🚀 Replit & Google Cloud Team Up: Bringing Generative AI Accessibility to Developers Everywhere

Update 2023-03-30

News

• Alibaba Splits Into Six Independently Operated Business Groups to Increase Agility and Value

• GitHub Lays Off Most of Its Engineers in India Amid Streamlining Effort

• Google Introduces New Features to Improve Search Trustworthiness: Perspectives Carousel and Author Info.

• Google Wins Partial Relief in Antitrust Case in India

• Disney Lays Off Metaverse Division, 7,000 Employees to be Affected

• Google Launches Ads Transparency Hub

• Intel Plans to Ship Server Chips Ahead of Schedule, Eyes Market Leadership

• Vertex AI brings Generative AI to Developers and Data Scientists with Model Garden and Generative AI Studio

• Toshiba Board Backs $15 Billion Takeover Bid With Conditions

• Tech Leaders Call for Moratorium on AI Development

• AI Expert Warns of Dangers of Unleashing Generative AI: Regulation Required to Prevent AI-Induced Job Loss

• Replit and Google Cloud Partner to Make Generative AI More Accessible to Developers

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Big Tech

Alibaba Splits Into Six Independently Operated Business Groups to Increase Agility and Value

Alibaba Group has announced its plans to split its business into six main units covering e-commerce, media, and the cloud. The move is aimed at reinvigorating growth and unlocking value for shareholders.

Each new entity will be able to raise capital at its discretion, possibly including its own initial public offering (IPO). The announcement's timing is significant as China's government updated its policies for companies publicly listing overseas, and these rules go into effect on March 31.

Alibaba will remain the holding company for the six new entities, and one unit, Taobao Tmall Commerce Group, will still be wholly owned by Alibaba. However, the ownership structure could change for the other five as they seek investor funds. The split will allow each entity to focus on its core business, which could help increase performance over time. Alibaba's US-listed shares rose nearly 9% after the announcement.

🥇 PRO Break-up of the Big Tech companies has long been a discussion point. Would YouTube be worth more outside of Alphabet, or AWS outside of Amazon? If Alibaba proceeds with the business unit split it will serve as an important real-world case study for other large tech firms.

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GitHub Lays Off Most of Its Engineers in India Amid Streamlining Effort

GitHub has laid off most of its engineering team in India, cutting over 100 jobs in the South Asian market. The move is part of a broader streamlining effort announced by GitHub last month, which includes cutting roughly 10% of its workforce by the end of March. India is a key engineering hub for many large companies, and the layoffs come as GitHub seeks to cut expenses amid weakening global market conditions. Microsoft, which owns GitHub, declined to comment on the matter.

Google Introduces New Features to Improve Search Trustworthiness: Perspectives Carousel and Author Info.

Google is introducing a new " Perspectives " feature that will appear in search results to help users see different viewpoints on certain search topics. The feature will show a carousel of "insights from a range of journalists, experts, and other relevant voices" under the "Top Stories" box in search results. Google aims to provide trustworthy information in the box, but it is unclear how the company decides what gets shown[. The Perspectives carousel will be available in English in the US on desktop and mobile devices soon.

In addition to the Perspectives feature, Google is also adding an "About this author" box to search results. This box will appear when users click the three dots next to a link and will provide information about the author of the page. The company is also testing a feature that will show a "timeline of events" for certain search queries.

Google Wins Partial Relief in Antitrust Case in India

Google has won partial relief in an antitrust case in India related to abusing the company's dominant position in Android.

• The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal upheld the $161 million penalty levied on Google by India's local watchdog Competition Commission.

• The court set aside four of the ten directives, including permitting the hosting of third-party app stores within Play Store and restricting users' uninstallation of pre-installed apps.

• The court also set aside the directive that ordered Google not to deny access to Play Services APIs to OEMs, developers, and competitors and not restrict an app developer's ability to distribute their apps through side-loading.

Disney Lays Off Metaverse Division, 7,000 Employees to be Affected

Disney has reportedly eliminated its metaverse division in the first of three planned layoffs, with a total of 7,000 employees expected to be made redundant across the company.

• The division was announced internally last February when then-CEO Bob Chapek appointed Mike White to lead the next-generation storytelling unit.

• The team was expected to use Disney's existing intellectual property in what Chapek called "the next great storytelling frontier". However, rumors of layoffs began to swirl shortly after Bob Iger replaced Chapek as Disney CEO last November.

Google Launches Ads Transparency Hub

Google has launched a new Ads Transparency hub that provides users with more information about the advertisers behind the ads they see across search, YouTube, and other sites where Google shows ads. The hub is a searchable library of ads from advertisers that have run ads on Google's platforms. Users can search for specific ads by heading to the Transparency Center directly or by selecting the three-dot menu that appears beside an ad they want more information about. From there, they can click the option that says “see more ads this advertiser has shown using Google,” and they will be redirected to the Transparency Center.

The Ads Transparency hub is part of Google's efforts to increase transparency and accountability in online advertising. Google introduced the My Ad Center last year, which lets users customize the types of ads they see by liking, blocking, or reporting ads, but it never provided more information about specific advertisers. The launch of the Ads Transparency hub seems late, given that Facebook launched its Ad Library in 2019, which allows users to see all the ads a Page is running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.

🥇 PRO The Facebook Ads library is one of the best places to find inspiration for creating Facebook/Instagram ads. The new Ads Transparency hub from Google will most likely be a treasure trove of ad inspiration.

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Intel Plans to Ship Server Chips Ahead of Schedule, Eyes Market Leadership

Intel has announced that new products for the server market will come sooner than expected]. The company has started sending samples of a Sierra Forest chip to customers and plans to ship it in the first half of 2024.

Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, is trying to reclaim technological leadership in the server field, one of its most profitable parts. In recent years, Intel has lost ground to rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Vertex AI brings Generative AI to Developers and Data Scientists with Model Garden and Generative AI Studio

Google Cloud has launched a new Gen App Builder tool that allows developers to create enterprise-grade generative AI applications without coding. The tool supports not just text but other modalities, such as images and videos as well, enabling richer customer interactions.

The platform Vertex AI, launched in 2021, has gained generative AI support, too. Two features are being introduced to Vertex AI with this launch – Model Garden and Generative AI Studio. Model Garden provides access to a wide range of model types, including open-source and third-party models, while Generative AI Studio offers a managed environment for developers and data scientists to easily access, customize, and deploy foundation models.

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Startups

Toshiba Board Backs $15 Billion Takeover Bid With Conditions

The board of Toshiba has announced its support for a $15 billion takeover bid by a subsidiary of Japan Industrial Partners, Inc. (JIP), but has not recommended the deal to shareholders.

The board's support is conditional on the deal being launched, and it has not yet recommended that shareholders accept the offer.

The board has cited the possibility of new circumstances arising during the four-month period between the tender offer and the decision deadline as a reason for its reluctance to recommend the deal.

Toshiba has faced a decade of difficulties, including an accounting scandal and a meltdown of its nuclear power business, and has been seeking a buyer for some time.

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AI

Tech Leaders Call for Moratorium on AI Development

Elon Musk and a group of well-known AI researchers have signed an open letter calling for a pause on the development of large-scale AI systems, citing concerns over the "profound risks to society and humanity" that these systems pose. The letter calls on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

The signatories include author Yuval Noah Harari, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, politician Andrew Yang, and a number of well-known AI researchers and CEOs, including Stuart Russell, Yoshua Bengio, Gary Marcus, and Emad Mostaque.

The call for a pause on the development of large-scale AI systems is not the first time that Musk has expressed concerns over the potential dangers of AI. In 2015, he warned that AI could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. In 2017, he called for the regulation of AI to prevent it from becoming a threat to humanity.

AI Expert Warns of Dangers of Unleashing Generative AI: Regulation Required to Prevent AI-Induced Job Loss

Generative AI is a technology that allows for the creation of original content by learning from existing data.

• OpenAI's ChatGPT is a famous example of generative AI, which is a chatbot that uses a large language model to generate responses.

• The launch of ChatGPT has created a significant buzz, with tech giants investing billions of dollars in generative AI.

• However, if generative AI achieves the desired productivity through task automation, it may impact 300 million full-time jobs globally, according to a report by Goldman Sachs.

Replit and Google Cloud Partner to Make Generative AI More Accessible to Developers

Replit, a leading cloud software development platform, has announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to advance generative AI for software development. The partnership will allow Replit's 20 million developers to access Google Cloud infrastructure, services, and foundation models via Ghostwriter, Replit's software development AI. In turn, Google Cloud and Workspace developers will get access to Replit's collaborative code editing platform. The collaboration aims to accelerate the creation of generative AI applications and underscores Google Cloud's commitment to nurturing the most open ecosystem for generative AI.

The partnership between Replit and Google Cloud highlights the growing importance of generative AI in software development. AI is changing software development, and the newest LLM chat apps can generate code for full programs with simple natural language prompts. However, even powerful LLMs cannot run code themselves, and standalone chat LLMs require developers to copy and paste code from where they work to the chat app. Replit's partnership with Google Cloud aims to address these challenges and make generative AI more accessible to developers.

🥇 PRO GitHub Copilot is, at the moment, one of the most used AI-enhanced products. The Replit and Google partnership is both rather given. Replit could not go for OpenAI as it would create misalignment to Github (Microsoft owned). We wonder if this partnership is the start of something bigger and if there could be a possible acquisition in the future. As of February 2023, Replit has 20 million developers who have created over 240 million Repls, ranging from multiplayer games to production software, and the platform is growing very fast.

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