A new month has begun as we present the following #RandomThoughts on Visionaries courtesy of the team at the Information, Futurism, Bill Gates, and Inside Tech:
|
| Biden’s AI Executive Order Requires Google, OpenAI and Others to Share Data | By Amir Efrati | Source: The Information  | The Biden administration on Monday issued a far-reaching executive order that gives the federal government the authority to vet the most advanced artificial intelligence software developed by companies such as OpenAI and Google before they release it publicly. Under the order, companies are required to provide federal officials with detailed information about how and where they are developing AI such as large language models that underpin ChatGPT, including their cybersecurity protections. The Biden administration said it wanted to prevent bad actors from using such models to develop biological, radiological and nuclear weapons or discover software vulnerabilities as well as “software or tools to influence real or virtual events.” Biden tasked a unit of the Commerce Department to develop standards for how companies should test, or “red-team,” the AI models before their release. The new reporting requirements may only apply to the biggest and most advanced AI developers and cloud providers, for now. The order covers large models that were trained with at least 10 to the 26th power floating-point operations, or flop. One AI practitioner estimated that it would be the equivalent of training a model using an Nvidia H100 chip for 28 million hours, which would cost of tens of millions of dollars. The government also wants information about computing clusters that can handle 10 to the 20th power flop per second, or flops, which the AI practitioner estimated would be the equivalent of 50,000 H100 server chips. It isn’t clear how many cloud providers or companies have such clusters. The new rules also task the Commerce officials with developing a way to “watermark” or label AI-generated content, and asks federal health officials to review reports of “harms or unsafe healthcare practices involving AI.” The rules may not persist after the Biden administration ends unless the next president OK’s the order or Congress passes a law affirming aspects of it. | |
|
|
| Meta To Offer Ad-Free Subscriptions for Facebook, Instagram in EU | | By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan | Source: The Information | Meta Platforms will begin offering subscriptions for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram next month, the company announced Monday. The move comes in response to new regulations in the region that affect how tech companies use personal data. The company said in a blog post that users in Europe will have the option to subscribe for €9.99 ($10.60) per month on the web or €12.99 ($13.79) for iOS and Android devices. People who do not subscribe will continue to see ads. Explaining its decision, Meta cited “evolving European regulations” in Europe, which impose new restrictions on how tech companies handle user data. Meta tried to challenge a series of legal decisions on these issues in recent years, but, realizing the direction the region was going on privacy matters, began discussing the idea of a subscription for Facebook and Instagram back in 2021, The Information previously reported. | |
|
|
| X Valued at $19 Billion, Company Tells Employees | | By Erin Woo | Source: The Information | X is valued at $19 billion, the company told employees on Monday in an internal note announcing their equity grants, almost exactly one year after Elon Musk bought the company then known as Twitter for $44 billion. Since last fall, the company’s advertising revenue has plummeted, and it has shed over 80% of its staff. In March, Musk promised his remaining employees equity at a $20 billion valuation, before providing no further details for more than seven months. The employee equity was granted at a share price of $45, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. The company’s internal valuation, which represents a 55% discount from Musk’s purchase price, is still higher than how others have valued the company. Fidelity, which invested in Musk’s takeover, has marked down the value of its shares by 65%, Axios has reported. | |
|
|
| Shein Acquires U.K. Fast Fashion Brand Missguided | | By Ann Gehan | Source: The Information | Shein agreed to buy U.K. fast fashion brand Missguided, the companies said Monday, as Shein aims to grow through partnerships with other brands. “The joint venture we have entered ushers in a new format of partnerships for Shein, as part of our unwavering commitment to meet customer demand,” Shein’s executive chairman Donald Tang said in a statement. Under the deal, Shein will license Missguided’s intellectual property to Sumwon Studios, a joint venture between Shein and Missguided founder Nitin Passi. British sports retailer Frasers had bought Missguided last summer for £20 million after the brand entered administration, a process similar to bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. Financial details of the sale to Shein weren’t disclosed. The Missguided deal is similar to the one Shein struck with U.S. fast fashion giant Forever 21 in August. Under that deal, Shein took a stake in a joint venture between Forever 21’s parent company, Authentic Brands Group, and Simon Property Group, one of the largest mall owners in the country. That deal also included a licensing agreement between Shein and Forever 21 for Shein to design, manufacture and sell Forever 21 merchandise on its U.S. sites. |
|
|
Goldman Sachs is considering exiting the consumer lending business, potentially affecting its partnership with Apple, according to The Wall Street Journal. The collaboration has produced several consumer products and services, including an Apple credit card, a high-yield savings account, and a buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) service.
More:
- Goldman Sachs is facing pressure to cut losses as it deals with expected lower quarterly profits, which could put Apple's products at risk, according to the Journal.
- Initially, the Apple savings account drew attention with a 4.15% APY, but it has since lost favor among Goldman executives, who view it as a distraction from the bank's core business.
- Partners blame CEO David Solomon for Goldman's unprofitable expansion into consumer lending, which has resulted in major losses and the departure of some top executives from the division.
- The products could be transferred to another bank, possibly American Express. Another possibility involves granting Apple a bigger stake in the partnership.
Zoom out:
- Earlier this year, Apple revealed that customers had collectively deposited over $10B into their Goldman-backed savings accounts.
While everyone is worried about AI ending the world, the real threat might be from corporations using it to prop up their wealth and influence. |
| I had an amazing trip to Senegal last month. I was in Dakar for the Gates Foundation’s annual Grand Challenges meeting, an initiative we launched two decades ago with a single goal in mind: to identify the biggest problems in health and give grants to the researchers who might solve them. Our hope was to inspire more brilliant scientists to think more ambitiously about transforming health in low-income countries—and to help support and sustain R&D for the benefit of billions of people whose health needs had been neglected. |
|
| In 2003, we put forth 14 Grand Challenges. The initial list included developing a vaccine that didn’t require refrigeration, creating a TB treatment for latent infection, and inventing a needle-free drug delivery system. In the years since, we’ve issued more than 200 challenges—and we even launched our first AI-specific call-to-action earlier this year. |
|
| I was lucky to spend a lot of time in Senegal with amazing scientists working on the next big breakthrough. Here are 5 of the coolest innovations I saw: |
|
An AI trainer that teaches health workers in India how to treat high-risk pregnancies. Here’s a devastating statistic: One woman dies in childbirth every 2 minutes. Amrita Mahale and the team at ARMMAN are using artificial intelligence to improve the odds for new mothers in India. Their large language model will one day teach health workers how to treat high-risk pregnancies. The training chatbot can be used in both English and Telugu, and the coolest part is that it automatically adjusts to the experience level of the person using it. Whether you’re a brand-new nurse or a midwife with decades of experience, ARMMAN’s trainer can arm you with the knowledge needed to save lives. A low-cost mRNA vaccine platform that puts manufacturing where it’s needed most. mRNA vaccines helped prevent millions of deaths during the height of the COVID pandemic. A company called Quantoom developed a new platform that will make it cheaper and easier to build and run factories that can be adapted to make different mRNA vaccines. I was proud to announce that the foundation is investing $40 million to scale up local mRNA vaccine manufacturing in low- and middle-income countries—which includes funding for IPD to use Quantoom’s platform. This will increase supply, lower costs, guard against the possibility of vaccine hoarding in emergencies, and provide a path for local scientists to discover and develop their own vaccines. A new way of tracking mosquitoes on the molecular level to stop malaria. Cases of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria are increasing for the first time in decades. Although climate change is a big contributor, other reasons include conflicts and drug resistance. Fortunately, Isabella Oyier at the Kenya Medical Research Institute is fighting back against mosquito evolution. She uses molecular epidemiology to track mosquitoes who have the genes that cause drug resistance and integrate it into national malaria surveillance and monitoring efforts. This will give stakeholders more insight into where resistance is spreading—and how to stop it. A novel approach to treating a common microbiome disorder. Our bodies are home to more microbial cells than human cells, and the good bacteria in our microbiome play an essential role keeping bad bacteria in check. When that balance is off, you get diseases like bacterial vaginosis—a common disorder that, among other problems, can make women more susceptible to HIV infection or more likely to give birth preterm. Today’s treatments are not very effective, so I was excited to talk to Melein Zhu and her team about a new approach they’re exploring. It uses oleic acids to inhibit the growth of a “gateway” bacteria that can lead to more bad microbes, as well as promotes the growth of the good bacteria. This research is still in its early stages, but it’s promising. A new drug development platform will make us better prepared for the next pandemic. Although the world made remarkable progress on vaccines when COVID struck, the same can’t be said for therapeutics. The team at Decoy Therapeutics is working to speed up the process of developing drugs with their promising new biologic platform. The idea is that lipopeptide molecules could be used to inhibit their fusion machinery and prevent them from infecting cells. If Decoy’s research pans out, scientists could one day use the platform to design therapies for novel viruses within days or even hours.
|
|
What a week Tim Cook had. On Thursday, Apple reported anemic September-quarter results, completing a fiscal year where revenues fell 2.8%. That’s actually not a bad result given that the smartphone market that drives Apple’s business shrank 10.5% in the same 12-month period, according to IDC data. Still, it is yet another reminder (if any were needed) that Apple is no longer a growth company. Cook’s other big event this week was his birthday: He turned 63 on Wednesday, which incidentally is several years older than any of his counterparts atop other big tech firms. In fact, the average age of the CEOs of Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Amazon and X/SpaceX/Tesla is around 50.
For a company of Apple’s size and cultural importance, it’s remarkable that there’s so little public discussion of the fact that its management is aging—and so little sense of who could come next. Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, is reportedly just a couple of years younger than Cook, which means he could only be a short-term successor if Cook decided to retire tomorrow. To be clear, there’s no reason to think Cook is planning to retire imminently, but it’s certainly possible he wants to have another chapter in his life. A Bloomberg report in 2021 said Cook wanted to stick around for “one more major new product” release, such as the mixed-reality glasses which are due out early next year. Assuming that’s true, Apple’s board should be looking for a successor now.
In fact, while Cook has unquestionably been an excellent CEO, at least from a shareholder point of view, it wouldn’t be a terrible thing for him to move on sooner rather than later. The company is too reliant on a portfolio of mostly older products to have any hope of improving its long-term growth trajectory. The mixed-reality headset looks unlikely to be the fix some might want. What Apple needs is a leader with fresh ideas and a willingness to take some risks. Cook, who has maintained an exemplary track record over the past dozen years, has reason to take less risk, not more. After all, who wants to blot their reputation at this point in their tenure?
Will that be someone from inside? Most of the people at the top of Apple have been there a long time and have surely absorbed Apple’s way of doing things. That’s probably a good thing, given how successful the company has been. The question is whether one of those people is willing to try a few new things. It’s a question the board and shareholders need answered.
