Computerspeak by Alexandru Voica

During a media tour to hype up Grok 3 ahead of its release, Elon Musk appeared at Welt’s Economic Forum in Germany where he put superintelligence among the top 10 most important milestones in the history of life on Earth.I explain the consequences of his statement in this week's newsletter: https://www.computerspeak.co/p/agi-making-humanity-multiplanetary

The most meaningful achievement of the AI Action Summit in Paris is not what happened at the event, but in fact what we didn’t see. For the first time at a global AI event, the AI grift industrial complex, comprised of alarmists, doomers, skeptics, privacy and safety fanatics, and other conspiracy theorists, was relegated to where they’ve always belonged: at fringe events, preaching to their cleverly-named think tanks and foundations, without anyone who actually matters in the world of AI in attendance.Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/rip-to-the-ai-grift-industrial-complex

In recent months, a new breed of reasoning models has begun to emerge from the research labs of the tech world. An early adopter of these reasoning models has been the software engineering community. Instead of expecting the models to autonomously produce flawless code, engineers are leveraging them as interactive partners—similar to having a knowledgeable colleague or an advanced debugging tool. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/reasoning-models-as-sounding-boards

When Chinese AI research lab DeepSeek released R1, an open weights AI model that was on par with OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model, the response from many in the American media and industry circles was swift and alarmist. The achievement was quickly framed as a "Sputnik moment"—a term evoking the Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 and the subsequent Cold War space race. This analogy is misleading: R1 is not a disruptive step change with military and geopolitical implications, it’s just a great example of dogged engineering that produced a capable model. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/deepseek-brings-out-the-war-hawks-cold-war-rhetoric

During a press conference held on Tuesday at the White House, Donald Trump, together with Larry Ellison from Oracle, Masayoshi Son from SoftBank and Sam Altman from OpenAI, announced the Stargate Project, a new company set to invest $500 billion over the next four years to build AI infrastructure in the United States. So what exactly does that get you in terms of real-world infrastructure? We do the math in this week’s Computerspeak: https://www.computerspeak.co/p/the-math-on-stargate-project Also in the news this week: [*] Business Insider: Trump announces an AI infrastructure investment of up to $500 billion involving OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank [*] Bloomberg: Stargate’s First Data Center Site is Size of Central Park, With At Least 57 Jobs [*] Fortune: OpenAI’s Stargate may be tech’s biggest gamble ever, but here’s what’s really at stake [*] WSJ: How Oracle Plays Cheaply in AI [*] Sifted: ‘This must be a wake-up call for Europe’: Tech leaders urge EU to match Trump’s $500bn AI investment plan [*] The Information: Behind the OpenAI-Oracle Pact, an Elon Musk Threat Loomed [*] Bloomberg: AI’s $100 Billion Stargate Venture Touted by Trump Will Tap Solar Power [*] Sifted: Winning in AI will require millions more GPUs. Can Europe get there? [*] TechCrunch: Meta’s Yann LeCun predicts ‘new paradigm of AI architectures’ within 5 years and ‘decade of robotics’ [*] The Information: Startups’ AI Revenue Is Booming. Some Investors Doubt It Will Last [*] Wired: Game Developers Are Getting Fed Up With Their Bosses’ AI Initiatives [*] Fortune: ‘A sense of panic’: Immigrant AI talent worry Trump could make an already broken visa system worse [*] FT: Huawei seeks to grab market share in AI chips from Nvidia in China [*] MIT Technology Review: The second wave of AI coding is here [*] TechCrunch: Here are the types of AI companies enterprise VCs want to back in 2025 [*] Washington Post: Amazon AI deal leaves ‘zombie’ start-up in its wake, whistleblower says [*] Science News: Want your own AI double? There could be big benefits — and risks

Content moderation at scale remains one of the most complex challenges that technology companies have to deal with today. I’ve seen firsthand how different companies approach this challenge across different platforms, from content creation to distribution. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/dealing-with-precision-in-content-moderation

An ambitious new AI model called GET (General Expression Transformer) promises to rewrite the rulebook for transcriptional regulation, a cornerstone of biological processes. Unveiled by researchers from MBZUAI, Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon, GET is not just another computational biology tool—it’s a leap forward in the form of a foundational model designed to predict gene expression across 213 human cell types. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/get-is-a-new-model-for-understanding-biology  Also in the news this week:  [*] The Atlantic: A Virtual Cell Is a ‘Holy Grail’ of Science. It’s Getting Closer. [*] Time: How China Is Advancing in AI Despite U.S. Chip Restrictions [*] Wired: AI Social Media Users Are Not Always a Totally Dumb Idea [*] Reuters: AI startups drive VC funding resurgence, capturing record US investment in 2024 [*] FT: Healthcare turns to AI for medical note-taking ‘scribes’ [*] WSJ: How Are Companies Using AI Agents? Here’s a Look at Five Early Users of the Bots [*] CNBC: How AI regulation could shake out in 2025 [*] Bloomberg: Sam Altman on ChatGPT’s First Two Years, Elon Musk and AI Under Trump [*] TechCrunch: Google is forming a new team to build AI that can simulate the physical world [*] MIT Technology Review: AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it [*] Business Insider: A VC firm created an AI agent-powered 'investment memo generator.' It's the latest example of how AI is coming for venture firms.

A new report from MMC Ventures discusses the ethical challenges of training AI models, drawing parallels between the data gathering practices of today and the Napster-to-Spotify transition that occurred over two decades ago in the music industry. The report examines the perspectives of three stakeholders: content creators, data rights holders, and AI developers, highlighting the need for fair compensation and efficient rights management. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/how-gen-ai-is-moving-from-the-napster-to-spotify-era Also in the news this week: Business Insider: AI improvements are slowing down. Companies have a plan to break through the wall. Axios: Trump eyes AI czar MIT Technology Review: The way we measure progress in AI is terrible Stanford University: Global AI Power Rankings: Stanford HAI Tool Ranks 36 Countries in AI Bloomberg: Amazon’s Moonshot Plan to Rival Nvidia in AI Chips New York Times: Should You Still Learn to Code in an A.I. World? The Information: New Competitors Chase OpenAI in Reasoning AI Race Axios: AI's scientific path to trust Fortune: Labeling AI-generated content is not as easy as it seems Bloomberg: Uber’s Gig Workers Now Include Coders for Hire on AI Projects FT: OpenAI’s text-to-video AI tool Sora leaked in protest by artists

Traditionally, we used to measure companies by their multiple, calculated as the company's valuation divided by its revenue. Multiples used to be a safe metric for investors to compare a company to other businesses. But with the AI companies of today, using multiples is no longer an option because, for many of them, they create a distorted picture of their true worth. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/ai-valuations-two-years-from-chatgpt Also in the headlines this week: Index Ventures: Scaling Through Chaos in the Age of AI Inc: The NBA Stepped Up Its Social Media Game With AI. So Can You AP: Nvidia rivals focus on building a different kind of chip to power AI products FT: Are the robots finally coming? Fortune: AI enters a new phase, and the Fortune 50 AI Innovators list identifies the companies leading it TechCrunch: Current AI scaling laws are showing diminishing returns, forcing AI labs to change course The Verge: Niantic is building a ‘geospatial’ AI model based on Pokémon Go player data CNBC: Business spending on AI surged 500% this year to $13.8 billion, says Menlo Ventures WSJ: How AI Could Help Bring Down the Cost of College WSJ: It Isn’t Just Data Centers—AI’s Plumbing Needs an Upgrade Washington Post: Want to speak Italian? Microsoft AI can make it sound like you do. The Information: OpenAI’s Female Staff Complain of Gender Disparity After Murati Exit Fortune: How Mark Zuckerberg has fully rebuilt Meta around Llama Business Insider: Inside Amazon's agonizing attempt to save Alexa with AI WSJ: AI Investments Are Booming, but Venture-Firm Profits Are at a Historic Low Business Insider: OpenAI ranks fourth among top tech vendors that IT leaders plan to spend the most with, survey finds The Guardian: ‘Have your bot speak to my bot’: can AI productivity apps turbocharge my life? The Economist: Will the bubble burst for AI in 2025, or will it start to deliver? FT: Tech investor Xavier Niel urges Europe’s AI start-ups not to cash out

A new paper presented this week by researchers from MBZUAI and UC Berkeley at the EMNLP conference in Miami explains why Romanian or Cherokee (a language spoken by 2,000 people in the United States) can both be considered low resource, albeit for different reasons. Learn more at https://www.computerspeak.co/p/better-definition-low-resource-languages Also in the news this week: Wired: Inside the Billion-Dollar Startup Bringing AI Into the Physical World Business Insider: 5 interesting takeaways from Slack's survey of 17,000 desk workers about AI CNBC: Tech giants are investing in ‘sovereign AI’ to help Europe cut its dependence on the U.S. Harvard Business Review: Research: How Gen AI Is Already Impacting the Labor Market Fortune: This United Nations AI official explains why she doesn’t want an international agency for AI Bloomberg: OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI The Information: How Elon Musk’s Supercomputer Freaked Out AI Rivals WSJ: It’s a Legacy Agriculture Company—And Your Newest AI Vendor FT: Amazon steps up effort to build AI chips that can rival Nvidia Fortune: Think Donald Trump’s AI policy plans are predictable? Prepare to be surprised FT: AI groups rush to redesign model testing and create new benchmarks Reuters: OpenAI and others seek new path to smarter AI as current methods hit limitations The Information: OpenAI Shifts Strategy as Rate of ‘GPT’ AI Improvements Slows WSJ: How ChatGPT Brought Down an Online Education Giant Time: What Donald Trump’s Win Means For AI New York Times: I Took a ‘Decision Holiday’ and Put A.I. in Charge of My Life CNBC: Meet the AI version of Andrew Ross Sorkin and David Faber