OpenAI is making history again, this time by scoring billions from investors
OpenAI, which turned generative AI from a sci-fi concept into a consumer reality when it released ChatGPT two years ago, made history again last week when it raised $6.6 billion in one of the largest venture capital funding rounds in U.S. history.
The startup is now valued by investors including Thrive Capital, Microsoft and AI chipmaker Nvidia at $157 billion – about the market value of “publicly traded household names such as Goldman Sachs, Uber and AT&T,” The Wall Street Journal noted. Apple, which has signed a deal to offer ChatGPT to iPhone users as part of its new Apple Intelligence system, was also considering making an investment before the talks collapsed, the Journal added.
The pressure is now on CEO Sam Altman to transform the San Francisco-based company from a nonprofit charity to a for-profit company within two years, a shift that is raising concerns in his new quest to make money OpenAI could release AI tools that could increase the risk to humanity. The company said in a statement to Bloomberg that it would use the money to advance AI research and boost its computing capacity.
OpenAI has already significantly advanced the technology by announcing a version of its major language model called o1 which aims to imitate human-level reasoning. Google has a team also working on an AI reasoning model as it seeks to challenge OpenAI in the market for software that is “more adept at solving multi-step problems in areas such as math and computer programming,” Bloomberg reported last week, based on anonymous sources.
Whether you’re a fan of OpenAI or not, the funding news confirms that a generational AI future is inevitable. But will it be a good future?
Far be it from me to question the wisdom of venture capitalists, but let me remind you that MIT economist Daron Acemoglu isn’t so sure. He said again last week that AI is overhyped and will not deliver the productivity boost and returns. investments that companies investing more than a trillion in the technology believe will happen. Why? Because, he thinks, AI will only be able to handle a small percentage of today’s jobs in the next decade: 5%. “A lot of money is going to be lost,” says Acemoglu told Bloomberg. For a deeper dive into his thinking, take a look at what he said to Goldman Sachs about this in June.
Here are the other AI activities worth your attention.
California’s governor has introduced a bill calling for an AI kill switch
Regulators in California, which passed the most sweeping law on AI safety and development, saw their proposed SB 1047 go up in flames after California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed it. The bill called for safety testing on AI models costing more than $100 million and would require companies to build in a “kill switch” to shut down systems in the event of an impending disaster (with someone in California deciding what is a disaster).
Echoing language from Silicon Valley tech companies and AI developers that the bill would stifle innovation — California is home to 32 of the world’s 50 leading AI companies — the Democratic governor wrote on September 29. statement that he did not think the proposal to “introduce certain safeguards to prevent catastrophic damage” was the right approach.
“A California-only approach might be justified — especially in the absence of federal action from Congress — but it must be based on empirical evidence and science,” Newsom said. “The bill applies strict standards to even the most basic functions – as long as they are deployed by a large system. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”
While many AI companies say they welcome some form of AI regulation, as we all know, the devil is in the details. More than 100 companies signed at the end of September The European Union’s AI Pactincluding Amazon, Google and Microsoft, which pledge to agree to the law’s provision aimed at making generation AI safe. However, Apple, Anthropic and Meta did not sign after expressing concerns that EU regulations are creating too many regulatory hurdles.
Priceline’s new Penny Voice AI assistant is just the beginning
I wrote a piece about how AI companies are starting to rely on voice technology to convince you to feel more comfortable interacting with their AI assistants. Case in point: Meta last month licensed the voices of well-known actors Awkwafina, Judi Dench, Kristen Bell, Keegan Michael Key and John Cena to provide answers and tell jokes, using Meta AI.
But it’s not just AI makers hoping to convince you with their interlocutors. Priceline demonstrated Penny Voice, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-4o so you can have a back-and-forth audio chat to help book your travel plans. “Penny will be able to ‘hear’ and understand complex consumer questions and anticipate needs based on preferences and past interactions, then respond in real time,” the company said. You can hear what that will all sound like here.
Also worth knowing…
If you’re curious about how people use AI, CNET offers some explanations on how to write a resume with ChatGPT; how AI can help you create a care plan for your plants; which AI tools you can use to summarize your Excel spreadsheets; and how to use gen AI for meal planning, or as author Corin Cesaric writes, to help you decide “what to cook for a week.”
Former President Donald Trump was the subject of a fake AI-generated photo posted Facebook shows the Republican presidential candidate wearing an orange life jacket and wading through a flooded street accompanied by another man. Although Trump did view the damage from Hurricane Helene during a trip to Georgia, professor of engineering Walter Scheirer from the University of Notre Dame, told USA Today that you can tell the image is not authentic. This is due to the numerous artifacts in the low-resolution photo and the fact that: “The clothing of the two men appears dry. If they were wading through water, they would be soaked – an effect seen in the numerous real photos of the hurricane.”
What happens when you ask popular AI text-to-image tools to create their versions of baby boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Zers? According to a joint research project by Alport and Turing Post, the stereotypes are flying around. They analyzed more than 1,200 images in four AI models, and you can see the results for yourself in their summarytitled Sad Boomers, Sober Zoomers, Sidelined Gen Xers (again) and No Avotoast for Millenials. Note the researchers: “The one thing they all have in common is the love of beer.”
Waymark, an AI video technology company, has released the full version of what is said to be one of the first AI-generated films, a dystopian work called The frost. The final version of 23 minutes combines part onea 13-minute short film released in June 2023 and described by MIT Technology Review as “impressive” and “bizarre”, with the previously unreleased part two. The film was made with OpenAI’s Dall-E and tools from Runway and Luma Labs. You can watch the trailer here. I found it a little disturbing: we’re only at the beginning of all this AI filmmaking, but you know it’s only going to get better.
