Explore every episode of the podcast Computerspeak by Alexandru Voica
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Will AGI transform humanity into a multiplanetary species? | 21 Feb 2025 | 00:06:57 | |
During a media tour to hype up Grok 3 ahead of its release, Elon Musk appeared at Welt’s Economic Forum in Germany where he put superintelligence among the top 10 most important milestones in the history of life on Earth.I explain the consequences of his statement in this week's newsletter: https://www.computerspeak.co/p/agi-making-humanity-multiplanetary | |||
| RIP to the AI grift industrial complex | 14 Feb 2025 | 00:06:50 | |
The most meaningful achievement of the AI Action Summit in Paris is not what happened at the event, but in fact what we didn’t see. For the first time at a global AI event, the AI grift industrial complex, comprised of alarmists, doomers, skeptics, privacy and safety fanatics, and other conspiracy theorists, was relegated to where they’ve always belonged: at fringe events, preaching to their cleverly-named think tanks and foundations, without anyone who actually matters in the world of AI in attendance. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/rip-to-the-ai-grift-industrial-complex | |||
| ByteDance's new AI turns photos into movie sequences | 08 Nov 2024 | 00:07:57 | |
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has just previewed X-Portrait 2, a new portrait animation model built in cooperation with researchers from Tsinghua University, China’s best-ranked university in science and technology. The model is an evolution of the first-generation X-Portrait technology (which was presented earlier this year at SIGGRAPH) and provides similar functionality to Runway’s Act-One tool Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/bytedances-new-ai-turns-photos-into Also in the news this week:
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| Welcome to Computerspeak, a newsletter and podcast about AI! | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:01:34 | |
Welcome to Computerspeak! I’m starting this newsletter and podcast to keep track of new breakthroughs in AI and other emerging technologies, and share them with you every week. Computerspeak will be published on Friday on a weekly basis, providing a selection of the most interesting media articles about AI. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/© 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| There's a surge of AI investments in Malaysia and Thailand | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:03:10 | |
Countries in Asia are adopting AI at an accelerated rate and, if that trend continues, we’re likely to see AI-related investments in the region surpass $100 billion by 2028, according to IDC. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| "AI-adjusted" earnings are now a thing | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:02:37 | |
Several reporters have been telling me that there's mounting skepticism of AI startups and their revenue potential among investors in the Valley. Here are the are two contributing factors to this cooling off. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| At TED AI in Vienna, Europe fights for its place at the table | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:03:13 | |
My thoughts after attending TED AI Vienna, the first AI-focused TED conference held in Europe. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| An AI-powered metaverse starts to take shape | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:02:09 | |
Remember nine months ago when the world collectively was rolling its eyes every time Mark Zuckerberg mentioned the metaverse on an earnings call? Well, maybe it’s time to roll them back, put on a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and take a closer look at what Meta is doing because the metaverse could be finally revealing itself to us in its hype-less, tangible future glory. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| A radical approach could turn the Middle East into an AI hub | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:02:21 | |
In the race for AI supremacy, a new innovation hub is emerging according to a story from Reed Albergotti in Semafor: the Middle East. As the UAE and Saudi Arabia build data centers capable of training foundational models, more startup founders and investors are relocating to the region, taking advantage of recently established free zones where entrepreneurs can experiment freely with emerging technologies. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| Achieving supremacy in AI | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:04:05 | |
In her new book Supremacy, Parmy Olson goes behind the scenes of the AI industry’s two-year rollercoaster ride which began in November 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. She focuses on the evolution of two founders: Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, and chronicles their journeys from the early startup days where both had lofty goals of solving science and providing economic abundance to their more corporate-focused, present day predicaments, where their fortunes are closely tied to the business realities of Big Tech. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| Compute Deserts yield winners at the world's first AI Olympiad | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:02:47 | |
The Oxford Internet Institute has published a paper highlighting the uneven distribution of computing around the world, identifying three categories of countries when it comes to access to cloud AI infrastructure. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| The people onscreen are fake, but the business value is real | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:04:07 | |
According to some commentators, we’ve reached peak AI and the industry is in a huge bubble because generative AI provides no real benefits to early adopters. Here is their argument: over the last year, Big Tech has made sizable infrastructure investments in AI and VCs have signed large checks hundreds of startups (some with eye-watering valuations) but, so far, we have nothing to show for it. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| Are reasoning models becoming sounding boards for human thought? | 07 Feb 2025 | 00:07:32 | |
In recent months, a new breed of reasoning models has begun to emerge from the research labs of the tech world. An early adopter of these reasoning models has been the software engineering community. Instead of expecting the models to autonomously produce flawless code, engineers are leveraging them as interactive partners—similar to having a knowledgeable colleague or an advanced debugging tool. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/reasoning-models-as-sounding-boards | |||
| AI is not just a feature, it's a new fabric for creation | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:02:08 | |
For years, Apple has perfected the art of making technology accessible to the point of it becoming invisible—if you’re using an iPhone or a Mac, everything just works. They offer a similar vision for AI with Apple Intelligence which will improve apps and OS features in small yet meaningful ways. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| If we are serious about p(doom), we should also discuss p(human) | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:05:53 | |
Shortly after appearing on Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast, Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI safety researcher, posted a chart on X arguing that, given the current pace of progress with AI, we will have AGI by 2027 and maybe even “superintelligence” beyond 2030 thanks to millions of GPUs concentrated in 10 GW data centers. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| Open models are great but they have a big catch | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:06:07 | |
The generative AI race welcomed another important contender last week when Meta released two pre-trained and fine-tuned Llama 3 language models with 8B and 70B parameters, respectively. Just in the past three months, Microsoft, Google, Databricks, Cohere and Mistral have all made foundational models available for broad use, creating a growing trend among technology companies. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| Consumer AI is having a utility problem | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:04:47 | |
Consumer AI devices are having a difficult time lately. With global shipments of smart home devices declining in 2023, it seemed only natural that the market would look to generative AI to breathe new life into existing devices or expand with a host of new, mobile AI-powered gadgets. However, a different story is playing out, with a string of recent releases failing to capitalize on the potential of generative AI. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| Is there life after death with AI? | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:03:55 | |
Ever since Kodak introduced the first camera for amateur photographers in 1888, people have preserved precious memories by carefully curating photo albums—initially as physical books and more recently as digital collections stored in the cloud with services such as Google Photos, Dropbox or Flickr. But thanks to rapid advancements in generative AI, the century-old concept of a photo album is about to get a radical upgrade. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| AI colleagues are coming to an office near you | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:03:31 | |
On July 9, the CEO of Lattice, a software company offering performance management and employee engagement solutions, published a blog article that began like this: “Today Lattice is making AI history. We will be the first to give digital workers official employee records in Lattice. Digital workers will be securely onboarded, trained, and assigned goals, performance metrics, appropriate systems access, and even a manager. Just as any person would be.” After getting dogpiled on social media for three days, Lattice updated their original announcement, clarifying it “will not further pursue digital workers in the product.” Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| Liquid AI achieves worm-level AGI | 04 Nov 2024 | 00:02:57 | |
Yann LeCun said we’re still years away from AI achieving the level of intelligence of a house cat. But can today’s AI be as smart as a worm? Liquid AI, a startup spun out of MIT, believes so. Inspired by the brain of the Caenorhabditis elegans roundworms found in soil environments, Liquid AI’s founders have built a new generation of multimodal AI models designed to be more efficient and capable than traditional LLMs, especially those based on the transformer architecture. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/ © 2024 Black Knight Entertainment Ltd | |||
| Investors start asking hard questions about AI | 03 Nov 2024 | 00:04:14 | |
It was earnings week for the Magnificent 7 and, despite record-breaking profits, investors had just one question on their minds: what is $200 billion of investment going to deliver in revenue when the next generation of AI arrives? | |||
| DeepSeek brings out the war hawks and Cold War rhetoric | 03 Feb 2025 | 00:06:45 | |
When Chinese AI research lab DeepSeek released R1, an open weights AI model that was on par with OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model, the response from many in the American media and industry circles was swift and alarmist. The achievement was quickly framed as a "Sputnik moment"—a term evoking the Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 and the subsequent Cold War space race. This analogy is misleading: R1 is not a disruptive step change with military and geopolitical implications, it’s just a great example of dogged engineering that produced a capable model. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/deepseek-brings-out-the-war-hawks-cold-war-rhetoric | |||
| Doing the math on the Stargate Project | 24 Jan 2025 | 00:17:19 | |
During a press conference held on Tuesday at the White House, Donald Trump, together with Larry Ellison from Oracle, Masayoshi Son from SoftBank and Sam Altman from OpenAI, announced the Stargate Project, a new company set to invest $500 billion over the next four years to build AI infrastructure in the United States. So what exactly does that get you in terms of real-world infrastructure? We do the math in this week’s Computerspeak: https://www.computerspeak.co/p/the-math-on-stargate-project Also in the news this week: [*] Business Insider: Trump announces an AI infrastructure investment of up to $500 billion involving OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank [*] Bloomberg: Stargate’s First Data Center Site is Size of Central Park, With At Least 57 Jobs [*] Fortune: OpenAI’s Stargate may be tech’s biggest gamble ever, but here’s what’s really at stake [*] WSJ: How Oracle Plays Cheaply in AI [*] Sifted: ‘This must be a wake-up call for Europe’: Tech leaders urge EU to match Trump’s $500bn AI investment plan [*] The Information: Behind the OpenAI-Oracle Pact, an Elon Musk Threat Loomed [*] Bloomberg: AI’s $100 Billion Stargate Venture Touted by Trump Will Tap Solar Power [*] Sifted: Winning in AI will require millions more GPUs. Can Europe get there? [*] TechCrunch: Meta’s Yann LeCun predicts ‘new paradigm of AI architectures’ within 5 years and ‘decade of robotics’ [*] The Information: Startups’ AI Revenue Is Booming. Some Investors Doubt It Will Last [*] Wired: Game Developers Are Getting Fed Up With Their Bosses’ AI Initiatives [*] Fortune: ‘A sense of panic’: Immigrant AI talent worry Trump could make an already broken visa system worse [*] FT: Huawei seeks to grab market share in AI chips from Nvidia in China [*] MIT Technology Review: The second wave of AI coding is here [*] TechCrunch: Here are the types of AI companies enterprise VCs want to back in 2025 [*] Washington Post: Amazon AI deal leaves ‘zombie’ start-up in its wake, whistleblower says [*] Science News: Want your own AI double? There could be big benefits — and risks | |||
| Dealing with precision in AI classifiers for content moderation | 21 Jan 2025 | 00:18:06 | |
Content moderation at scale remains one of the most complex challenges that technology companies have to deal with today. I’ve seen firsthand how different companies approach this challenge across different platforms, from content creation to distribution. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/dealing-with-precision-in-content-moderation | |||
| GET is a new model for understanding human biology | 10 Jan 2025 | 00:11:11 | |
An ambitious new AI model called GET (General Expression Transformer) promises to rewrite the rulebook for transcriptional regulation, a cornerstone of biological processes. Unveiled by researchers from MBZUAI, Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon, GET is not just another computational biology tool—it’s a leap forward in the form of a foundational model designed to predict gene expression across 213 human cell types. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/get-is-a-new-model-for-understanding-biology Also in the news this week: [*] The Atlantic: A Virtual Cell Is a ‘Holy Grail’ of Science. It’s Getting Closer. [*] Time: How China Is Advancing in AI Despite U.S. Chip Restrictions [*] Wired: AI Social Media Users Are Not Always a Totally Dumb Idea [*] Reuters: AI startups drive VC funding resurgence, capturing record US investment in 2024 [*] FT: Healthcare turns to AI for medical note-taking ‘scribes’ [*] WSJ: How Are Companies Using AI Agents? Here’s a Look at Five Early Users of the Bots [*] CNBC: How AI regulation could shake out in 2025 [*] Bloomberg: Sam Altman on ChatGPT’s First Two Years, Elon Musk and AI Under Trump [*] TechCrunch: Google is forming a new team to build AI that can simulate the physical world [*] MIT Technology Review: AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it [*] Business Insider: A VC firm created an AI agent-powered 'investment memo generator.' It's the latest example of how AI is coming for venture firms. | |||
| How gen AI is moving from the Napster to the Spotify era | 29 Nov 2024 | 00:12:57 | |
A new report from MMC Ventures discusses the ethical challenges of training AI models, drawing parallels between the data gathering practices of today and the Napster-to-Spotify transition that occurred over two decades ago in the music industry. The report examines the perspectives of three stakeholders: content creators, data rights holders, and AI developers, highlighting the need for fair compensation and efficient rights management. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/how-gen-ai-is-moving-from-the-napster-to-spotify-era Also in the news this week:
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| Two years on from ChatGPT, AI valuations are still a murky business | 22 Nov 2024 | 00:13:09 | |
Traditionally, we used to measure companies by their multiple, calculated as the company's valuation divided by its revenue. Multiples used to be a safe metric for investors to compare a company to other businesses. But with the AI companies of today, using multiples is no longer an option because, for many of them, they create a distorted picture of their true worth. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/ai-valuations-two-years-from-chatgpt Also in the headlines this week:
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| Researchers have a better definition for low resource languages | 15 Nov 2024 | 00:12:35 | |
A new paper presented this week by researchers from MBZUAI and UC Berkeley at the EMNLP conference in Miami explains why Romanian or Cherokee (a language spoken by 2,000 people in the United States) can both be considered low resource, albeit for different reasons. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/better-definition-low-resource-languages Also in the news this week:
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