🕶️ Hey Meta

PLUS: Amazon's $150B data center bet

Haroon ChouderyMar 29, 2024 · 8 min read

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Happy Friday, fellow humans 👋

Meta is adding AI capabilities to their Ray-Ban glasses, Microsoft has introduced safety features to prevent chatbots from being misused, and Amazon is making a $150B bet on data centers…

Let’s dive into it!

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🧵 In today's edition:

🕶️ Hey Meta
💪 Microsoft's AI bodyguards
🏢 Amazon's $150B data center bet
🤑 AI Fundraising News
🗞️ AI Quick-Bytes
🐦 Tweet Post of the Day

🕶️ Hey Meta

Meta already holds a strong position in the open-source world.

Now, they are looking to make a giant impact in the AI wearables space by giving their Ray-Ban smart glasses some AI powers.

With a simple "Hey Meta", you can:

Activate a virtual assistant to identify objects, animals, monuments, and more just by looking at them through the glasses.
Get a translation - the AI covers English, Spanish, Italian, French, and German text.

The big question - does it work?

During an early access trial, The NY Times took the AI-powered glasses for a spin at the grocery store, zoo, and museums.
The AI was impressive at recognizing pets, artwork, and exotic fruits (although it stumbled on the ultra-exotic cherimoya).
It also struggled with recognizing distant animals behind cages.

But this is just the beginning. As Meta continues refining its AI capabilities, the future could include everything from augmented reality gaming to virtual shopping.

Tbh, I’m going to hold off on buying these glasses until I get a full MKBHD review on the AI-powered features first 👁️

Read more: The Verge

💪 Microsoft's AI bodyguards

AI chatbots are the cool new kids on the block. But just like human teens, they can be convinced to pull some stupid stunts if you push the right buttons.

To combat this, Microsoft is playing an AI hall monitor to keep its chatbots from being punked.

The tech giant just rolled out new "safety features" to protect its Azure AI Studio chatbots from users trying to make them misbehave.

The AI bodyguards include:

Prompt shields to detect and block attempts to trick chatbots into unauthorized actions like data theft through "jailbreak" prompts.
Defenses against "indirect prompt injections," where hackers inject sneaky instructions into the training data to brainwash the AI into going rogue.
Alerts that flag when a chatbot makes stuff up or sends bogus responses.

The company had to put out a lot of fires last month when some users tried to dupe their Copilot into generating disturbing content, so this is all part of Microsoft's quest to make their chatbots more trustworthy as their Copilot assistant grows more popular.

Regardless of all these features, we humans will always try to find loopholes. We’re only slightly annoying like that 😂

Read more: Yahoo Finance

🏢 Amazon's $150B data center bet

Amazon plans to drop $150B over the next 15 years to grow its global empire of data centers.

Why? To meet the insatiable demand for AI computing power.

AI is about to experience exponential growth, with companies racing to develop and commercialize GenAI tools like ChatGPT.
Amazon sees this boom coming and is ensuring its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform has the power (and cloud space) to seize the opportunity.

The company also wants to expand into new data center hubs from Mississippi to Malaysia. It's scooping up land, securing power sources like hydroelectric dams and nuclear plants, and even co-locating server farms with its warehouses.

These efforts have received pushback, however, as Amazon has had to deal with electricity shortages, community backlash over noise/sprawl, and pushback from renewable advocates who worry about Amazon's reliance on fossil fuels for these energy-consuming AI factories.

Amazon's Cloud leader Kevin Miller vows that the company will get creative to match its "need for energy with renewable, carbon-free power," but only time will tell if they hold true to their word.

Read more: Yahoo Finance

🤑 AI Fundraising News

TurbineOne raises $15M in Series A funding to automate threat recognition and cueing alerts for decision-makers using ML, allowing for data insights in challenging operational environments.
Ensis raises $4M in Seed funding to develop an AI-powered proposal software for responding to government RFPs and RFIs.

🗞️ AI Quick-Bytes

What else is going on?

Microsoft Copilot AI will soon run locally on PCs.
Metaview's tool records interview notes so hiring managers don't have to.
Boutique startup studio super{set} gets another $90 million to co-found data and AI companies.
The White House knows the risks of AI being used by federal agencies. Here's how they're handling it.
Accel rethinks early-stage startup investing in India.
Google's Circle to Search feature will soon handle language translation.