GM Readers! ☀️

Welcome to the 22nd issue of Evolving Internet Insights.

Something we are thinking about: Do we have enough use cases (problems to solve) that require all these new advanced AI models?

Thanks for reading!

Liang and Dan 🙌

🌰 In a Nutshell

• Google launches Gemini, its next generation LLM, to compete with OpenAI 🚀

• Elon Musk’s xAI announced $1B equity fundraise shortly after launch 💸 

• OpenAI COO, Brad Lightcap, claims AI is overhyped, implying that it is not a silver bullet 🚅

• The number of ML and AI research papers grow exponentially, meaning more innovation in the space is on the way 📈

💾 Byte-sized Stories

This week’s top stories with our insights on top.

1. Google Releases Gemini, Its Next-Gen AI Model To Compete with OpenAI

⚡️ TL;DR: Google launched Gemini, its next-gen AI model to compete with OpenAI. Gemini is more than just a single AI model — offering users multiple versions depending on their use cases. There will be a light version called Gemini Nano and more advanced versions called Gemini Pro and Ultra. A video demo of Gemini showed off how Gemini was able to interact with video and audio seamlessly. 

⚡️ So What: Google ran a comparison between Gemini and Open AI GPT.  Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind, highlighted “I think we’re substantially ahead on 30 out of 32” of those benchmarks… some of them are very narrow and some of them are larger.” Here is an example of some of the benchmarking that Google did.

⚡️ Zoom Out: While the transformative Transformer paper that underpinned GPT’s technology came out of Google research, Google has lagged behind OpenAI in the genAI race. But what Google has going for it is an extensive product suite that it can implement Gemini across. Sundar Pichai has said, “one of the powerful things about this moment [launch of Gemini] is you can work on one underlying technology and make it better and it immediately flows across our products.”

Read More Here, Here

2. Elon Musk’s xAI Is Looking To Raise $1B In Equity Funding 💸

⚡️ TL;DR: xAI, the OpenAI competitor Elon Musk founded, is looking to raise $1B in equity funding. So far, it has raised ~$135M. This announcement follows xAI’s recent launch of Grok, its ChatGPT competitor that will initially be rolled out to X (f.k.a. Twitter) users.

⚡️ So What: As we’ve covered in the past, Grok’s big advantage is that it has “real time knowledge of the world via the X platform.” Compounding this advantage, is X’s decision to ban crawling and scraping to fend off any AI models training on its data. As xAI enters the competition in a crowded space of well-funded LLM providers like OpenAI and Big Tech companies like Meta, it is going to need a lot of capital to compete. Also, it is still unclear whether all this technology will in fact accrue value to its creators. AI companies are still not making money and with increasing competition, it will become increasingly hard to do so without giving the market something novel and defensible.

⚡️ Zoom Out: One thing that Musk has is a large user base and a mature product in X. xAI is closely tied to the X platform and given the proprietary data, Grok could potentially offer something completely different (read: potentially better) to its users and that is native to the X platform. For example, Grok might be the best model to help users write better content on X, since it’s trained on X data. Also adding to this potential thesis by Musk is that he has stated that he wants X to become a super app where users can do everything from payments to social media.

Read More Here, Here

3. OpenAI COO Thinks AI is Overhyped 😵‍💫

⚡️ TL;DR: In an interview with CNBC, OpenAI COO, Brad Lightcap, highlighted that one of the more overhyped parts of AI is that enterprises think “in one fell swoop, [it] can deliver substantive business change.” Lightcap also highlighted that companies expect generative (gen) AI to solve their major problems, like dramatically cutting costs and revitalizing company growth—basically asking AI to be a solution to everything.

⚡️ So What: In light of the gen AI boom, it seems like every company and every management team is touting how AI is the future. And once one company announces this train of thought publicly, other companies feel compelled to do the same. The topic of gen AI has been mentioned on too many earnings calls, company strategy announcements, and startup pivots.

So, taking a step back, it is probably good that the COO of one of the leading companies in the space is trying to level set expectations. Now that companies have started to roll out their AI solutions, we are starting to see the realities of these implementations. For example, Morgan Stanley’s rollout of its internal chatbot is not being used as people still prefer to ask a person for information.

⚡️ Zoom Out: Emerging technology adoption cycles all look similar regardless of the technology itself. While the gen AI boom gave consumers and the average user something impactful and usable with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, enterprises and many other users segments still have not adopted the technology. In another emerging technology, Web3, similar cycles took place. The irony is that during a hype cycle, the lofty industry claims are more abundant, and during down cycles, the noise dies down and builders build. Maybe the cooldown alluded to by Lightcap is what the AI industry needs to build beyond the obvious use cases. After all, technology is nice, but real adoption requires value-add products built and applicable for global populations.

Read More Here, Here

📊 Let’s Get Graphic

One visual we couldn’t stop thinking about.

The Number of ML and AI Research Papers Increase at an Exponential Rate. 📈

⚡️ Takeaway: Number of papers published on machine learning and artificial intelligence are increasing at an exponential rate. If innovation is powered by research, then this is a leading indicator that we are just getting started in what is possible in AI and generative AI.

🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole

Some deeper dives to help you get smarter on emerging tech.

1. Vitalik on AI Optimism: an essay by Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, on his views on AI “doomerism” versus optimism. 

2. AI and Consciousness: an article diving into why it will be hard to tell if AI ever becomes “conscious.”

3. Generative AI Revolution in Games: a deep dive by the a16z team on how generative AI is disrupting the gaming industry.

🗳 We’d Love your Feedback

🙏 Shameless Asks

It takes us days to put this together, sharing it takes you 19.45 seconds 😘

An easy way to support us and the newsletter is through the referral program.

⚡️ Share Evolving Internet Insights with a friend and ask them to subscribe

⚡️ Share on X/Twitter and Linkedin with a short note

⚡️ Share on your company Slack/Teams channels and communities