Synthetic Mind here, your favorite A.I newsletter commonly known as the ‘Picasso of A.I’…. we paint you a picture of what’s new in A.I so great you can’t look away.

It’s Wednesday. Bring it on:

• 💻 Microsoft Releases A.I Personal Assistant

• 🎥 Why Celebs Are Protesting A.I

• 🤖 The Official A.I Race Scoreboard

• 💼 Wednesday Winnings

Read Time: 5 min 6 sec

💻 Microsoft Releases A.I Personal Assistant

Earlier this year Microsoft got us all hot + heavy over their plans to release an A.I personal assistant. Now in early July, the A.I personal assistant it here and I must say….

We have some mixed feelings about it.

On one hand, the update had some pretty cool features to spice up your workday:

• A personal A.I assistant that runs in a side tab bar. It’s like ChatGPT for all things Microsoft. You can ask it things like “summarize this website” or “Take a screenshot” without leaving the page.

• A new-and-improved settings homepage. The settings page is now more user-friendly and has a few new features (shown below).

Personally, I prefer a half-done product over a half-assed one. Unfortunately for me, this falls under the latter.

Microsoft left out the #1 feature we were all excited for… Bing Plugins.

In May, Microsoft promised to include Bing Plugins as they would allow us to use the A.I assistant in platforms other than Microsoft.

Think how with ChatGPT Plugins you can use ChatGPT to book flights in Expedia or order groceries in Instacart.

Microsoft didn’t give an official reason for holding back Bing Plugins….

But if I had to guess, there are 2 possibilities:

1. ChatGPT Plugins were a flop. This was not a good look for ChatGPT. So Microsoft says they’ll slowly start adding Bing Plugins as they “receive feedback” on the updates.

2. Microsoft wants to stay ahead. Amazon, OpenAI, and Snowflake have all announced plans to create an A.I marketplace. It’s possible Microsoft pulled a code-red and released the A.I assistant early before the plugins were ready to keep the lead.

If you want a deeper overview of the update or when you can access the new update, click HERE.

 🎥 Why Celebs Are Protesting A.I

If there’s one thing celebs know how to do it’s stir up drama, but this time they have a good point…

Over 300+ actors are threatening to go on strike if SAG-AFTRA (the American labor union for actors) does not create laws to protect actors against the use of A.I.

Some of the signees include Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Lawrence, and Amy Schumer.

The fear is that directors will start to use deepfakes of actors to film scenes as opposed to paying the actors themselves.

I can understand why using A.I actors makes a lot of sense for directors - they’re cheaper, faster, and won’t complain as much.

But to actors, this threatens their jobs and could ruin their reputation as someone else has control over what their A.I self says and does.

However, some celebs are making BANK with their A.I clones by contracting them out to companies for advertising (if you missed this, we covered it a few weeks ago HERE)

The actors gave SAG-AFTRA until the end of June 30th to make a decision.

The bigger picture: The issue of deepfakes is a repeated problem in content industries.

Back in April, A.I generated music formed a split in the music industry. Some artists threatened to sue for using their voice, whereas others like Grimes (Elon Musk’s girlfriend) offered to split the royalties 50/50 with the creator.

So, how SAG-AFTRA handles this will set a strong precedent for future industries.

🤖 The Official A.I Race Scoreboard

Watching the A.I race is kinda like watching NASCAR - it’s fun to watch but we have no clue who’s in the lead…

But Lightspeed (the #1 A.I tech startup investor) has released a report analyzing 3,500+ to decide the top 8 companies in the A.I race.

(Spoiler alert - it’s not OpenAI)

First, let’s get a few things straight:

1. This only applies to A.I startups. As in companies that are based completely on A.I. This report DOES NOT include companies like Microsoft or Google that are using A.I in the products.

2. Lightspeed is choosing the winner based on the technical talent of the employees. In their mind, the more talented your employees are the better your product. This factors in things like employee education, experience, and awards.

3. Every company must meet a minimum company valuation. 

After looking at all the data, Lightspeed landed on the ‘Generative 8’ - the top 8 A.I startups based on talent.

1st place: Tome - an A.I platform that uses A.I to generate presentations from your data.

Although we hear about other A.I startups like OpenAI and Midjourney more… this does make sense. 

Tome is skilled in many different areas of generative A.I whereas other A.I startups stick to 1 or 2.

Midjourney → Image generation only

OpenAI → Text (ChatGPT) and image (DALL-E) generation split between 2 separate tools.

Tome can research, design, and create an entire PowerPoint with text and image generation based on 1 text prompt…. all in under 5 minutes. 

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💼 Wednesday Winnings

Here are a few jobs hiring right now in the A.I space to check out!

Outlier: A.I Model Trainer (Depends on the task/ paid per task)

• Generate data and provide feedback on the most advanced generative A.I models

• Looking for applicants with a deep understanding of physics

Discord: Senior Data Scientist ($204,000 to $235,000)

• Build predictive models on massive data sets to support high-impact company projects

• 4+ years of experience in developing applied machine learning

Inflection AI: Engineer For The A.I Safety Team ($100,000 - $250,000)

• Developing training materials, hiring moderators and raters, and evaluating data to maintain A.I safety

• None Specified

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