The AI Scientist

Happy Wednesday, Cyborgs.

Hello from stormy Mallorca. There’s something about being on an island that makes the creative juices flow…I hope you all have had a chance to explore far and wide a bit this summer, and if not, there still a couple weeks left to escape your routine and seek inspiration before Fall hits!

Please enjoy this week’s jam-packed edition and as always, do let us know what you want to see more of, love & don’t love 🙃

Today’s rundown:

• TLDR: This week in Future + Culture

  • State of CA partners with NVIDIA on AI education

  • The “AI Scientist”

  • Flux Hype

• Community Shares

• NYC Virtual Beings Event invite - Sept 11 @ Neuehouse Madison Square & Save the date Sept 25th in Venice Beach

• Community Spotlight: Founder Sam Hosovsky on his company uCat, combining VR & BCI, helping paralyzed users express equally in digital worlds.

State of CA partners with NVIDIA on AI education initiatives

Signed by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Gavin Newsom, the initiative aims to:

1. Train students, educators and workers

2. Support job creation and promote innovation

3. Use AI to solve challenges that can improve the lives of Californians

“This partnership will help the California Community Colleges and its more than 2 million students prepared with industry aligned skills in AI and ready on day one for careers that will drive their prosperity and our state’s economic competitiveness. We can’t stand still as AI changes the future of learning, and our approach prioritizes equitable access to AI teaching and learning enhancements that will lift up underserved populations.” – Sonya Christian, Chancellor of California Community Colleges 

Tokyo-based Sakana AI introduces fully comprehensive ‘AI Scientist’

The ‘AI Scientist’ fully automates scientific discovery, enabling LLMs to perform research independently, instead of as an aid, as it has been in the past.

Curious what you all think are the pros and cons of a fully autonomous vs. aid-based approach, in this instance.

Everyone is talking about Flux, the current hyped AI image generation tool

• Started by German-based AI startup Black Forest Labs, former Stable Diffusion engineers.

• Went viral across social platforms due to the chilling realism of its portraits.

• Unlike Midjourney, Flux is open-source.

• Three versions available - all text to image based. Also working on text-to-video, naturally.

This makes us think - how quickly can models be dethroned? The text-to-image and text-to-video space is getting increasingly crowded. Who will the winner be?

JPMorgan grants its employees a OpenAI-powered assistant

JPMorgan Chase has rolled out a generative AI assistant to tens of thousands of its employees, the initial phase of a broader plan to inject the technology throughout the bank. The program, called LLM Suite, is already helping more than 60,000 employees with tasks like writing emails and reports. The software is expected to eventually be as ubiquitous within the bank as the videoconferencing program Zoom, people with knowledge of the plans told CNBC.

Why we care: A mass adopted, productivity-based use case of AI for enterprise. What will the product roadmap look like from here?

👫ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴛʏ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇꜱ👫

I wanted to share a book recommendation I’m really enjoying during my time in Europe, that my fellow nerds might enjoy.

“The Worlds I see” by Dr. Fei Fei Li, is the story of Chinese immigrant Dr. Fei Fei Li’s riveting journey shaping major advancements in the field of AI, through her work as a computer vision scientist in the early 2000’s. This book explores the early days of the most consequential scientific developments of our time, through the eyes of one of the most influential scientists in the field making a compelling case for its human-centric, ethical manifestation.

Our friend Cosmo Scharf is hosting the first global visionOS hackathon in one month on 9/13-9/15! It’s a great opportunity to gain experience building for Apple Vision Pro, connect with fellow developers, and win prizes. Learn more:

😺ᵤₚcₒₘᵢₙg ₑᵥₑₙₜₛ😺

We’re back in salon-mode this Fall with Virtual Beings NYC edition at Neuehouse Madison Square, on Sept 11! We’ll feature a panel of subject matter experts and a world renowned artist, sharing their process of envisioning and creating virtual beings. We’ll explore the role of virtual beings in relation to humans, different types of AI-powered avatars, sample use cases, and more.

I’m already blown away by the speakers we’re lining up...announcing this week. In the meantime secure your spot, we expect high turnout :)

And don’t worry, LA - we’re announcing our September 25th event at Neuehouse Venice Beach again soon, save the date 🙂 

💡 𝐀&𝐌 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭💡

【Ｓａｍ　Ｈｏｓｏｖｓｋｙ，　ｕＣａｔ】

Sam is a leader in the biotechnology sector, having brought to market digital products that automate lab operations (Clustermarket), accelerate clinical trials compliance (Loftware), and personalize patient education (Kyowa Kirin, Eli Lilly), among others. His striving to enrich human experience with technology has lead Sam to the intersection of advanced neurotechnology and virtual reality, a frontier he is currently pushing at uCat.

Tell us a little more about what you’re building at uCat - it’s mindblowing..

uCat is the first application for Neuralink-like brain implants. Its software allows anyone to embody and live through their virtual avatar, regardless of how severely paralyzed they might be.

You can also check out uCat’s whitepaper.

What’s inspiring you these days?

For the past 2 months, I've been living "on the road" out of a backpack, raising funds across Europe and the United States. The sheer volume of inquisitive minds I've met from locals to star researchers made me realize just how much our technology--that can free one's thoughts from the cage of a paralyzed body--matters.

What’s your current industry hot take?

By 2030, tens of thousands will live with high-bandwidth brain implants. They will be used to let people with severe paralysis control their PCs, including their personal virtual reality avatars.

𝕀𝕗 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕖𝕟𝕛𝕠𝕪 𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕟𝕖𝕨𝕤𝕝𝕖𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣 & 𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕤, 𝕡𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕤𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝔸𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕤𝕥 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕄𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕖 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝟙-𝟚 𝕗𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕤 🙏 😻