This is Synthetic Mind, where we prepare you for the future of AI by helping you understand it.

Here's how we're closing out the week:

• AI Essays: Smart or Cheating?

• Sequoia Capital Bets Big on AI, deploying $18M+

• AlphaCode Torches 54% of Particpants in Coding Competition

• Quick Bytes

• Mind Meme

AI Essays: Smart or Cheating?

Teachers' war against plagiarism is becoming increasingly difficult.

Internet -> Made everything available to students.

AI -> Made everything available, uniquely.

We’ve seen college kids claiming their drafting essays in 15 minutes or less. Then following it up with a plagiarism checker to clean em’ up.

It’s like laundering but for homework.

Here’s how you launder your homework, for educational purposes only - literally:

1. Use ChatGPT to write a specific prompt. “Write an essay on Moby Dick in the writing style of Shakespear”

2. Clean it up with a phrasing tool like Quillbot

3. Check and make adjustment to the writing.

If Synthetic Mind was still in school he'd be dishing out B+ essays to his classmates for $25 a pop. Gotta make it believable, right?

🤖 Sequoia Capital Bets Big on AI, deploying $18M+

AI is like a giant tsunami of technological advancement, and Sequoia Capital is surfing that wave all the way to the top. They're not just along for the ride either, they're leading the charge.

They're probably doing a little dancey dance in their office, celebrating the record breaking growth this year.

Here’s how Sequoia Capital sees AI playing out:

• Pre-2015: AI gets its footing, useful for small tasks like fraud detection.

• 2015 to Today: The race to hit scale, as AI gets bigger, it gets better. 

• 2022+: Better, faster, cheaper. The cost of running the AI goes down.

• Now: Game-changing apps arrive. Similar to the iPhone enabling great phone apps.

Oh boy, I’m sure Sam Altman is excited about those cheaper costs.(it's reported ChatGPT is racking up $3M/day in processing expenses - ouch.)

Sequoia unsurprisingly is putting their money where their mouth is.

In total, they’re part of rounds raising $291M in capital with 6 of their AI investments being in the last 2 years.

AlphaCode Torches 54% of Participants in Coding Competition

Uh oh, it looks like our robot overlords might be one step closer to taking over the world.

You heard it here first, folks:

AlphaCode, a product from the geniuses at DeepMind, just participated in a coding competition and managed to beat out more than half of the 5,000 human participants.

That's right, AI is finally starting to show us up when it comes to solving complex problems.

Looks like we better watch our backs, because those robots might be coming for our jobs next.

Just kidding (or are we?)

Let's face it, it's a tough economy out there and now more than ever we're seeing industries facing the financial squeeze.

Here are a few areas we see ripe for disruption:

• Text: Marketing, email sales, transcription

• Code: Code generation and documentation

• Image: Design, Media and Advertising

Which of those are looking to transition to AI to lighten the load?

Quick Bytes

• Developers Who Use AI Create More Security Issues. Done is better than perfect right?

• AI Year In Review. Like Spotify wrapped that you actually care about.

• 40 Growing AI Companies & Startups. This list has more hockey sticks than the Stanley Cup.

Mind Memes

That's all for today. See ya next week!