GSV's AI News & Updates (09/23/24)
Google and Salesforce Fund AI Education, OpenAI Education, NotebookLM, Pearson AI Study Tools, Lionsgate and Runway, Brisk Raises $6.9M, Prof Jim Raises $1.5M, Mercor AI, 11x.ai
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General 🚀
Meta has a major opportunity to win the AI hardware race: The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses exceeded expectations in a year when AI gadgets flopped. But can it keep the momentum going?
OpenAI to Decide Which Backers to Let Into $6.5 Billion Funding: Several strategic investors, including OpenAI’s biggest backer Microsoft and new investors Nvidia and Apple, are likely to get access. The deal is set to value OpenAI at $150B, a total that doesn’t include the new investment.
Perplexity in talks with top brands on ads model as it challenges Google: Perplexity aims to redesign the auction-based ads system pioneered by Google, allowing brands to bid for "sponsored" questions with AI-generated answers.
Lionsgate Signs Deal With AI Company Runway, Hopes That AI Can Eliminate Storyboard Artists and VFX Crews: The model will be trained on Lionsgate's extensive portfolio of film and TV content, with the aim of saving "millions and millions of dollars" in production costs.
Education and the Future of Work 📚
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces $120M fund for global AI education: The initiative aims to develop AI curriculums, teacher training, and inclusive AI learning experiences. The five organizations receiving funding are ISTE, 4-H, aiEDU, CodePath, and STEM From Dance.
Salesforce Gives $23M to Education to Help the AI Generation Unlock Critical Skills: Bringing their total education commitment to $150M over 12 years. The funding aims to prepare students for an AI-driven future by providing career readiness opportunities, STEM and AI education, and support for nonprofits focused on AI skilling and literacy.
OpenAI Hires Former Coursera Executive to be its First General Manager of Education: Belsky, formerly of Coursera, will lead efforts to bring OpenAI products to more schools and classrooms. Her role includes boosting engagement with educators across K-12, higher education, and continuing education.
NotebookLM and Google's Multimodal Vision for AI-Powered Learning Tools: An overview of Google’s AI experiments and their potential applications in education.
Iteach Bringing AI to Teacher Curriculum via Khanmigo Partnership: iteach is making AI training a mandatory part of its six-course educational foundation module.
Pearson Launches New AI-Powered Study Tools: New AI features include personalized study plans based on uploaded syllabi, interactive video learning with an AI chatbot, expanded study tools offering problem-solving assistance and practice questions, as well as AI tools for instructors to create tailored assignments. The company cites improved grades for students using AI tools to understand complex topics.
Italy tests AI-assisted teaching in schools to boost IT skills: The AI tools are intended to act as virtual assistants to aid learning and help teachers personalize education.
Teenagers are using AI to learn math and science from celebrities: These popular social media videos blend human-written scripts with AI-generated visuals and celebrity imitations to explain complex topics like math in an engaging, fast-paced format. Link to Onlock Learning (570K+ followers) here.
The Dawn of the AI Era: Teens, Parents, and the Adoption of Generative AI at Home and School:
Seven in 10 teens age 13 to 18 say they have used at least one type of generative AI tool.
Teens say they are using generative AI for a variety of purposes, but using it for help with homework is the most common.
Most parents are in the dark about their child's generative AI use.
About 6 in 10 teens report either that their school has no rules for how
generative AI can be used or that they're not sure if there are rules.
Black teens are about twice as likely as their peers to report that teachers
flagged their schoolwork as being created by generative AI when it was not.
Perplexity University Adoption:
Salesforce’s New AI Strategy Acknowledges That AI Will Take Jobs: The company is shifting its pricing model for AI services, charging $2 per conversation handled by its new AI "agents." Salesforce is emphasizing the autonomy of its new AI tools, contrasting them with older chatbots and copilots.
Startups and Tools 🛠️
11x.ai raises $24M led by Benchmark to build AI digital employees: 11x.ai focuses on creating "automated digital workers" for go-to-market teams, with AI agents like Alice (sales representative) and Jordan (phone representative). The company is approaching $10M in ARR and counts Brex, DataStax, and Otter among its customers.
Brisk Teaching raises $6.9M: The company also introduced Brisk Boost, a new tool that acts as a personal tutor for students while providing insights to teachers. Brisk has gained 500,000 users among 3.5 million U.S. teachers, saving educators over 10M hours.
Prof Jim secures $1.5M for expansion: Prof Jim's Generative AI tech converts text into interactive video with quizzes and narration, enhancing educational content delivery.
Mercor’s AI Interviewer Has Vetted 300,000 Job Candidates. Now It’s Valued At $250 Million: Led by three 21-year-old Thiel Fellows, Mercor has raised $32 million from Benchmark, Peter Thiel and others for its AI-powered jobs marketplace. The startup’s revenue run rate is already in the tens of millions, growing 50% monthly — and profitable.
Tech 💻
1X World Model: A video generation model that can be used to simulate first person views of robotic activity. This can be helpful for offline data generation and robot training.
Jumping Over AI’s Uncanny Valley: Why the technology’s imperfections might be a feature, not a bug.
Safety and Regulation ⚖️
Newsom signs California bill to limit ‘addictive’ social media feeds for kids: The "Protecting Our Kids From Social Media Addiction Act” aims to limit social media companies' ability to provide "addictive feeds" to minors without parental consent. It requires companies to display posts in chronological order (instead of engagement-maximizing algorithms) and prohibits sending notifications to minors between midnight and 6AM or during school hours.
Here is what’s illegal under California’s 8 (and counting) new AI laws: Addressing issues such as deepfake nudes, AI-generated content disclosure, election interference, and actors' rights, with 30 more bills under consideration. Newsom hinted at his approach to AI regulation, focusing on demonstrable risks rather than hypothetical ones.
Federal Education Research Centers to Focus on GenAI for K-12: The Institute of Education Sciences announced plans this week for four new research and development centers. Two centers will study GenAI in STEM education, while the other two will explore AI tools for boosting student literacy. The centers are collectively called U-GAIN (Using Generative Artificial Intelligence to Augment Teaching and Learning in Classrooms).
LinkedIn Is Quietly Training AI on Your Data: The company quietly announced it's using user data, including profile information and posts, to train AI models for itself and its "affiliates.
Adobe Introduces Tools to Measure Impact of AI-Generated Content: The new features aim to show the return on investment (ROI) of AI-generated marketing assets.
Biden Administration to Prepare Ban on Chinese Car Software: The rules aim to address security concerns in smart cars, focusing on automated driving systems and vehicle communications.
Other
SocialAI offers a Twitter-like diary where AI bots respond to your posts
With AI, dead celebrities are working again – and making millions