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Daily Digest #289

Hello folks, if you use any AI tools in your business or at work, I’d love a couple of minutes for a review here¹⁰⁹ 🙏.

Here’s what we have today;

PICKS

1. OpenAI Board and staff are at a standoff. 743 of the ~770 OpenAI employees, including Ilya Sutskever have signed the letter for the board to resign. Reports⁴²⁰ are that the staff got two different explanations, none of which satisfied them. While the team is keeping OpenAI operational, customers are looking for other options.⁶¹⁶ More on 👀what’s going on with OpenAI?⁹⁷⁷ (updated regularly)

2. Satya Nadella talks about Open AI and Sam Altman - On a mini-media tour with Bloomberg¹⁷⁰, CNBC²⁰³ and Kara Swisher²²⁶, Nadella talked about what went down and what are his plans.🍿Our Summary⁶²⁴ (also below)

3. The scrambling attempts of OpenAI board - Through the weekend, Nat Friedman and Alex Wang declined the request²⁶⁴ to be OpenAI’s Interim CEO. The board also attempted for merger with Anthropic³⁰¹ (the AI company started by ex-OpenAI employees).🍿Our Summary²⁹⁷

4. Amazon will teach you AI for free^1,809 - Amazon is launching a new initiative called "AI Ready" to provide free AI skills training to 2 million people globally by 2025. This aims to address the talent shortage in AI as businesses struggle to find qualified candidates. 🍿Our Summary⁵⁶⁵ (also below)

TOP TOOLS

• Voice to music⁶⁴⁴ by Musicfy - Sing and turn your notes into any instrument you want.

• Negotiation Coach⁵⁹² (GPT) - Guiding role-play scenarios and providing visual summaries.

• AI proxy by Braintrust Data¹⁸⁰ - Easily swap in any LLM while using OpenAI SDK

• Summarify⁵³⁹ - Summarize PDFs, webpages, Youtube videos, blogs & more.

• PostNitro⁴¹⁷ - Create carousels for social media in seconds.

• Competely⁶²¹ - Get AI-powered competitive analysis in minutes.

View more →²⁵⁴

WHO’S HIRING IN AI

• .txt²²³ - Make text generation fast and reliable.

• Salesforce CEO offers¹¹¹ to match comp for OpenAI researchers.

Get listed here →¹

NEWS

• Thoughts on the OpenAI rollercoaster²⁸⁸ from a fellow founder.

• Orca 2 by Microsoft²⁶³ - Teaching small language models how to reason. It’s open source.

• LLMs cannot find reasoning errors¹⁹⁹, but can correct them.

• Ilya Sutskever’s Ted talk²⁰³ from earlier this year - The exciting, perilous journey towards AGI.

• OpenAI’s board set back the promise of artificial intelligence - Opinions by Vinod Khosla.²²⁴ (1st VC investor in OpenAI)

View more →⁶⁷

QUICK BITES

The hottest company in Silicon Valley, the company that promised God-level AGI is providing a drama whose script can only be written by AGI. The last we tuned in, OpenAI Board and staff were at a standoff.

Reports say that the staff got two different explanations, none of which satisfied them. 743 of the ~770 OpenAI employees, including Ilya Sutskever have signed the letter for the board to resign.

Don’t know what happened? 🍿Catch up here.¹⁶⁷

Statement: Satya Nadella talks to the media after hiring Sam Altman into Microsoft.

On a mini-media tour with Bloomberg¹⁷⁰, CNBC²⁰³ and Kara Swisher²²⁶, Nadella talked about what went down and what are his plans.

• I’m not being told about anything about [what Sam did] (1). Open AI’s governance needs to change after this ”event” (2).

• There is no OpenAI without Microsoft leaning in to partner in a deep way. We have everything to serve our customers if Open AI disappeared tomorrow (3).

• We are open for Sam and Greg to go back to Open AI, but they’ll keep doing business with Microsoft in any case (1). I’m open to both options (2).

• We have a place for every OpenAI employee that wants to come to Microsoft. And will keep supporting the ones who choose to stay at OpenAI (3).

In addition, Sam Altman tweeted that both his and Satya’s priority is to keep OpenAI thriving.

Report: OpenAI staff got different examples from the board for “his not candid communication” [source¹⁰²]

The examples given are:

1. Altman gave two people at OpenAI the same project.

2. Altman gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel.

The employees are not buying these (evident from the 95% of them being ready to walk if Sam isn't brought back.

Report: Customers reached out to OpenAI competitors. [source⁷⁷]

While the team is keeping OpenAI operational, more than 100 OpenAI customers contacted OpenAI competitor Anthropic over the weekend.

Follow what’s happening at OpenAI here⁹⁷⁷

QUICK BITES

After the OpenAI fiasco and announcing that Sam Altman will be the CEO of a new AI unit at Microsoft, Satya Nadella went on a mini-media tour. Bloomberg²⁰³ (1), CNBC²⁰³ (2) and Kara Swisher²²⁶ (3) talked to Satya about what went down and what are his plans.

What is going on here?

Satya Nadella talks to the media after hiring Sam Altman into Microsoft.

What does this mean?

OpenAI’s non-profit board fired Sam Altman on Friday (catch up here¹⁶⁷). Satya welcomed Sam and Greg to Microsoft and the OpenAI employees are pressuring the board to resign and bring Sam back.

• I’m not being told about anything about [what Sam did] (1). Open AI’s governance needs to change after this ”event” (2).

• There is no OpenAI without Microsoft leaning in to partner in a deep way. We have everything to serve our customers if Open AI disappeared tomorrow (3).

• We are open for Sam and Greg to go back to Open AI, but they’ll keep doing business with Microsoft in any case (1). I’m open to both options (2).

• We have a place for every OpenAI employee that wants to come to Microsoft. And will keep supporting the ones who choose to stay at OpenAI (3).

In addition, Sam Altman tweeted⁴⁵ that both his and Satya’s priority is to keep OpenAI thriving.

Share this story⁶²⁴

QUICK BITES

Amazon is launching a new initiative called "AI Ready"^1,809 to provide free AI skills training to 2 million people globally by 2025. This aims to address the talent shortage in AI as businesses struggle to find qualified candidates.

What is going on here?

Amazon is providing totally free training aligned with in-demand AI roles across business and technical fields.

What does this mean?

The main components of the AI Ready program are:

• 8 new free online AI courses covering both foundational concepts and more advanced skills.

• Over $12 million in AI scholarships for 50,000+ high school and college students.

• New collaboration with Code.org designed to help students learn about generative AI.

It has already released^1,809 a few courses in two categories: courses for business and nontechnical audiences and courses for developer and technical audiences via AWS Educate and AWS Skill Builder.

Why should I care?

AI skills are becoming critically important in the workforce. AWS’s new study⁶⁶ for AI in the workforce has some stats to back the claim:

• 93% of businesses are expecting to use AI solutions across their organizations in the next 5 years.

• Hiring AI-skilled talent is a priority for 73% of employers, but ¾th of them are unable to find that talent.

• Employees with AI capabilities may earn 47% higher salaries on average.

Amazon is aiming to remove barriers like cost and access to training so anyone motivated can develop these abilities.

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