Vana plans to let users rent out their Reddit data to train AI A startup, Vana, says it wants users to get paid for training dataIn the generative AI boom, data is the new oil.
“It does this by allowing users to aggregate their personal data in a non-custodial way … Vana allows users to own AI models and use their data across AI applications.”Here’s how Vana pitches its platform and API to developers:The Vana API connects a user’s cross-platform personal data … to allow you to personalize your application.
This month, Vana launched what it’s calling the Reddit Data DAO (Digital Autonomous Organization), a program that pools multiple users’ Reddit data (including their karma and post history) and lets them to decide together how that combined data is used.
We have crunched the numbers and r/datadao is now largest data DAO in history: Phase 1 welcomed 141,000 reddit users with 21,000 full data uploads.
“Reddit does not share non-public, personal data with commercial enterprises, and when Redditors request an export of their data from us, they receive non-public personal data back from us in accordance with applicable laws.
This week in Las Vegas, 30,000 folks came together to hear the latest and greatest from Google Cloud.
What they heard was all generative AI, all the time.
Google Cloud is first and foremost a cloud infrastructure and platform vendor.
From Google’s perspective, the company has built generative AI tools to more easily help data engineers build data pipelines to connect to data sources inside and outside of the Google ecosystem.
Executives, IT pros, developers and others who went to GCN this week might have gone looking for what’s coming next from Google Cloud.
Apart from testing Meta AI chatbot with users in countries like India on WhatsApp, the company is also experimenting with putting Meta AI in the Instagram search bar for both chat with AI and content discovery.
The search query in the search bar leads you to a conversation in DM with Meta AI, where you can ask questions or use one of the pre-loaded prompts.
Separately, a few users TechCrunch talked to were able to ask Meta AI to search for Reels suggestions.
Meta confirmed its Meta AI experiment on Instagram with TechCrunch.
You can find a ton of posts about the quality of Instagram search.
Humane today announced the availability of its first product, the Ai Pin.
Ai Pin is the first of what Humane hopes will be a long line of devices aimed at harness the power and popularity of generative AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Humane’s vision for the $699 device is one in which a new technology can free itself of its predecessors’ limitations.
It really started a conversation about the incredible tool we built, but also some of the side effects.”The Ai Pin is the first of what will almost certainly be a long line of products riding the generative AI boon.
Humane’s $699 entry point gets you the Ai Pin, an extra battery and an AI charging case.
Meta, hell-bent on catching up to rivals in the generative AI space, is spending billions on its own AI efforts.
But an even larger chunk is being spent developing hardware, specifically chips to run and train Meta’s AI models.
Meta unveiled the newest fruit of its chip dev efforts today, conspicuously a day after Intel announced its latest AI accelerator hardware.
Google this week made its fifth-generation custom chip for training AI models, TPU v5p, generally available to Google Cloud customers, and revealed its first dedicated chip for running models, Axion.
Amazon has several custom AI chip families under its belt.
“Our goal over time is to make a Llama-powered Meta AI be the most useful assistant in the world,” said Joelle Pineau, Vice President AI Research.
Most notably, Meta’s Llama families, built as open-source products, represent a different philosophical approach to how AI should develop as a wider technology.
But Meta is also playing it more cautiously, it seems, especially when it comes to other generative AI beyond text generation.
Ironically — or perhaps predictably (heh) — even as Meta works to launch Llama 3, it does have some significant generative AI skeptics in the house.
It’s not generative AI,” he said.
But this year, whether to foster developer goodwill or advance its ecosystem ambitions (or both), Google debuted a number of open-source tools primarily aimed at supporting generative AI projects and infrastructure.
Beyond MaxDiffusion, Google’s launching Jetstream, a new engine to run generative AI models — specifically text-generating models (so not Stable Diffusion).
“We’ve heavily optimized [the models’] performance on TPUs and also partnered closely with Nvidia to optimize performance on large GPU clusters,” Lohmeyer said.
The goal is to reduce the barrier to entry for getting generative AI models onto TPU hardware, according to Google — in particular text-generating models.
And Optimum TPU doesn’t yet support training generative models on TPUs — only running them.
Logspace co-founder and CEO Rodrigo Nader previously worked on machine learning problems at enterprise AI company Bitvore, together with co-founder and CTO Gabriel Luiz Freitas Almeida.
“This acquisition will provide current Langflow developers and current DataStax developers additional resources and integrations to elevate their applications to match the scale of their ambitions,” said Chet Kapoor, CEO and chairman of DataStax.
“Langflow is focused on democratizing and accelerating generative AI development for any developer or company, and in joining DataStax, we’re working together to enable developers to put their wild new generative AI ideas on a fast path to production.”The DataStax team argues that this acquisition effectively completes its effort to build a one-stop generative AI stack.
Langflow will continue to operate as a separate entity, so existing users shouldn’t notice any immediate changes.
“We couldn’t be more excited about joining the DataStax team and supercharging our ability to grow the Langflow platform, bringing it to more researchers, developers, enterprises and entrepreneurs working on generative AI applications,” said Nader.
OpenAI captivated the tech world a few months back with a generative AI model, Sora, that turns scene descriptions into original videos — no cameras or film crews required.
So he launched Higgsfield AI, an AI-powered video creation and editing platform designed for more tailored, personalized applications.
In fact, Mashrabov sees social media — and social media marketing — as Higgsfield’s principle money-making niche.
So we believe video generative AI solutions will be a core solution in helping them to achieve it.”Of course, Higgsfield isn’t immune from the broader challenges facing generative AI startups.
It’s well-established that generative AI models like the kind powering Diffuse can “regurgitate” training data.
Google.org, Google’s charitable wing, is launching a new program to help fund nonprofits developing tech that leverages generative AI.
Called Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI, the program is to be funded by $20 million in grants and include 21 nonprofits to start, including Quill.org, a company creating AI-powered tools for student writing feedback, and World Bank, which is building a generative AI app to make development research more accessible.
“Generative AI can help social impact teams be more productive, creative and effective in serving their communities,” Annie Lewin, director of global advocacy at Google.org, said in a blog post.
But there remain significant barriers for nonprofits looking to build their own AI solutions or adopt third-party products — chiefly cost, resources and time.
Nonprofit accelerator Fast Forward said that this year, more than a third of applicants for its latest class were AI companies.
