Amazon Releases AI Assistant for Business, Q - This Week in AI

This week in AI we have stories on Amazon Q, Andrej Karpathy's Intro to LLMs, and Stability AI exploring a sale.

5 months ago • 6 min read

By MLQ

Welcome to our weekly AI roundup where we curate the top resources, stories, and startups to watch. This week in AI we have stories on:

Amazon Q: AI-Powered Business Assistant
Andrej Karpathy's Intro to Large Language Models
Stability AI Investors Explore Sale amid Leadership Controversy
Recently funded AI startups to watch: AI21 Labs & Layer AI
AI tools to watch: Pika 1.0

Top Stories

1) Amazon Q: AI-Powered Business Assistant

Amazon has unveiled Q, an AI-powered chatbot specifically designed for businesses, during the AWS re:Invent conference. Q is trained on AWS knowledge and offers a range of solutions and actions, including content generation and problem-solving capabilities.

Training: Trained on 17 years of AWS knowledge, Q is accessible via AWS Management Console, web apps, and chat apps like Slack.
Functionality: Beyond answering queries, Q can generate content (e.g., blog posts, emails), perform actions (e.g., creating service tickets), and integrate with various apps and software.
Cost: Starting at $20 per user per year, Q is now in public preview

2) Andrej Karpathy's Intro to Large Language Models

Andrej Karpathy, a legend in AI known for his expertise in deep learning and computer vision, has released a YouTube video titled 'Intro to Large Language Models'. The video is a must watch for anyone that wants to simplify the complexities of LLMs in an accessible way.

Understanding LLM Components: The video provides an in-depth look at LLMs, highlighting their journey to becoming a core component in systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard.
Educational Approach: Karpathy uses parallels with contemporary operating systems to explain the intricacies of LLMs, making the content more relatable and understandable.
Technicalities and Security: The lecture covers technical features, training processes, and security-related issues of LLMs, emphasizing the importance of understanding the fundamentals of these models.

3) Stability AI Investors Explore Sale amid Leadership Controversy

Stability AI, known for the Stable Diffusion image generator, is exploring the possibility of selling the company. This development follows increased investor pressure over its financial situation and leadership issues.

Investor Pressure: Coatue Management, one of Stability AI's major investors, has called for CEO Emad Mostaque's resignation, citing leadership concerns and the company's precarious financial position.
Sale Exploration: Stability AI has reportedly entered early-stage discussions with potential buyers but emphasizes that a sale is not imminent.
Financial Position: The company raised significant funds in 2022, reaching a $1 billion valuation, but faces high operating costs, spending about $8 million monthly with relatively modest revenue returns.
Controversy and Innovation: Stability AI's Stable Diffusion has been both lauded for its capabilities and embroiled in controversies, especially regarding deepfakes.
Internal Dynamics: The company has seen a rapid turnover in senior management and a strained relationship with its investors

Recently funded AI startups

Here are a few of the top AI startups that received venture funding this past week:

AI21 Labs - Raised a $208M Series C Round

What they do: AI21 captures real intelligence and rephrases writing to say exactly what is meant by offering summaries and it transforms the way people read and write through deep learning frameworks, and computer vision algorithms, enabling customers to understand, analyze, and visualize abstract knowledge structures and read more efficiently.
Industries: Machine Learning, Software, Artificial Intelligence
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel

Layer AI - Raised a $1.8M Seed Round

What they do: Layer AI end-to-end data operating system provides a unified data layer to perform data science through a simplified, collaborative, and automated platform as well as makes data science accessible to companies of all sizes, enabling clients to optimize productivity and leverage consistent insights for data-driven business logic and decisions.
Industries: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Art, Casual Games, Machine Learning, Video Games, Software
Location: San Francisco, California

Access the weekly list of funded startups

AI tool to watch: Pika 1.0

Pika 1.0 is a text-to-video AI tool developed by Pika Labs. This startup has designed an AI-powered platform that can create and edit videos from captions and still images.

The company's flagship product, Pika 1.0, offers a suite of videography tools with a generative AI model capable of editing videos in styles ranging from 3D animation to anime and cinematic.