A week in Generative AI: $$$, Enterprise & Sunshine
A week in Generative AI: $$$, Enterprise & Sunshine
News for the week ending 3rd September 2023
This week, generative AI news is back with a bang from the summer. So much news to cover, especially in the ethics space, so I’ve created a whole section for it this week. There was also a huge amount of news from Google and OpenAI, with some of it covered below. Enjoy!
OpenAI Passes $1 Billion Revenue Pace as Big Companies Boost AI Spending
$80m in revenue a month or $960m per year. OpenAI generated just $28m in revenue last year, so this is a big step up, but it apparently cost OpenAI $540m to develop ChatGPT which also costs $700k a day to run (i.e. $255m per year). So roughly $165m profit - not bad.
However, their Microsoft deal also means that Microsoft reportedly get 75% of OpenAI’s profits until it makes back the $13bn they have invested in OpenAI so far.
At this rate it will take OpenAI over 100 years to pay Microsoft back…. 😱
Google's Duet AI becomes a meeting assistant, doc summariser, and chat companion
This is big news for anyone using Gmail and/or Google Workspaces and arguably provides better features than Windows Co-Pilot that Microsoft announced earlier this year. Generative AI in the workplace is coming hard and fast!
OpenAI launches a ChatGPT plan for enterprise customers
There are some interesting little tidbits in there - enterprise plans come with enhanced privacy that ensure OpenAI can’t train their models on an enterprise’s data and all chat conversations are encrypted in transit and at rest. There is also single sign-on, usage statistics, shareable prompt templates and access to Code Interpreter (now called Advanced Data Analysis).
"Project Sunshine" - ChatGPT with special capabilities
OpenAI is working on a secret project with “special capabilities” that can be enabled for some users in the Beta settings. No news yet on what these capabilities are but very intriguing!
This week’s AI Ethics news
Abandon artificial intelligence copyright exemption to protect UK creative industries, MPs say
US Copyright Office wants to hear what people think about AI and copyright
This week’s long reads
AI Supremacy - Why You Should be Skeptical of AGI
NY Times - A Stroke Stole Her Ability to Speak at 30. A.I. Is Helping to Restore It Years Later.
“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.“
William Gibson