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- Ilya's secret ASI roadmap
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. What did Ilya see? Potentially a new path to ASI that's worth betting billions on ā despite no product or revenue stream.
With investors ready to value his secretive company at $30B based on a "different mountain to climb," is the former OpenAI co-founder sitting on a breakthrough that could rewrite the AI roadmap?
In todayās AI rundown:
Ex-OpenAI scientistās new path to ASI
Microsoft looking to move beyond OpenAI
Making viral posts 10x faster with AI
Stanford AIās obesity treatment breakthrough
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
SAFE SUPERINTELLIGENCE INC.
Image source: Getty Images
The Rundown: Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever's startup Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) is reportedly raising $2B at a $30B valuationāwith the researcher hinting at a different approach to achieving advanced AI than all other rivals.
The details:
Sutskever reportedly told investors he has identified a completely new direction for AI development, describing it as āa different mountain to climb.ā
According to the Wall Street Journal, SSI is in talks for funding at a valuation of $30B, despite having no revenue or public-facing product.
The company is not planning to release any commercial products prior to achieving superintelligence and operates leanly with just 20 employees.
Sutskever departed OpenAI in the months following the Nov. 2023 ouster of Sam Altman, later saying he āregretted his participationā in the boardās actions.
Why it matters: SSI has no shortage of investors despite the lack of immediate plans for a revenue-generating product. But a contrarian bet on an entirely new path could reshape how we think about achieving ASI ā with the next breakthrough potentially coming from rethinking AI's foundations rather than just continuing to scale models.
TOGETHER WITH AWS
ā”ļø Coding Faster With Amazon Q
The Rundown: Amazon Q Developer is your AI-powered coding companion that helps developers build, operate, and transform software with intelligent assistance at every step of the development lifecycle.
With Amazon Q Developer, you can:
Accelerate your workflow with line-by-line code suggestions and quality improvements in your favorite IDE
Get expert AWS guidance on architecture, troubleshooting, and resource optimization
Transform existing applications and automate upgrades without starting from scratch
MICROSOFT
Image source: Getty Images
The Rundown: Microsoft is reportedly developing MAI, a new family of AI models that rivals current industry leaders ā alongside the build-out of its own in-house reasoning models to reduce reliance on OpenAI for its Copilot suite.
The details:
The new MAI models reportedly match top offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic, with the company planning to offer them through Azure.
They are being tested as replacements for OpenAI's tech in Copilot while also experimenting with alternatives from xAI, Meta, and DeepSeek.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman reportedly grew frustrated last fall with OpenAIās refusal to share the inner workings of its o1 reasoning model.
OpenAI also renegotiated a deal in January with Microsoft, allowing for the use of other server providers, adding to growing tension between the companies.
Why it matters: Despite Microsoftās $13B investment in OpenAI, the relationship has felt contentious for a long time. While the tech giant may have felt beholden when OpenAI was a clear leader, competition has increased significantly ā and an internal rival model would certainly change the dynamic even more.
AI TRAINING PRESENTED BY BLOTATO
The Rundown: Blotato is an all-in-one AI content tool that helps you create, remix, and distribute AI-optimized content across multiple platforms, accelerating your brand presence 10x faster.
Step-by-step:
Sign up for a free account at blotato.com.
Import content from any sourceāe.g., YouTube, TikTok, PDF, podcastāor type your own preferred topic.
Select your target social platforms to generate viral-optimized posts tailored to each one.
Customize the drafts with your insights, add AI images or faceless videos, and then publish to all social platforms seamlessly!
Pro tip: You can also schedule your content calendar in advance to maintain consistent posting across all platforms while saving hours of manual work each week.
PRESENTED BY JOTFORM
The Rundown: Jotform AI Agents help businesses boost customer satisfaction and response times by way of real-time, personalized conversations across every channel.
Jotform AI Agents allow you to:
Gather customer info 24/7 through personalized cross-channel conversations
Automate tasks like form-filling, call handling, and scheduling
Define how your agent responds based on customer triggers and sentiment
Customize responses and language to fit your brand
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Stanford University
The Rundown: Stanford researchers just discovered a natural molecule called BRP that matches Ozempic's weight loss powers but with fewer side effectsāusing AI to unlock a potential breakthrough in obesity treatment.
The details:
BRP targets specific brain regions instead of affecting multiple organs, potentially avoiding common Ozempic side effects like nausea and muscle loss.
In animal tests, a single dose of BRP cut food intake by half in both mice and minipigs, with obese mice losing significant fat over two weeks of treatment.
Stanford's "Peptide Predictor" AI system sifted through 20,000 human genes, analyzing thousands of potential candidates, to find the natural molecule.
A company has already been created to begin human trials, with researcher Katrin Svensson suggesting that BRP could revolutionize weight loss treatment.
Why it matters: While much of the AI healthcare buzz has focused on diagnosis and drug design, Stanford's breakthrough shows how AI can unlock new medicines hidden in nature. This success in finding a natural alternative to a blockbuster drug could spark a wave of AI-powered discoveries in our biology.
QUICK HITS
š ļø Trending AI Tools
š Mistral OCR - SOTA API for extracting text from images or documents
š¤ Manus AI - Fully autonomous AI agent capable of handling real-world tasks
š£ļø Tavus - Conversational Video Interface to bring AI agents to life
š” Template Hub - Marketplace to create, share, deploy specialized AI agents
š¼ AI Job Opportunities
Former DeepMind researchers launched Reflection AI with $130M in funding, aiming to build autonomous coding systems as a stepping stone to superintelligent AI.
X added functionality for users to be able to ask Grok questions by tagging an automated @Grok account, joining Perplexity in providing quick access.
Alibaba researchers published START, a new tool-integrated reasoning model that significantly enhances LLM capabilities through code execution and self-checking.
Hedra unveiled Character-3, an āomnimodal modelā capable of reasoning across image, text, and audio to create high-quality video generations.
Luma Labs released Ray2 Flash, a new version of its top-tier video generation model that brings 3x faster speed and lower costs.
Sudowrite introduced Muse, a new AI model trained for fiction writing that features advanced storytelling capabilities and longer attention for chapter-length outputs.
Sam Altmanās World Network released World Chat, an encrypted mini-app that allows users to chat, connect, and send money with verified humans.
COMMUNITY
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See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and JasonāThe Rundownās editorial team
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