Welcome, humans.☕

What to decode:

• 🎨 Microsoft released Designer web app for creativity.

• ♾️ Meta reveals AI plans

• 💼 AI → layoffs

• 🌲 Pinecone raise $100m Series B for language model database tech

Read time: 4 minutes

🎨 Microsoft released Designer web app for creativity.

Microsoft's AI capabilities have been making headlines once again, this time with the introduction of Microsoft Designer. This innovative canvas-style web application utilizes generative AI to enable users to create a wide range of designs, from posters and presentations to social media posts. Notably, it also offers the option to resize designs to fit specific platform styles, such as Instagram's iconic square format.

In addition to Microsoft Designer, the company has also enhanced its Edge Browser with a new AI-powered sidebar. This feature assists users in various online tasks, such as composing emails or posting on social media platforms. Microsoft continues to make strides in the realm of AI, offering users cutting-edge tools and features to improve their digital experiences.

Check out some demos here

♾️ Meta reveals AI plans

During Meta's recent earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the company's commitment to integrating artificial intelligence into its product offerings. He outlined plans for AI-powered agents to enhance business messaging, customer support, and metaverse experiences, although specific details were limited.

Zuckerberg mentioned AI-enhanced chat experiences in WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as visual creation tools for Facebook, Instagram, and advertising. He also credited recent AI-driven recommendations for a significant increase in user engagement and monetization.

Specifically, users spent 24% more time on Instagram, leading to a 30% increase in monetization on the platform and a 40% increase on Facebook compared to the previous quarter. Consequently, Meta's stock experienced a substantial 14% surge.

 💼 AI → layoffs

The future of Big Tech may involve smaller, more efficient companies.

Recently, economist Tyler Cowen suggested that the significant efficiency improvements brought about by AI could lead to the downsizing of large tech corporations. Although predictions from economists are often met with skepticism, Cowen's argument holds merit.

For instance, Midjourney, a leading AI image generator, operates with just 11 full-time employees. OpenAI, the $29 billion company behind ChatGPT, has fewer than 1,000 employees, yet it outperforms Google, which employs over 200,000 people.

In a recent development, Dropbox laid off 500 employees (16% of its workforce) to shift its focus towards AI-powered products. CEO Drew Houston acknowledged the need to hire AI-proficient employees rather than reorganizing existing staff, emphasizing the importance of user-friendly AI enterprise management tools.

The key takeaway: AI is expediting a significant workforce transformation in big tech companies, a trend that began with last year's recession.

 🌲 Pinecone raise $100m Series B for language model database tech

Pinecone, a previously lesser-known company, has successfully secured a $100 million Series B funding round at a $750 million valuation, with leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) at the helm. The company gained prominence following the emergence of ChatGPT and has since evolved into a crucial start-up, boasting thousands of commercial users.

For those unfamiliar with the technology, language models employ numerical vectors to represent sentences. Pinecone specializes in providing databases that store these vectors, offering enhanced oversight and management of the data utilized within large language models (LLMs). This advancement has the potential to address the "hallucination" issues often faced by chatbots.

Andreessen Horowitz has also shared their thoughts on this significant deal.

FASCINATING FINDS

• On this day - On April 28, 2003, Apple Computer introduced the iTunes Music Store, a groundbreaking platform for purchasing digital music at 99¢ per song. Designed for seamless integration with Apple's iPod and iTunes software, the iTunes Music Store was not the first of its kind, but it quickly gained widespread popularity. In its initial week, the platform sold over one million songs, marking the beginning of a transformative era in the music industry. By 2008, the iTunes Music Store had become the leading music retailer in the United States, surpassing even Wal-Mart in sales. (link)

• Weird but interesting - The "ILOVEYOU" Virus (2000) - This computer worm spread through email with the subject line "ILOVEYOU" and an attachment named "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs". Once opened, the virus would overwrite files, send itself to all contacts in the user's address book, and cause widespread damage. It is estimated to have affected 45 million computers and caused billions of dollars in damages. (link)

• Mind-boggling statistics - The AI market is projected to reach $190 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36% from 2020 to 2025. (link)

MISCELLANEOUS

(News, podcasts, videos, blogs etc)

• Intuit’s Shift - The growing pains and promise of embracing AI when you're a legacy financial software giant. (link)

• Europe to ChatGPT - Disclose your sources. (link)

• LLM+P - Empowering large language models with planning. (link)

• Decoder-only transformer with 1.3B parameters pre-trained on the RedPajama dataset and fine-tuned on the Databricks Dolly. (link)

• The UIs ChatGPT won't replace. (link)

• Dawn of the agents. (link)

• How organisational dysfunction and a lack of ambition bogged down Apple's AI and ML efforts. (link)

• Language models aren’t modeling ambiguity. (link)

• Training Stable Diffusion from scratch for <$50k with MosaicML. (link)

That's all for now!

As always, thanks for reading, and see you next time. 🫡☕