TLDR 2023-05-05

OpenAI reported $540 million in losses last year. CEO Sam Altman plans to raise $100 billion in the next few years to develop a smarter AI capable of self-improvement. Meanwhile, OpenAI looks to acquire more data sets for its software. Some companies have banned generative AI usage with proprietary data to prevent it from entering the ChatGPT data pool. OpenAI's ambitious investment in AI technology raises the question of whether other AI companies can keep up.

Google will be launching the Pixel Fold at the Google I/O 2023 event. Leaked marketing materials and hands-on videos indicate that the Pixel Fold phone will have a full-size outer display, a Google Tensor G2 processor, and a strong hinge. The 5.8-inch phone will be able to fold open into a 7.6-inch tablet. It will cost around $1,700. Google has been encouraging Android app developers to work on foldable devices and larger screen sizes.

This article takes a look at the world of solar geoengineering. Solar geoengineering refers to various attempts to change the Earth's climate by reflecting its sunlight. This can be done through the use of balloons, clouds, sunshades, or by releasing gasses or small particles into the atmosphere from an aircraft. There is widespread opposition to studies and debates on the topic, given the potentially irreversible impact to the planet. Despite this, a few companies have already launched independent efforts.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the world's first vaccine against Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). Arexvy from GSK will be available for adults only, aged 60 and over, pending a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In clinical trials, patients who received the vaccine had an 82.6% lower risk of developing lower-respiratory tract infections from RSV and a 94.1% drop in the chances of a severe RSV infection. Several other treatments for RSV are currently under development.

AI models are mostly developed in Python. Translating them into a faster implementation can be difficult and may require Python programmers to learn other languages. Mojo is a strict superset of the Python language. It provides additional functionality so that developers can write high-performance code. Mojo allows Python programmers to access the benefits of faster languages such as C.

Frappe is a full-stack web application framework designed for low code web development in Python and Javascript. It comes with integrated libraries and extensive modules. Frappe's single page application includes built-in forms, lists, searches, and navigation, with user roles and permissions applied out of the box on all interactions.

A leaked document from Google discusses how neither Google nor OpenAI has a moat. Training models from scratch is expensive and negates prior fine-tuning work. This makes the ability to train large models from scratch on expensive hardware less of a competitive advantage than previously believed. Google and OpenAI's efforts to build the most powerful language models are being surpassed by developments in the open-source LLM community.

This Hacker News thread looks at new technologies that aren't currently trending. The technologies discussed include color e-ink displays (which are just starting to get decent), commodity RISCV chips (some have just entered mass production), generative AI and quantum computing cloud (high demand from Wall Street and Government/Defense), and heat pumps (highly impactful for the climate).

Microsoft is adding features to Bing Chat AI such as image and video results, a new Bing and Edge Actions feature, persistent chat and history, and plug-in support.

StarCoder is a free alternative to code-generating AI systems like GitHub's Copilot.

The AI caused workers to become much more productive and resulted in greater customer satisfaction.

Importing ES modules becomes a lot better with import maps.

Code uploaded to the Play Store suggests that Google is looking to integrate Bard AI into Android for Pixel users.

The Prime Video team dumped their serverless microservices architecture and replaced it with a monolith, resulting in 90% savings in their operating costs and a simpler system.