TG-AI-F: Don't ignore the AI elephant in the room
Happy Friday!
Here, a few extra thoughts on the AI week that was. Subscribe to get these (hopefully sparkling) missives directly in your inbox, and also just to stay in touch (let me know what you think!). 😊
— Sharon 👋
P.S. For my regular AI news and trend takes, find me on VentureBeat.
🐘 Amid the flood of AI news, don’t ignore the EA elephant in the room
TL/DR: Effective Altruism’s influence on this week’s AI news was hard to find
The news that Amazon had committed to invest up to $4 billion in LLM startup Anthropic was a bombshell this week. But where was the context about the influence of what some have called the “cult”-like Effective Altruism movement on Anthropic? That is, “EA” — with its outsized focus on averting a catastrophic scenario where an AGI created by humans eradicates our species. The EA of jailbird Sam Bankman-Fried, a star in the movement, and his colleagues at the nutty, bankrupt crypto empire that invested $530 million in Anthropic?
That context was hard to find: The New York Times’ Cade Metz did not mention it in his coverage of the Amazon/Anthropic news, even though he covered the FTX investment in Anthropic last December (although Kevin Roose delved deeply into Anthropic’s EA connection in July).
In fact, one of the only publications to mention the Anthropic/EA connection related to the Amazon news was Vox — which ran it in its Future Perfect column that is, bizarrely, a section of Vox's website “focused on news stories relevant from an effective altruism perspective.”
Look, I admit it’s impossible to constantly mention the EA context in every piece. One could never do that when it comes to OpenAI, for example — since it’s in the news every single day. But every once in a while I think it’s important to call it out. After all, this is the week ChatGPT started to “speak” and “listen” (no, not really, just a voice interface) and got access to the internet. Isn’t it important to fully understand that the folks “creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity” received a grant of $30 million from EA-funded Open Philanthropy in 2017? That employees “go to the same parties and subscribe to the rational philosophy of Effective Altruism.” That the company’s head of alignment, Jan Leike, who leads the superalignment team, reportedly identifies with the EA movement?
Granted, New York Magazine tackled the Sam Altman take on EA this week — “He also embraced the techy-catnip utilitarian philosophy of effective altruism” — but yeesh…that’s only a drop in the bucket of jaw-dropping nuggets in that story (I highly recommend sitting down to read it with some popcorn).
Also: Some extra thoughts on…
The Hollywood strike and AI: A tentative agreement was reached this week between WGA members and Hollywood— the studios and production companies will have to disclose if any material given to them has been generated by AI, while AI cannot credit as a writer; write or rewrite “literary material,” or be source material. My take: I hope the studios abide by any new rules, but I wonder if it’s even possible to hold back this AI tide — and whether the agreement has left the door open enough for writers to still be pushed aside by AI.
The bazillion-dollar AI valuations keep coming: OpenAI is rumored to be seeking a valuation up to $90 billion with a sale of existing shares. Amazon’s $4 billion investment in Anthropic could take the startup’s valuation to new heights. Character AI is supposedly in early talks to value the company at more than $5 billion. My take: WTF????? 😳
The Silicon Valley supergroup taking on AI hardware: OpenAI’s Sam Altman, former Apple designer Jony Ive and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son are looking to replace the smartphone! Delivering the benefits of AI “in a new form factor, unconstrained by the rectangular screen”! My take: I could see Altman, Ive and Son as the new AI Nirvana.
🤷 Awkward moment of the week:
So apparently a photo of my demo trying out the Meta Quest 3 headset is now going around Europe thanks to Sarah Yañez-Richards, a reporter at EFE, which she told me is the AP of the EU. I plan on embracing this awkward moment in time because it was really fun. 😊 Read Richards’ full story, in Spanish:
