AI Engineer Snags $2.7 Billion to Sign With Google
A former Google employee that the tech titan sorely missed, the AI wunderkind was happy to let bygones be bygones — for a mere $2.7 billion signing fee.
Shazeer is one of the early pioneers of what were to become AI chatbots — the tech that powers most of today’s auto-writers.
Technically speaking, Google also purchased Shazeer’s start-up company — Character.AI — as part of his rehire.
But “within Google, Shazeer’s return is widely viewed as the primary reason the company agreed to pay the multibillion-dollar licensing fee,” according to writer Miles Kruppa.
Brings new meaning to the song lyric, “Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.”
In other news and analysis on AI writing:
*In-Depth Guide: Meeting Minutes, Minus the Misery: Zoom’s AI Meeting Note-Taker: Wired reviewer John Brandon offers an in-depth look at new AI for Zoom software — dubbed ‘AI Companion’ — that auto-generates meeting notes and summaries.
AI Companion can also tell you who talked the most during a Zoom meeting — and even gauge the meeting’s overall emotional tone, according to Brandon.
Brandon’s verdict: “Overall, the AI Companion saved time in an important way: No one had to take notes in any of my meetings, and the final summaries were all quite useful. No clicking or clacking!”
*Brain Transplant: Google Adds ‘Copilot’ Type Chatbot to Its Workspace Suite: In an effort to compete with ‘Copilot’ — an AI chatbot that Microsoft offers for use in its business productivity suite — Google has added a similar AI chatbot to its competing suite, Workplace.
Observes writer Emilia David: “Workspace users in the Business, Enterprise and Frontline plans will automatically get access to the Gemini app that’s now built into the platform.
“Workspace offers enterprises access to a large swath of Google products — Gmail, Docs and Calendars — but with the option of using their own domains and enterprise-level security. “
*Salesforce Promising ‘Copilot Killer:’ Deriding Microsoft’s Copilot as little more than an annoying time-waster, Salesforce is promising to roll-out a competing product for its own workplace productivity suite.
Dubbed ‘Agentforce,’ the AI system is designed to make it easier to use business software — and to integrate with hundreds of business applications.
Observes writer Sasha Rogelberg: “It’s part of a growing movement of implementing AI agents over copilots to take tech assistance one step further.”
*The End of I Never Said That?: Editors and writers looking for an easy way to record — and instantly transcribe — in-person interviews may want to check-out the Plaud-AI pin.
Powered by ChatGPT, the $169, soon-to-be-released tech comes with 300 free, monthly transcription minutes, according to writer Brian Heater.
Observes Heater: “The recordings are saved on your phone in real time. And from there you can decide whether to upload them for transcription — depending on how robust a monthly subscription you have.”
*Chatbots Gone Wild: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Third Reich: The Wall Street Journal became the latest to find out the hard way that hosting an experimental AI chatbot can be an egg-on-face experience.
Specifically: Pranksters recently spoofed an experimental WSJ chatbot — designed to offer iPhone information — to instead spout Hitler talk.
Observes writer Joanna Stern: “Like my three-year-old, bots struggle to follow the rules.”
*AI a Hit Among UK Lawyers: Increasing numbers of UK legal pros are going all-in on AI, according to a new survey from LexisNexis.
Researchers found that 41% of 800+ legal pros surveyed are currently using AI for work.
Observes writer Caroline Hill: “Lawyers with plans to use AI for legal work in the near future also jumped from 28% to 41%, while those with no plans to adopt AI dropped from 61% to 15%.”
*ChatGPT CEO’s Crystal Ball on Our Future: Everyone Wins the Lottery?: Sam Altman — the AI wunderkind that made ChatGPT and AI household words the world over — predicts AI’s impact on the future will most likely be so overwhelmingly positive, it’s unimaginable.
Observes Altman: “How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity?
“In three words: Deep learning worked.
“In 15 words: Deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale — and we dedicated increasing resources to it.”
*Free-for-All: Open-Source AI Gets Another Boost: Fans of open-source AI software — released free to the world on the theory that the real money is in the apps to be built atop it — have something new to cheer about.
Facebook’s parent Meta has released an upgrade to its AI software that competes directly with the AI engine undergirding ChatGPT.
Dubbed Llama 3.2, the AI engine is still a bit weaker than the one running ChatGPT.
But long-run, the competition is sure to help keep AI prices lower.
*AI Big Picture: Hungry for Cash, ChatGPT-Maker on the Hunt for Unthinkable Billions: Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI, is currently on a world tour attempting to convince players in the computer industry to cooperatively build the next generation of AI data centers.
Altman insists the world will need a spate of these centers to fully realize AI’s potential.
The cost of each new center: A cool $100 billion, he says.
Observes writer Cade Metz: “OpenAI believes this kind of technology could be the future of its business. If it can get its hands on more computing power, its AI can learn to do more. At least, that is the theory.”
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.