Daily Digest: Lean Google, Zuck's AI

PLUS: secret safety talks with China

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Daily Digest #324

Hello folks, here’s what we have today;

PICKS

  1. 1000+ employees let go from Google's assistant and hardware teams. Google is restructuring and downsizing teams to align resources with top priorities while competition in AI and hardware is growing.🍿Our Summary (also below)

  2. OpenAI, Anthropics and Cohere were part of secret talks with Chinese experts in Geneva last year. Their goal was to find common ground on AI safety and standards to ensure AI develops in a safe, ethical way.🍿Our Summary (also below)

  3. How AI replaced Metaverse as Zuckerberg’s priority - Bloomberg has done an extensive profile of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s coming 20th anniversary and its recent push to AI.

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QUICK BITES

Google is laying off over 1,000 employees across multiple divisions, including engineering, services, Google Assistant, Pixel hardware, and Nest and Fitbit devices. This comes after 12,000 layoffs at Google last year.

What is going on here?

1000+ employees let go from Google's assistant and hardware teams.

What does this mean?

Google is restructuring and downsizing teams to align resources with top priorities. Layoffs cover its Google Assistant team and hardware (especially AR). Layoffs in its ad services units are expected to happen soon.

Google is facing growing competition in AI and hardware from companies like Amazon and startups. Rabbit R1 sales were more than $4M (though chump change for Google) in 48 hours. Amazon is adding LLMs and other AI-powered skills to Alexa by partnering with AI startups.

Why should I care?

The Information’s founder Jessica Lessin thinks we shouldn’t count Google out. Layoffs hint that it’s getting rid of the bloat and has serious plans to get AI into products. With talent like Fitbit’s founders leaving along with this “restructure” there is the other end of predictions: Google is (yet again) falling behind.

QUICK BITES

Some big US AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere met up secretly with Chinese government AI experts in Geneva last year to chat about keeping AI safe and avoiding harms. This rare team-up comes while the US and China are competing hard in cutting-edge tech like AI.

What is going on here?

Some US and Chinese stakeholders put aside their tech race to quietly work together on AI safety.

What does this mean?

These previously secret meetings in July and October 2022 were among American AI leaders and big Chinese institutions like Tsinghua University. Their goal was to find common ground on AI safety and standards to ensure AI develops in a safe, ethical way.

White House, UK and Chinese government officials knew about the organization of these Geneva meetings. Shaikh Group which helps with talks in regions of conflict mediated these talks. Chinese AI companies like ByteDance, Tencent, Baidu, and Google DeepMind didn't participate, although DeepMind was briefed.

Why should I care?

Keeping aside the future innovations, AI as we have it now is going to impact geopolitics and international narratives massively. Among that, it’s nice to have key stakeholders discuss how they can deal with this stuff and maybe, not blow it all up.

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