OpenAI is trying to make ChatGPT a “Helpful AI Companion”

Welcome back to The Prompt,

ChatGPT will now be able to handle tasks like sending reminders about important deadlines or sharing daily weather reports. People can ask the conversational AI chatbot to send alerts at a future date and time, OpenAI announced today. The new functionality, which is rolling out to the company’s paid users, points toward the AI ​​giant’s efforts to add assistant-like capabilities to ChatGPT, its flagship product with over 300 million users. However, it still has a way to go to catch up with other assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa, which can play music and make phone calls.

Also: Submissions are now open for the seventh annual AI 50 list: Forbes’ The ultimate list of the most prominent private AI startups across the globe.

Now let’s get into the headlines.

THE BIG GAMES

While devastating fires destroyed parts of Los Angeles, California last week, AI-based software designed to mitigate disasters it didn’t help much. In 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced plans to build an AI system that would analyze video footage and detection of growing firessending out immediate alerts to send in human crews before the fires could intensify. But while it has been helpful in preventing some fires, the current disaster, which has caused a reckoning 150 billion dollars the value of the damage so far, moved too fast for the system.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

AI titan Anthropic is set to raise $2 billion in venture capital with a valuation of $60 billion. When the deal closes, she will each of its seven founders– including its CEO Dario Amodei – billionaires, Forbes reported. This is based on an estimate that each co-founder will continue to hold a 2% stake in the company, giving each a net worth of at least $1.2 billion.

POLICY

With days to go President-elect Donald Trump takes officeOpenAI described its vision for building AI in America. The maker of ChatGPT released a new “Economic Program” detailing how The US can maintain its AI lead over Chinaattracting over $100 billion in global funding that would otherwise have gone to Chinese tech companies. The company is also proposing a lighter regulations based on “democratic values”.

THAT DEAL OF THE WEEK

ABRIDGING, a startup that uses AI to help life sciences businesses continue with the papershas raised $30 million in a round led by Redpoint Ventures. With generative AI tools, researchers will be able to focus more on drug development than maintaining them documents necessary to comply with the regulationssaid CEO Surbhi Sarna.

deep dive

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has spent the past few months working on an artificial intelligence project that aims to take advantage of the burgeoning landscape of AI video generation. The startup, which has not been previously reported, was founded last year under the name “Hooglee,” according to sources with knowledge of its development and business materials seen by Forbes. Schmidt’s family office, Hillspire, is currently funding and hosting it.

The billionaire “AI whisperer” has become a sometimes polarizing voice in Silicon Valley and Washington on the promise and dangers of artificial intelligence, alternately claiming it will “double everyone’s productivity,” characterizing these systems as “nuclear weapons of a different kind”. or predicting, as he did last December, that it might become so sophisticated that “we should seriously think about pulling the plug on it.”

However, a few months ago, Schmidt and a small group quietly incorporated Hooglee LLC, a company that broadly describes its mission as “democratizing video creation with AI.” Its website, which consists of a single landing page and does not name Schmidt or any of its staff, claims it is “creating innovative solutions that bring people together, simplify communication and increase engagement.” Schmidt declined to comment.

Hooglee appears to be the first AI project that Schmidt has personally incubated after investing in a number of AI companies, such as startup Anthropic and quantum computer SandboxAQ. The billionaire, who Forbes estimated to be worth more than $26 billion, has also funded an OpenAI grant program and AI science nonprofit FutureHouse.

Read the full story at Forbes.

WEEKLY DEMO

it financial apps like Cleo AI and Bright claim to help people with their money problems by offering advice and analyzing their spending. They also often end up using people’s personal data for it sell other products, Wires found. Applications provide cash advances and loans through third-party entities, tempting its users to take out short-term debts.

MODEL BEHAVIOR

OpenAI model o1, which shows its reasoning of the chain of thought before it returns a result, seemed to be performing some steps in Chinese, one user pointed out. Spectators attribute the trend to the Chinese training data from open source datasets and third-party data taggers, TechCrunch reported. OpenAI has not commented on the apparent issue.