s fourth round of funding this year, which is unusual even in the frenzy of artificial intelligence fundraising. IVP has already made several investments into Perplexity, including leading its Series B last year. The pace of funding underscores the intense capital demands of building an AI company and investors’ willingness to fund those bets.
The other election night winner: Perplexity
Author: Maxwell Zeff | Source: TechCrunch | Published: 2024-11-06 20:01 | Reading Time: 4 min | Domain: techcrunch.com
Summary: On Tuesday, two AI startups tried convincing the world their AI chatbots were good enough to be an accurate, real-time source of information during a high-stakes presidential election: xAI and Perplexity. Late last week, the startup announced the launch of its election information hub, featuring real-time maps populated with voting data from Democracy Works and the Associated Press, the same information sources that power Google’s election map. In particular, OpenAI recently released its Google competitor, ChatGPT Search. But the Sam Altman-led startup didn’t trust the feature to answer questions about this election, di...
Post of the Week
Identity politics isn't working
Author: Noah Smith | Source: Noahpinion | Published: 2024-11-07 01:43 |
Reading Time: 4 min | Domain: noahpinion.blog
Summary: I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think Trump is a terrible choice for America, but there’s no denying that the American people have made their choice. He’s projected to win a solid majority of the popular vote — the first time a Republican has done so since 2004. Trump and the GOP won because nonwhite voters and working-class voters — traditional Democratic constituencies — shifted his way. Democrats are now the party of the educated upper middle and wealthy class, but have lost their appeal to the middle and working classes: This largely destroys the narrative that nonwhite immigration will...
News Of the Week
Coatue is raising $1B for AI bets
Author: Marina Temkin | Source: TechCrunch | Published: 2024-11-05 00:59 | Domain: techcrunch.com
Summary: Coatue Management, a hedge fund that invested heavily in tech startups during the pandemic-infused boom, is raising $1 billion to back AI-focused companies, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The funding, which will top up the firm’s flagship fund, will be raised primarily from institutional investors. However, high-net-worth individuals with accounts at the brokerage Raymond James & Associates could also invest in Coatue, per the report. Coatue, which has nearly $50 billion in assets under management, has invested in over 170 VC-backed companies in 2021, according to PitchBook data. Coatue has sinc...
Bitcoin, Coinbase, Robinhood Surge After Trump Victory
Author: Yueqi Yang | Source: The Information | Published: 2024-11-06T19:35:17Z | Domain: theinformation.com
Summary: Cryptocurrencies and related equities broadly rallied on Wednesday, after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election and Republicans took control of the Senate. Bitcoin hit all time high, jumping more than 8% to $75,450. Coinbase shares rose 33%, bringing the crypto exchange’s market ...
Microsoft U-Turns on Copilot Fee for Office Apps
Author: Tony Phillips | Source: How-To Geek | Published: 2024-11-07T16:42:19Z | Reading Time: 2 min | Domain: howtogeek.com
Summary: Microsoft has announced plans to pull the plug on its mandatory $20 Copilot Pro fee, in favor of including access to the AI tool as part of the Microsoft 365 subscription bundle. Microsoft 365 Family and Personal subscribers in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand will get automatic access to Copilot features once they update to the latest version of the productivity suite. This comes less than a year after the company started charging $20 for Copilot Pro licenses on top of the regular Microsoft 365 subscription. In a news post on the Asia-Pacific section of its website, Microsof...
OpenAI's Potentially Massive iOS ChatGPT Upsell
Author: M.G. Siegler | Source: Spyglass | Published: 2024-11-05 10:16 |
Reading Time: 3 min | Domain: spyglass.org
Summary: OpenAI's Potentially Massive iOS ChatGPT Upsell This seemingly small tweak in a second beta version of a third iOS iteration could have massive implications for both OpenAI and Apple (and Microsoft! ): With the second beta of iOS 18.2 that's available for developers today, Apple has further fleshed out the ChatGPT integration that's available with Siri. In the Settings app, there's now a section that shows the ChatGPT daily limit, and offers an option to upgrade to the paid ChatGPT Plus plan. Just yesterday before this new beta hit, I was recording a podcast (coming soon) where my buddy Mike asked me if I had noticed any kinds of usage limits or notices with the ChatGPT integration baked into the new iOS betas. I noted that while it was fa...
T-Mobile Agreed to Pay OpenAI $100 Million Over Three Years for AI
Author: Jon Victor | Source: The Information | Published: 2024-11-04T22:43:00Z | Domain: theinformation.com
Summary: T-Mobile agreed to pay OpenAI roughly $100 million over the next three years as part of a deal to use the startup’s technology, The Information reported on Monday. T-Mobile is paying to use OpenAI’s models to develop a new customer service chatbot that will aim to remember customer-specific data and use generative artificial intelligence to answer the bulk of their questions without the need for a human agent. T-Mobile said it plans to release the tool next year. The deal marks one of the largest contracts OpenAI has scored with an enterprise customer so far. Many large companies are planning to increase their budget for generative AI in the coming year, but are s...
Meta’s former hardware lead for Orion is joining OpenAI
Author: Maxwell Zeff | Source: TechCrunch | Published: 2024-11-05T00:38:22Z | Reading Time: 1 min | Domain: techcrunch.com
Summary: The former head of Meta’s augmented reality glasses efforts announced on Monday she is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware, according to a post on LinkedIn. OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that Caitlin Kalinowski will be joining the startup. Kalinowski is a hardware executive who began leading Meta’s AR glasses team in March 2022. She oversaw the creation of Orion, the impressive augmented reality prototype that Meta recently showed off at its annual Connect conference. “I’m delighted to share that I’m jo...
OpenAI acquired Chat.com
Author: Kyle Wiggers | Source: TechCrunch | Published: 2024-11-06 19:17 | Domain: techcrunch.com
Summary: OpenAI bought Chat.com, adding to its collection of high-profile domain names. As of this morning, Chat.com now redirects to OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the acquisition via email. Chat.com is one of the older domains on the web, having been registered in September 1996. Last year, it was reported that HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah acquired Chat.com for $15.5 million, making it one of the top two all-time publicly reported domain sales. Shah announced last March that he’d sold Chat.com to an unnamed buyer. And late today, in a [post](https://x.com/dharmesh/status/1854307...
AI, Data Center And Energy Startups Get Large Capital Infusion In October
Author: Gené Teare | Source: Crunchbase News | Published: 2024-11-07 12:05 | Reading Time: 3 min | Domain: news.crunchbase.com
Summary: Global venture capital funding in October reached $32 billion, marking the highest month for startup investment so far in 2024. OpenAIraised the largest round last month, a $6.6 billion deal led by Thrive Capital that alone represented around 20% of the month’s total venture investment. (OpenAI’s $157 billion valuation bumps it up to be the second-most valuable company on the unicorn board after ByteDance, the owner of TikTok.) And not far off from a bill...
Most-Active US Investors In October: Andreessen Horowitz Takes Top Spot Again
Author: Chris Metinko | Source: Crunchbase News | Published: 2024-11-08 12:03 | Reading Time: 3 min | Domain: news.crunchbase.com
Summary: See August’s most-active startup investors here. October turned out to be a pretty busy month for many of the big names in venture and was led again by Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst followed closely, all investing in 11 or more rounds involving U.S.-based companies. Interestingly, none of those firms took part in the big round of the month — [...
The S&P 500 Makes Up 51% of Global Stock Market Value
Author: Marcus Lu | Source: Visual Capitalist | Published: 2024-11-06T17:03:44Z | Reading Time: 1 min | Domain: visualcapitalist.com
Summary: The S&P 500 Now Makes Up 51% of Global Stock Market Value This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources. This graphic breaks down the global equity market into five major pieces as of Dec. 31, 2023, using data from S&P Dow Jones Indices. It highlights the massive share of market capitalization that is located in the U.S., p...
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