AI Snapshot: AI sugar daddy?; New ML-based Spotify feature; AI is Spider-Man's steroid of choice #13
News / Analysis / Resources
Issue #13 of the
Infinite Waves
Newsletter
AI snapshot is the Monday issue of the Infinite Waves newsletter. AI news, developments, and points of interest from the previous week.
Feature:
AI to be everyone’s sugar daddy?
In a blog post Sam Altman, the CEO of research lab OpenAI (whose GPT-3 technology is now generating 4.5 billion words per day and is used in over 300 apps) said that in just 10 years the AI industry could be generating enough wealth to pay every adult citizen in the United States $13,500.
The implication is that eventually AI companies will be so rich and powerful that they’ll be able to subsidise the world with a Universal Basic Income.
Is this possible? Probably. Should it happen? Nobody knows.
Altman’s ideas have been met with criticism.
'This beautifully epitomizes the AI ideology that I believe is the most dangerous force in the world today.'
Glen Weyl, economist and a principal researcher at Microsoft Research
One of the issues to come out of this is that the exponential increase in AI systems might exacerbate wealth inequality, and concentrate power and capital resources into an even tighter circle of technology companies.
The reality will obviously be pretty complex, but these are the kinds of issues that will start to become legitimate questions and concerns.
What do you think, would you like living off AI pocket money?
News 📰
Everyone, it seems, wants to build autonomous trucks. It won’t be long before we see protesting truck drivers burning effigies of WALL-E at truck stops. Volvo has made its intention clear to participate in fully autonomous semi trucks by partnering with self-driving startup Aurora. As it stands, Aurora has raised $690m in funding. Volvo is currently the world’s second largest producer of heavy-duty trucks.
Don’t you hate it when you give someone $20m and it turns out they lied about their tech. Surveillance startup Banjo landed a $20.7m contract based on its AI technology. AI technology that it didn’t have. Oh, and the company’s CEO, Damien Patton, also pleaded guilty to helping a KKK leader with a mission to shoot up a synagogue. Yeah, hate it when that happens.
New Machine Learning-powered Spotify feature. Grease up your elbow joints and prepare to robot dance your joints into oblivion 🕺 🤖 💃 Users will now be able to find new songs through curated mixes based on each their musical taste. It is, inventively, called ‘Spotify Mixes’. Hopefully you haven’t let someone use your account, you might get some Harry Styles in your ears right when you’re about to hit peak workout 😬 .
AI makes Spider-Man’s muscles bigger. Yeah, you heard it right. Weird one. An update to Spider-Man: Miles Morales adds machine learning technology to Miles's muscle formation according to a lead character developer.
Tweet of the week:
5 years ago, already?! 😳 Get busy living folks…
Something free
Graph + AI Summit is the first and only open conference for accelerating analytics, AI and machine learning with graph algorithms.
Resource
9 Comprehensive Cheat Sheets For Data Science
Sources:
Silicon Valley leaders think A.I. will one day fund free cash handouts. But experts aren't convinced
Volvo and Aurora team up on fully autonomous trucks for North America
This surveillance startup got $20M for AI tech it didn’t have
Spotify's New Playlists Dubbed 'Spotify Mixes' Use Machine Learning To Bring You Fresh Music
Spider-Man: Miles Morales' New Muscle Upgrade Uses Machine Learning
9 Comprehensive Cheat Sheets For Data Science
OpenAI’s text-generating system GPT-3 is now spewing out 4.5 billion words a day