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  • Lore Issue #53: A16Z Drops The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

Lore Issue #53: A16Z Drops The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

Author

Nathan Lands
October 18, 2023

Good morning.

We've just finished another week with groundbreaking developments in AI. And then Silicon Valley legend Marc Andreessen dropped The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.

For those who know me, I’m incredibly bullish on the future of humanity aided by AI. This manifesto serves as a rallying cry to combat the media narrative that technology — and now AI — is bad.

I think you should read it.

  • Nirvana Insurance raised $57M to make AI inroads into commercial trucking insurance (Link)

  • Together raised $50M to rent out AI chips to companies through a cloud service (Link)

  • Procurify raised $50M to invest in AI-powered tools for procurement (Link)

  • Machina Labs raised $32M to rapidly manufacture advanced composite and metal products (Link)

  • Orbem raised €30M to expand AI-powered imaging in food, construction, and medical sectors (Link)

  • JetCool raised $17M for datacenter cooling (Link)

  • Neura Robotics raised $16M to build robots that are able to see, hear and perceive touch (Link)

  • Reality Defender raised $15M to detect text, video and image deepfakes (Link)

  • Pantomath raised $14M to expand its data observability platform (Link)

  • Mana Bio raised $14.5M to revolutionize Al drug delivery (Link)

  • Anysphere raised $8M from OpenAI to build an AI-powered IDE (Link)

  • Creative Force raised $8.9M to integrate AI into its e-commerce content platform (Link)

  • Leucine raised $7M for its drug manufacturing digital twin platform (Link)

  • Intento raised $8M for its machine translation and AI platform (Link)

  • MyShell raised $5.6M to revolutionize the AI-native app landscape (Link)

  • Proteus Space raised $4.2M to develop customized satellites (Link)

  • Cognitive Space raised $4M for intelligent space automation (Link)

  • Kodex AI raised €1.6M to develop AI-powered solutions for the financial industry (Link)

  • Fantix raised $1.6M for privacy safe AI model development (Link)

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Google is testing new ways to get more done right from Search, including generating images or drafting texts. For now, this feature is only available if you opt in to SGE through Google’s Search Labs program (and you have to be based in the US).

Notably, Microsoft has offered the ability to make images from Bing Chat since March, using OpenAI’s DALL-E model.

The Biden administration is imposing stricter export controls on advanced AI chips, affecting companies like Nvidia, Intel, and AMD in their sales to China. These rules aim to limit China's access to crucial AI chips and prevent technological workarounds.

Nvidia previously designed chips specifically for China to meet the previous restrictions, but the new measures will likely impact these sales.

Walmart is making extensive use of generative AI to enhance the shopping experience for customers. One of these is a shopping assistant chatbot that can help with various tasks and offer suggestions based on customer preferences.

Walmart also allows customers to try products virtually before purchasing, using generative AI to create 3D models from product photos. Their website and app improve search accuracy by understanding customer intent and context, as well as helping customers prioritize product features and providing review summaries.

Other news

  • Marc Andreessen just dropped a ‘Techno-Optimist Manifesto’ that sees a world of 50 billion people settling other planets: ‘We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us’

Generative Fill for Video

Game dev with DALL•E 3 for graphics + GPT-4 for code

Builder’s Visual Copilot

GPT-4 with voice as a negotiation simulator/instructor

  • tl;dv: A meeting recorder that transcribes and summarizes your calls (Link)

  • Predis: Generate branded social media posts, videos and carousels (Link)

  • Cello: Add a P2P referral program to any SaaS product in hours (Link)

  • Glasp: Highlight and organize quotes and ideas from the web (Link)

Find more tools at FutureTools.io.

  • Improving Large Language Model Fine-tuning for Solving Math Problems (Link)

  • In-Context Pretraining: Language Modeling Beyond Document Boundaries (Link)

  • Reward-Augmented Decoding: Efficient Controlled Text Generation With a Unidirectional Reward Model (Link)

  • Video Language Planning (Link)

That's it!

See you next week!

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