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- AI talent wars: OpenAI vs Tesla
AI talent wars: OpenAI vs Tesla
PLUS: Google considers a paywall for AI search
Rowan Cheung
April 05, 2024
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
The gloves are off in the AI talent arena, with Elon Musk and OpenAI trading blows in a bitter rivalry that’s getting personal.
As the two giants clash, Tesla finds itself caught in the crossfire — and forced to take drastic measures to keep its AI engineers from jumping ship. Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
Tesla and OpenAI talent war heats up
Google considers AI search paywall
Run open-source models locally for private AI
Octopus brings smarter AI agents to mobile
5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
ELON MUSK
Image source: Getty Images / Reuters
The Rundown: Elon Musk said Tesla is boosting compensation for its AI engineers to combat aggressive recruiting and massive offers from OpenAI, calling it the “craziest talent war” he has ever seen.
The details:
Musk claimed OpenAI has successfully poached several Tesla engineers, with Tesla increasing AI engineer pay to attempt to fend off threats.
Several Tesla engineers have even been poached by Musk’s own xAI, including ML scientist Ethan Knight — who Musk said was originally set to join OpenAI.
Also making AI talent poaching headlines is Mark Zuckerberg, who reportedly recently emailed several Google DeepMind employees to recruit for Meta.
Musk and OpenAI continue to battle, with the billionaire filing a lawsuit last month.
Why it matters: The bitter rivalry between Elon Musk and OpenAI is spilling over into an all-out talent war — with Tesla seemingly caught in the crossfire. While the AI race has everyone angling for top researchers, Musk and Altman’s past history may point to a more personal angle behind the poaching.
TOGETHER WITH CODESIGNAL
The Rundown: CodeSignal just introduced a new comprehensive learning path designed to help teams build crucial skills in AI, ML, and prompt engineering.
Level up your team with:
Engaging practice-based learning
1:1 support from AI tutor & guide, Cosmo
Analytics on how your team is developing
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Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google is reportedly considering charging for new ‘premium’ AI-powered search features, marking the first time the company would put any of its core search engine products behind a paywall.
The details:
Google is developing tech to deploy AI-enhanced search as part of its premium subscription services, which already includes Gemini access.
The traditional search engine would remain free, but certain AI-powered search enhancements would be limited to subscribers.
AI is costly to run compared to Google's current search model, potentially threatening the company's $175B search advertising cash cow.
Why it matters: Google's potential paywall highlights the tensions between its existing ad-supported business model and the disruptive forces of AI. While paywalling could help offset higher costs, it risks surrendering ground to competitors like Microsoft, which rapidly integrated AI into its search for free.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: Mistral AI’s open-source LLM, Phi-2, can be run on your laptop offline — keeping data private and avoiding the censorship that comes with other models.
Step-by-step:
Download LM Studio - a free platform for local AI models
Inside LM Studio, search for "phi-2"
Select “TheBloke/phi-2-GGUF” and download the Q6_K or Q4_K_S version.
Open the Chat tab, ensure Phi-2 is selected, and then start prompting away!
THE RUNDOWN UNIVERSITY
The Rundown: In case you missed it, we launched The Rundown AI University last week — the best place on the internet to learn how to actually apply AI in the quickest way possible.
What you’ll get by joining:
Instant access to over 100+ impactful AI workflows and use cases.
Daily tutorials to keep you up-to-date with the latest AI tools and techniques.
Weekly workshops on how the latest AI tools are shaping the future of work and how to implement them to stay ahead.
An exclusive community to network with and learn from the top 1% of early AI adopters.
We've already reached our first 500 members and are going to double the price on Saturday, but we want to make sure everyone has a chance to lock in at 50% off.
Join The Rundown University today, and you’ll be among the small percentage of professionals who actually take advantage.
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Stanford
The Rundown: Stanford researchers just introduced Octopus v2, a new framework for on-device AI agents that outperforms GPT-4 in accuracy by fine-tuning language models with special functional tokens.
The details:
Octopus v2 uses supported functions as special tokens and fine-tunes on a small dataset to learn when to use each function.
With just 100 training samples, the model achieved 98% accuracy in selecting the right function, surpassing GPT-4.
The optimized 2B parameter model runs on-device without needing an internet connection while maintaining speed and responsiveness.
Why it matters: The Octopus framework marks a leap forward towards making AI more practical and accessible for everyday use. In the near future, every smartphone will have a powerful, intuitive AI agent handling tasks seamlessly from simple user requests.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
❤️ Maia- An AI assistant for your relationship
📚 Shepherd- AI-powered study platform to enhance learning
📺 Focal- Create TV shows and movies using AI
🏗️ Keywords AI- Unified DevOps platform for LLM applications
📫 Astra- An executive assistant for your email inbox
💼 Synthesia - Strategic Account Executive
🛠 C3 AI - Site Reliability Engineer
👨💻 Sanctuary AI - Senior Software Engineer
🔧 Shield AI - Mechanical Engineer
QUICK HITS
Waymo is expanding its partnership with Uber, launching autonomous vehicle food delivery through Uber Eats in select areas of Phoenix, AZ.
Cohere released a new model called Command R+, which claims to perform competitively against rivals like OpenAI on certain business-critical tasks at a lower cost.
OpenAI introduced new fine-tuning API features and is expanding its Custom Models Program, giving developers more control and support for building AI systems for specific use cases.
Oracle and Palantir announced a partnership to deliver secure cloud and AI solutions, helping governments and businesses maximize data value and enhance decision-making.
Lumana unveiled a next-generation video surveillance platform that leverages AI to enhance security, improve operational efficiency, and streamline incident response for organizations.
Big tech including Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and Intel formed the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium, seeking to address concerns about AI’s impact on jobs.
Brave rolled out its Leo assistant on iOS, offering features like voice-to-text input, PDF and document summaries, and Google Docs integration.
THAT’S A WRAP
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