😺 AI → layoffs

PLUS: regulation, finally

Welcome, humans.

Even an AI couldn’t have predicted the New York Knicks winning a round in the playoffs. 🏀

Here’s what’s going on in the world of AI today:

AI might make tech companies leaner.
The EU’s AI Act gets closer to passing.
Microsoft opens up Canva competitor.
Meta is betting big on AI.

Sponsor The Neuron | New Here? Subscribe!

Big Businesses Might Get Smaller From AI ⚖️

The future of Big Tech might just be (smaller) Big Tech.

Yesterday we featured a column by economist Tyler Cowen predicting that AI’s massive efficiency gains might spell the end for bloated tech companies.

While we usually disregard economists’ predictions, Cowen has a point:

Midjourney, AI’s top image generator, has a mere 11 full-time employees.
OpenAI, ChatGPT’s $29 billion parent, has <1,000 and is dominating Google (which has >200,000).

And just yesterday, Dropbox laid off 500 people (16% of the entire company) as it shifts its focus toward investing in AI-powered products.

Its CEO Drew Houston admitted that this transition requires recruiting AI-literate employees versus reorganizing existing staff. AI better make their enterprise management tools a little easier to use.

Why it matters for you: AI is accelerating what last year’s recession began: a massive reshuffling of manpower at big tech companies.

The silver lining is that AI will help those laid off to build significant companies with lean teams. We’re just a mighty duo here at The Neuron!

FROM OUR PARTNERS

Stop Endlessly Searching Your Codebase 🔎

I’m about to tell you something crazy (& unacceptable):

Developers spend an average of 12 hours a week searching for information from documentation, code, StackOverflow, and Google. That time could be spent enhancing new code, inhaling caffeine, or purchasing black hoodies.

Cody is an AI coding assistant that helps you find all the information you need to unlock your coding potential.

Cody’s code graph and LLM are trained on your entire codebase, documentation, and a massive amount of open-source code. It’s a pair programmer that really gets it, you know?

Ask it anything: how to fix a bug, where something is referenced in documentation, or to summarize recent changes in the code repository. Cody can even write and fix code itself.

Try Cody for free today on Sourcegraph and with the Cody VS Code extension.

The EU’s AI Bill Gets Closer to Passing 🇪🇺

Finally, someone’s taking action!

The EU just approved a draft of its regulatory AI Act, propelling the vital bill closer to its final stage before becoming law.

For context, the bill would divide AI companies into four risk categories from “minimal risk” to “unacceptable risk.”
Higher-risk firms will face stricter compliance measures like documentation and risk management.

That’s not all. Lawmakers squeezed in a key detail in the latest draft, requiring generative AI companies to disclose any copyrighted material used in training their models.

If the bill passes, it would be a major win for both big publishers and small creators looking to profit when their work is used as source material to train models like ChatGPT.

Meanwhile, regulation has remained sluggish across the pond, except for the Senate Intelligence Committee mandating encouraging AI companies to act responsibly.

Bottom line: The EU’s AI Act represents the first comprehensive attempt to regulate AI on a global scale. We’re eager to see if it passes.

Around the Horn 🦄

How AI might help hotel managers streamline operations and logistics.
Check out NFX’s list of the top 75 up-and-coming generative AI startups.
Microsoft released a public preview of its AI-powered design tool called Designer.
Meta outlined its plan to integrate AI into all of its apps in its earnings call. AI + strong earnings = +14% stock gain!
How and why Siri has fallen behind amid the emergence of generative AI.

Treats To Try 🍿

Featured: LoopGenius helps you find your first 100 customers fast. Go from idea to landing page to socials in minutes. Launch your business with LoopGenius.
Alicent is a popular Chrome extension for ChatGPT.
Chatscout is a shopping assistant powered by ChatGPT for e-commerce brands.
DevGPT is an AI-powered developer toolkit that integrates OpenAI APIs.
Notably is a research enablement platform that helps product teams do research faster.
Spoke.ai saves time by summarizing Slack threads & channels.
Monterey is a copilot for product insights.

DM us links on Twitter: @nonmayorpete & @noahedelman02.

Friday Find ⭐️

It’s robots playing soccer!!!

The DeepMind team published a study yesterday demonstrating a technique called Deep Reinforcement Learning, which they applied to help robots move dynamically.

The 1v1 game reminds us of PE in elementary school.

Jokes aside, the demo is awesome and very cute. Check it out here!