Daily Digest: AI got cheaper, again

PLUS: supercomputers for open source

January 26, 2024

Hello folks, here’s what we have today;

PICKS

  1. ICYMI, yesterday I published a post on how Clearbit’s team uses AI and I cover how you can encourage your team to adopt AI following a similar strategy.

  2. Fresh from OpenAI: They’ve launched two spanking new embedding models, spiced up the GPT-4 Turbo, and made the GPT-3.5 Turbo more wallet-friendly. There’s more on moderation and API usage as well.🍿Our Summary (also below)

  3. Hugging Face and Google partner for open AI collaboration. Google brings its heavyweight AI research and cloud hardware to the table, while Hugging Face adds its vast repository of transformer models and open-source libraries into the mix.🍿Our Summary

  4. Bret Taylor’s AI startup is about to become an unicorn. The ex-CEO at Salesforce and an OpenAI board member, is making moves with his AI firm, Sierra.🍿Our Summary (also below)

from our sponsor

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NEWS

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QUICK BITES

Fresh from OpenAI: They’ve launched two spanking new embedding models, spiced up GPT-4 Turbo, and made GPT-3.5 Turbo more wallet-friendly. There’s more on moderation and API usage below.

What is going on here?

OpenAI's latest drop is all about giving devs more bang for their buck and some nifty new toys to play with.

What does this mean?

The new embedding models: We've got a small one (text-embedding-3-small) that's leaner in price (we're talking a 5X price drop)and a large one (text-embedding-3-large) that’s the new heavyweight champ.

GPT-3.5 Turbo is about to get cheaper, slashing input costs by 50% and output by 25%. GPT-4 Turbo's new preview model promises to end those frustrating 'lazy' responses (coders unite) and smooth over language hiccups for non-English tasks.

The moderation model got an upgrade, making it tougher on potentially harmful content. We are also getting API key-level metrics in the usage dashboard for better tracking and the ability to assign permissions to API keys.

Why should I care?

This update is a toolkit upgrade. And a much-needed one at that. The old embedding models were still the leader but other companies had started to catch up. RAG, and chat with data apps are gonna become cool again.

And, everyone hates lazy chat, so let’s see how active the updated version is.

Bret Taylor’s AI startup is about to become an unicorn. The ex-CEO at Salesforce and an OpenAI board member, is making moves with his AI firm, Sierra.

What is going on here?

Sierra is in talks for new funding valuing it at $1B.

What does this mean?

Taylor founded this AI startup with Clay Bavor, a former Google hotshot. Now, it is on the brink of hitting unicorn status with a cool nearly $1 billion valuation, thanks to Sequoia Capital leading a hefty $85 million investment round.

Benchmark led an early investment in the company last year and Sierra already has some significant traction. With big names like Taylor and Bavor at the helm and Sequoia Capital opening its wallet, Sierra's one to watch. Taylor has already said that he’s with OpenAI for a short while—until the board situation sorts out. He’s got plans.

Why should I care?

Taylor’s got a knack for leading and innovating—riding Salesforce's ups and Salesforce's downs, and now trying to stabilise OpenAI’s board. Such people can’t sit on the sidelines when AI is changing industries. Together with Bavor, Taylor is bringing that magic to Sierra.

Ben’s Bites Insights

We have 2 databases that are updated daily which you can access by sharing Ben’s Bites using the link below;

  • All 10k+ links we’ve covered, easily filterable (1 referral)

  • 6k+ AI company funding rounds from Jan 2022, including investors, amounts, stage etc (3 referrals)

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