Welcome to The Neuron. We only ask the important questions, like: "If humans built robot versions of everything, would robot cats also knock everything off tables?"
Today in AI:
- Buzzfeed Investors Love AI
- Google's Got The Best AI Music So Far
- UT Austin's New Master's in AI
- Around the Horn
- Leo Sends His Regards
Buzzfeed Investors Love AI
We're in the hype cycle, ladies and gents.
The Buzzfeed CEO told staff that the company will be using AI to generate quizzes and come up with content ideas.
The stock went flying. Already +50% on an earlier announcement of a $10 million deal with Meta, Buzzfeed stock then rocketed up to a peak of +186% on the day.
Buzzfeed doesn't have much to lose. While CNET got in trouble for using AI and failing to correct factual errors, nobody will care if an AI wrote Buzzfeed's turn-my-brain-off quizzes.
Anyone else getting some dot-com vibes?
Time to see how many companies rebrand with "AI" in their name for the stock pump. Just look at C3.AI, proud owner of the stock ticker AI. They're up 45% over the last month.
Google's Got The Best AI Music So Far
It's the breakthrough of the week.
They knew what was coming
Google Research announced MusicLM, an AI that can generate music from text and images. Examples are in the linked page.
You can give it pretty much anything - a genre, time period, a description of the music - and it'll generate the music.
You can even give it an image and it'll create the music that it thinks should go with that image.
Yeah, it's a red flag if you put in their dating app profile and MusicLM spits out demon sounds 🚩
Based on the demos, MusicLM is the best music generator to-date. However, it's not looking like Google will release this one publicly. That's a bummer.
Coming soon: the first AI-generated SoundCloud breakout hit? 👀
UT Austin's New Master's in AI
Hook 'em.
For $10,000 you could buy:
- A 14-karat gold flute
- 72,000 ball pit balls
- 42 million Orbeez
- 3 hours at the most expensive hotel suite in the world
- A master's degree in artificial intelligence
The penthouse at the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva costs $80,000 a night
That's right. For career switchers or anyone looking to up their technical game, the University of Texas at Austin's new AI program may be your jam.
It's fully online and covers 10 courses over 1.5-3 years. And the tuition costs just $10,000.
That's expensive if you'd rather piece together free courses on the Internet. But it's cheap compared to the $60,000 a year that undergrads have to pay these days (sheesh!).
Plus, it gives you an excuse to head to Austin and get the legendary Franklin Barbecue. Drool.
I mean, look at that!
Applications open in June 2023, with first classes starting in January 2024.
Around the Horn
- A no-name Canadian political party tried to be cool by making an AI video campaigning for them. It backfired.
- VoicePen: Turn audio and video content into blog posts.
- Poll: Which will be more impactful: AI generating images or AI generating text?
- Hila: An AI-powered investment research assistant. Something ChatGPT won't help you with.
- Pentagon's AI chief says "data labeling" (aka what Scale AI does) is key to winning against China
- Japanese brewery uses AI to create sake and fish pairings
DM me links on Twitter: @nonmayorpete
Are you new to all this AI stuff? Here's The 3-Minute Guide to Slaying Your Dinner Convo About AI to get you up to speed. Or at least smart enough to impress your family.
