Рубрика: AI

Some people might think of generative artifical intelligence (AI) as a solution in search of a problem, but the technology is already proving its worth in one area: software development productivity. Close to half of technology professionals use generative AI to build applications. What's more, one third of IT staff use AI for data analytics. However, research suggests other business use cases are not quite ready.

A survey of more than 2,800 technology professionals, released by O'Reilly, shows that 44% of respondents use AI in their programming work, and 34% are experimenting with it. Data analysis is also a major use case for generative AI, with 32% of IT professionals using it for analytics, and 38% experimenting with it.

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"We aren't surprised that the most common application of generative AI is in programming, using tools like GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT," Mike Loukides, author of the O'Reilly report, writes. "However, we are surprised at the level of adoption."

There is also evidence of a healthy tools ecosystem that has already sprung up around generative AI, the report indicates. "As was said about the California Gold Rush, if you want to see who's making money, don't look at the miners; look at the people selling shovels," Loukides says.

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"Automating the process of building complex prompts has become common, with patterns like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and tools like LangChain. And there are tools for archiving and indexing prompts for reuse, vector databases for retrieving documents that an AI can use to answer a question, and much more. We're already moving into the second generation of tooling." The research shows that 16% of IT professionals report their companies are building on top of open-source models.

The report authors believe developers' adoption of AI tools will grow, regardless of whether their management tries to discourage it. "We expect that programmers will use AI even in organizations that prohibit its use," Loukides adds.

"Programmers have always developed tools that would help them do their jobs, from test frameworks to source control to integrated development environments. Programmers will do what's necessary to get the job done, and managers will be blissfully unaware as long as their teams are more productive and goals are being met."

The report shows there's also rising demand for professionals with AI expertise, particularly AI programming (66%), data analysis (59%), and operations for AI/ML (54%). General AI literacy (52%) is also critical, as users have learned when encountering the hallucinations that generative AI tools sometimes exhibit.

Also: Generative AI is everything, everywhere, all at once

Rising levels of adoption of generative AI for data analytics reflects "OpenAI's addition of Advanced Data Analysis (formerly Code Interpreter) to ChatGPT's repertoire of beta features," the report adds.

However, the research suggests many other business use cases for generative AI are still works in progress — and carry some risks. The most common direct business use case is applications that interact with customers, including customer support, the O'Reilly survey shows. Close to two-thirds (65%) of respondents report that their companies are experimenting with (43%) or using AI (22%) for customer-support applications.

Yet the report warns that "customer-facing interactions are very risky" when used with AI. The authors suggest that: "Incorrect answers, bigoted or sexist behavior, and many other well-documented problems with generative AI quickly lead to damage that is hard to undo."

The difficulty in finding appropriate business use cases is cited by IT professionals as the most pronounced roadblock to generative AI adoption — 31% for non-users, 22% for users. Blame a "move fast and break things" culture, Loukides writes. "Badly thought-out and poorly implemented AI solutions can be damaging, so most companies should think carefully about how to use AI appropriately."

Also: AI will change the role of developers forever, but leaders say that's good news

Another reason business use cases take time to formulate is that AI cuts deep into organizational processes. "We also have to recognize that many of these use cases will challenge traditional ways of thinking about businesses. Recognizing use cases for AI and understanding how AI allows you to reimagine the business itself will go hand in hand."
Finally, it's worth remebering that AI is still new. Overall, 38% of IT professionals report that their companies have been working with AI for less than a year. "Even with cloud-based foundation models like GPT-4, which eliminate the need to develop your own model or provide your own infrastructure, fine-tuning a model for any particular use case is still a major undertaking."

European investors grab the popcorn for the new ‘series’ of OpenAI, but are fearful of the fallout Mike Butcher @mikebutcher / 2 days

With the OpenAI saga playing out across the pond, the European tech community has been waiting for the latest updates as if a new series of “Succession” was about to drop. Indeed, events have at times resembled some Greek tragedy about the Gods fighting it out, atop Mount Olympus, while us mere mortals watch on. With only a handful of large-scale AI startups such as Germany’s Aleph Alpha and France’s Mistral in Europe getting the pulse up (London’s DeepMind was absorbed into the Google Borg long ago), we’ve been grabbing the popcorn and watching this unexpected episode of Silicon Valley from afar.

I probed a few keen tech observers, many of them venture capitalists, but almost none would go on the record, perhaps for fear of drawing the attention of some Valley AI God in full battle-mode.

A U.K.-based investor posited that the drama will have positive effects on Europe’s nascent AI sector.

“This is great news for startups like Mistral, who can probably poach some good employees and catchup with OpenAI. For the AI companies built on OpenAI this will make no major changes in the short term, but will mean the market homogenizes, especially if they lose direction and focus.”

Another pointed out that after OpenAI’s much lauded Demo Day the other week, it was seen as “the most extraordinary kind of business,” but now looks like “an absolute shit show.” They likened it to the debacle that was WeWork.

One European VC predicted that the events will have an impact on all term-sheet negotiations: “I would expect founders to become more resistant to board control over CEO replacement and other similar terms. They will clearly ask ‘if this can happen to Sam Altman, why should I assume it won’t happen to me?’”

At an even more practical level, a lot of European applied AI startups are very reliant on OpenAI, which is (whatever anyone says) head and shoulders above most alternatives. The turmoil at OpenAI seems to be pushing the business more into the hands of Microsoft and that could have quite major implications for companies reliant on OpenAI’s platform, “especially if that company is competitive with or outside the Microsoft ecosystem,” they pointed out.

“From a platform POV, it is a disaster,” said another investor. “So many companies are already working with OpenAI, this is like the Facebook, Twitter, etc. API changes all over again and possibly worse.”

There was also grumbling about European regulation, and a cautionary warning against being too over-reliant on one company, and a non-European one, at that.

“As we have seen with the heavy-handed regulation coming down from EU-level, government won’t save us. We need to have more AI champions locally. There is still time, but unclear how much,” said one investor.

Others were more upbeat about the turmoil buying useful time for European startups: “Which is a good thing for European generative AI startups as it gives them time to breathe and re-calibrate before the next shockwave.”

Finally, one brave soul in the shape of DN Capital co-founder and managing partner Steve Schlenker did go on the record.

One of his concerns is that access to the world’s most successful LLMs will move away from the average startup — “such as those in Europe” — and toward startups and researchers, mostly local to the U.S., and they might have to, in future, pass new, yet-to-be-defined “screening” processes, perhaps even defined by boards like the one at OpenAI.

Furthermore, if the best and brightest from OpenAI go on to be full-time employees of a paid U.S. mega-company like MSFT — one potential scenario, judging by Microsoft’s blanket job offer and hundreds of OpenAI’s own staff signing a letter threatening to quit, then that could have a major impact on competition. “The ability of the AI movement to remain open to all at a fair price will decline rapidly,” he said.

Meanwhile, the upside of all this chaos is that it has been playing out in public on social media, largely on Twitter/X. As a Warsaw-based VC put it to me: “It’s pretty exciting and unique that a lot of this shit show is happening publicly on Twitter. Not possible in Europe!”

Amidst OpenAI chaos, Sam Altman’s involvement in Worldcoin is ‘not expected to change’ Jacquelyn Melinek 24 hours

Sam Altman may have been asked to leave OpenAI, but his involvement in crypto project Tools for Humanity, which is building Worldcoin, remains uninterrupted, a source close to the project told TechCrunch.

Altman has “consistent and valuable” engagement with Tools for Humanity and “that is not expected to change,” the source said. The source added that Altman is still chairman and co-founder of the project, confirming that the information on the project’s website is up to date.

News of Altman’s ouster sent the Worldcoin token, WLD, plummeting to a low of $1.84 on Saturday, but the token recovered over the weekend and is currently trading on par with previous levels at $2.40, per CoinMarketCap data.

A timeline of Sam Altman’s firing from OpenAI — and the fallout

Worldcoin raised $115 million in May in a Series C round led by Blockchain Capital. As of March, Altman was on the project’s board, but was not involved in day-to-day operations.

“Proof of personhood is becoming increasingly important in the rapidly advancing age of AI,” The Worldcoin Foundation told TechCrunch late on Monday. The team supporting Worldcoin is still focused on the project’s mission, “building a more human internet and a more accessible global economy through World ID, a privacy-enhancing way to verify humanness and uniqueness online,” the company said.

Worldcoin is well-known for its controversial Orb hardware, which scans peoples’ irises and assigns them an ID that lets users access Worldcoin’s application and a digital passport. The verification process is meant to prove individuals’ identities and stop anyone from making multiple accounts.

Worldcoin doubles down on emerging markets amid wider criticism

The crypto project has faced pushback from some countries, especially Kenya, which banned Worldcoin from scanning any more of its citizens’ eyeballs on concerns that the company failed to inform users about the data security and privacy measures it had taken, and how the data collected would be used or processed.

Worldcoin has also faced backlash from critics, who allege the company targets developing countries with laxer privacy rules. The project gives most participants (outside the U.S. and some other countries) 25 WLD tokens, worth roughly $58.5, in exchange for signing up, and that has spurred its critics to call it exploitative.

That hasn’t stopped individuals from signing up. Since launching to the public 120 days ago, more than 2.46 million people have signed up for Worldcoin, according to its website. Over the past seven days, more than 65,200 new accounts have been created and the project has averaged 137,000 wallet transactions daily.

Tiago Sada, head of product for Tools for Humanity and a core contributor to Worldcoin, previously told me that focusing on developing countries and providing free tokens was “fair” because most tech projects focus on emerging markets first, given that they are the “easier ones to operate in.” And Altman should be around to help for the foreseeable future.

Read more of our ongoing coverage of Sam Altman’s firing from OpenAI and the subsequent fallout:

• Sam Altman’s firing from OpenAI: The timeline so far
• How OpenAI’s chaos could help Meta
• A history of OpenAI’s board members
• OpenAI’s instability escalates an AI talent free-for-all

OpenAI’s initial new board counts Larry Summers among its ranks Kyle Wiggers 8 hours

Meet OpenAI’s new board of directors: Bret Taylor, Larry Summers and Adam D’Angelo. Or, more precisely, the board for the time being.

Around 1 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, OpenAI announced that, after the company’s previous board of directors abruptly fired Sam Altman as CEO last Friday, it had reached an agreement “in principle” for Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO in tow with a new “initial” slate of board members. Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce, will chair this board, alongside Quora CEO D’Angelo — a holdover from OpenAI’s previous board — and Summers.

We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.

We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 22, 2023

“Initial” implies that the board is transitionary rather than permanent. And — this being an “in principle” ordeal — it’s far from concrete. We’ll have to await clarification from OpenAI, which presumably will come at a more reasonable hour in the workday.

If a Verge report is to be believed, however, the final OpenAI board will have nine members total — likely including Altman and a Microsoft exec. Prior to Tuesday’s breakthrough, Microsoft had reportedly been mulling whether to push for a board seat, which might invite regulatory scrutiny given the company’s relationship with OpenAI. Evidently, the company feels it’s worth the governance and oversight guarantees.

Now, Taylor’s name had been bandied about in reports over the past several days as a potential appointee to a new OpenAI board. And it’s not out of the question that D’Angelo, who was reportedly deeply involved in negotiations to bring Altman back into the OpenAI fold, has the necessary support to retain his seat. But Summers is a bit of a wildcard — at least on first glance.

An economist, Summers served as the U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010. More recently, he directed the White House U.S. National Economic Council for then-President Barack Obama, where he played a key role in charting the Obama administration’s response to the Great Recession.

Now, you might ask, what’s an economist and political veteran doing on the newly-formed OpenAI board? Well — a tech outsider on the startup’s board isn’t without precedent, first off. Republican member of the House of Representatives Will Hurd held a seat at one point in time, which he relinquished for an ill-fated presidential run.

But Summer’s appointment is also strategic, my colleague Ingrid Lunden pointed out to me via text. With OpenAI under increasing regulatory scrutiny, Summers brings connections OpenAI will need — and want — with governments, businesses and academia.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, is one of the big losers here. Reportedly among the board contingent that pushed for Altman’s removal, he’s seemingly been forced to give up great influence at the company he helped to co-found with Altman roughly eight years ago. If his recent post on X (formerly Twitter) is anything to go by, he greatly regrets it. Anyone would.

Tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner, director at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technologies, are also out. If reporting last night is anything to go by, Altman will be especially pleased by the latter’s ouster; Altman is said to have attempted to have Toner removed from the board earlier this year over a paper she co-authored that cast a critical light on OpenAI’s safety practices.

As for Brockman, who resigned as OpenAI’s president on Friday in protest of the board’s decision to can Altman, it’s unclear as to what his fate might be. The old board kicked Brockman off, and OpenAI’s announcement Tuesday said nothing of him returning. Stay tuned for more on that front; we’re keeping our ears to the ground.

Founders: Pay attention to what happened with OpenAI’s board

If this company structure gives you the ick, you are not alone.

Dominic-Madori Davis 16 hours

This weekend, a soft, rumbling feeling reached a loud consensus: Why the heck was OpenAI structured that way?

In very dumb words, its nonprofit arm had complete control over the for-profit holding company, giving it the ability to oust Sam Altman as CEO without even a day’s heads-up to the well-known Silicon Valley executive or any of the organization’s investors. More technically, as explained to me by stealth startup founder James Rosen-Birch, OpenAI is a tax-exempt charity wrapped around a holding company, which then has a majority stake (with Microsoft as a minority owner) in the for-profit side of OpenAI.

OpenAI’s origin story is now famous: a company that was founded to advance research and development into artificial general intelligence and realized it needed lots of money to do that. It took money from investors and sovereign wealth funds who, of course, wanted returns, so they created a for-profit subsidiary that could issue them equity. That subsidiary remained, however, under complete control of the tax-exempt charity and its board, who, unlike the investors, did not have a financial stake in the business, only the will to see that AI was used for the good of humanity. If this company structure gives you the ick, you are not alone.

Though no one knows precisely what happened, a common theory is that Altman’s for-profit efforts became at odds with the mission-driven nonprofit board.

Internal tensions

In fact, Kimberly Bryant, founder of Ascend Ventures, told us what many in the tech world were thinking: As OpenAI became more popular, struck pretty brand deals, and sought a near-$90 billion valuation, it introduced commercial complexities that the board may have felt were contrary to the company’s stated objectives. Though it is a nonprofit, vision misalignment is hardly unknown in the for-profit sector, leading to conflicts between board directors and CEOs.

“Nonprofit entities inherently prioritize ‘serving the public good’ over maximizing profit, a commitment that faces challenges amid the dynamics of hypergrowth and the diverse objectives of investors,” Bryant told TechCrunch+. “Issues arise when boards become overly controlling, overstep their authority, or act with self-interest . . . such dynamics can not only impede progress but also pose a significant threat, potentially causing severe damage to the organization or company.”

Rosen-Birch said OpenAI’s structure created several overlapping problems and questions, such as whether a for-profit company in a tax-exempt shell really exists for the good of humanity if it doesn’t have to pay for shared public goods and services. “And perhaps most relevant to the problem at hand, how does a board judge whether a company is acting in the interest of humanity? What power do they have to enforce those interests?” he said. “In hindsight, it seems the board was just as confused about [the answer to these] questions as we are.”

The latest update as of publication is that Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s biggest investors, wants Altman to work for them; nearly the entirety of OpenAI has signed a petition to quit if he doesn’t come back, and the fate of the OpenAI board is up in the air.

A cautionary tale

Though OpenAI’s board structure is unique, the fallout from the last few days should serve as a cautionary tale for founders and board members. RareBreed Ventures founder McKeever Conwell said founders rarely pay attention to the structure of their own boards until something grave, like a Silicon Palace coup, is staged against them. “Everybody wants to say boards are broken, but they’re not,” he said. “People just don’t know how to manage their boards.”

Bryant, who was ousted from her last company by the board, said the OpenAI mess could teach startups to “meticulously” choose their board of directors, establish clear expectations, impose term limits, and diligently ensure alignment with the organization’s long-term vision.