💸 OpenAI's Costly Mistake

Update 2023-04-03

News

• RESTRICT Act Could Put Free Speech at Risk - Experts Warn

• ByteDance Continues Impressive Revenue Growth

• Senate Introduces AMERICA Act to Take on Google and Other Big Tech Companies

• Google Drive Limits Lock Out Users: File Limit Set at 1 TB

• Uber Health Launches Same-Day Prescription Delivery

• Twitter Offering Free Verification for 10,000 Most-Followed Companies

• Twitter Open-Sources its Recommendation System, But Algorithm Weights Remain Private

• AI Ban in Italy: OpenAI Facing 20 Million Euro Fine Over Data Breach Concerns

• HuggingGPT: A Generic Language Interface to Empower AI Models in Different Domains and Modalities

• How to Optimize Your Content for Chatbots Like ChatGPT

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Big Tech

RESTRICT Act Could Put Free Speech at Risk - Experts Warn

The RESTRICT Act is a proposed piece of legislation that could potentially ban TikTok and other apps or communication services with connections to foreign countries in the US. The bill is led by Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD) and is not limited to just TikTok. The language used in the bill is "insanely broad" and could lead to other apps or communication services being banned in the US. The bill also seeks to criminalize the use of VPNs to get around the ban.

Many digital rights experts have expressed concern that the RESTRICT Act would expose individuals and organizations, including journalists, activists, and human rights defenders, to monitoring and repression, which could have a chilling effect on free speech. The bill is seen as a gross expansion of government control over the internet and does nothing to address domestic violators of data privacy.

ByteDance Continues Impressive Revenue Growth

According to sources, ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, generated more than $80 billion in annual revenue in 2022, up more than 30% from roughly $60 billion in 2021. This is significant because most technology companies with that kind of revenue experienced a marked slowdown in growth last year. ByteDance's revenue is now on par with that of Tencent, an iconic Chinese social media company that owns WeChat. Most of ByteDance's revenue growth came from its core advertising business in mainland China, where it operates Douyin, an app similar to TikTok with hundreds of millions of daily active users.

ByteDance's revenue growth has been impressive in recent years. Between 2020 and 2021, ByteDance's revenue grew by 70%. TikTok represented approximately 12% of ByteDance's total revenue in 2022. The company has been expanding its business beyond social media and advertising. It has launched a music streaming service, a messaging app, and a search engine. ByteDance is also investing in artificial intelligence and has established research labs in China, the United States, and Singapore.

Senate Introduces AMERICA Act to Take on Google and Other Big Tech Companies

A bipartisan group of senators has introduced the AMERICA Act (Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability) with the intention of breaking up the ad businesses of Google and Meta in a bid to curb alleged monopoly tactics[ The bill would prevent companies that process more than $20 billion in annual digital ad transactions from running businesses on two sides of the market, and they would have to establish "firewalls" to minimize abuse and conflicts of interest. The bill's creators expect Google and Meta to divest "significant portions" of their ad businesses to comply with the law. If the bill becomes law, Google would have to exit some of those businesses, and it would have a year to comply with the rules after the law is enacted.

Google Drive Limits Lock Out Users: File Limit Set at 1 TB

Google Drive has done a surprise rollout of file limits, locking out some users. The new file limit means that users cannot use the storage they buy from Google. The file limit is not yet clear, but it appears to be around 1 TB. Some users have reported that they are unable to upload files to Google Drive, while others have reported that they are unable to access their files. Google has not yet commented on the issue.

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Startups

Uber Health Launches Same-Day Prescription Delivery

Uber Health has launched same-day prescription delivery, allowing healthcare providers and health plans to manage prescription delivery from any pharmacy in their service area through the same platform they already use to coordinate patient transportation. This service is a significant milestone in Uber Health's mission to improve healthcare access, especially for those who find it challenging to get to a doctor's appointment or hospital. Uber Health's infrastructure and network provide a massive opportunity to create a significant impact and may provide easier access to healthcare for millions of people.

Twitter Offering Free Verification for 10,000 Most-Followed Companies

Twitter is reportedly giving its Verification for Organizations to the 10,000 most-followed companies for free. This decision comes as Twitter is preparing to make major changes to the way verification works on its platform. Twitter is winding down the legacy verified program in April and announced plans for Twitter Verification for Organizations. The latter is meant to let companies that are willing to pay $1,000 a month for the privilege of retaining their verified status and checkmarks. Companies that don’t get the free pass could rack up a big Twitter bill. On top of the $ 1,000-a-month price for Verification for Organizations, companies also have to pay $50 a month for each affiliated account.

Twitter Open-Sources its Recommendation System, But Algorithm Weights Remain Private

Since taking over the platform, Elon Musk has advocated for the open sourcing of Twitter's algorithm. However, Twitter's recent open-source release of their recommendation system only focused on the model training pipeline. It did not disclose the weights determining specific content appearances in the pipeline. The recommendation system consists of a four-stage process. The system collects the most pertinent Tweets from different sources, ranks each Tweet using a machine-learning model, applies heuristics and filters, and finalizes the ranking.

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AI

AI Ban in Italy: OpenAI Facing 20 Million Euro Fine Over Data Breach Concerns

Italy's privacy watchdog, the Italian Data Protection Authority, has temporarily banned ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI, due to concerns about a recent data breach and the legal basis for using personal data to train the chatbot[. The watchdog has imposed an "immediate temporary limitation on the processing of Italian users' data" by OpenAI. The ban comes into immediate effect and will temporarily limit the processing of Italian users' data by OpenAI. The Italian watchdog has given OpenAI 20 days to report what measures it has taken to ensure the privacy of users' data or face a fine of up to 20 million euros.

HuggingGPT: A Generic Language Interface to Empower AI Models in Different Domains and Modalities

The paper proposes a system called HuggingGPT that leverages large language models (LLMs) to connect various AI models and solve complex tasks. The authors argue that language could be a generic interface to empower AI models in different domains and modalities, and they present HuggingGPT as a solution to this problem.

HuggingGPT uses ChatGPT, an LLM, to conduct task planning when receiving a user request, select models according to their function descriptions available in HuggingFace (a machine learning community), execute each subtask with the selected AI model, and summarize the response according to the execution results. By leveraging the strong language capability of ChatGPT and abundant AI models in HuggingFace, HuggingGPT is able to cover numerous sophisticated AI tasks in different modalities and domains.

🥇 PRO HuggingGPT is a fascinating view of how future integrations with ChatGPT could work. This ties into the discussion we wrote about in a previous article and vertical embeddings and the coming plugin store at ChatGPT,

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New skills

How to Optimize Your Content for Chatbots Like ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to understand and respond to natural language queries. Unlike traditional search, ChatGPT provides a single answer to a user's query rather than multiple results ordered by relevance. Businesses that rely on SEO for traffic and relevance may need to adjust their strategies to account for the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT.

Being known in as many online places as possible may help ChatGPT identify a brand. However, it is too early to know definitively what can be done to optimize for chatbots like ChatGPT. Businesses focus on creating specific content that is more likely to be found by users searching for a particular topic. For example, a business that offers a cauliflower recipe-making class may want to create content specifically about cauliflower recipes to increase the likelihood of being found by users searching for that topic.

ChatGPT represents a shift away from traditional search and may require businesses to adjust their SEO strategies. While it is too early to know definitively how to optimize for chatbots like ChatGPT, businesses can focus on creating specific content that is more likely to be found by users searching for a particular topic.