Season 1 Finale: Microsoft To Join OpenAI’s Board After Sam Altman Rehired As CEO

The tribe has spoken…🔥 

• Microsoft to join OpenAI’s board after Sam Altman rehired as CEO

• AWS announces Amazon Q, AI chatbot for businesses

• IBM collaborates with AWS to launch a new cloud database

• Weekly productivity hacks

• Quick snips of other AI updates

Read time: 7 minutes

Microsoft to join OpenAI’s board after Sam Altman rehired as CEO

Remember how Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, was furious after knowing Sam was fired?

Microsoft will now hold a non-voting observer position on OpenAI's board, according to CEO Sam Altman. Microsoft's representative can attend board meetings and access confidential information but will not have voting rights.

Altman followed up in his official announcement by outlining three immediate priorities for the organization:

1. Advancing the research plan and investing in safety efforts

2. Improving and deploying products that benefit users

3. Working on building a diverse board and enhancing governance structure

He also expressed confidence in overcoming recent challenges and finishing the goal of building beneficial artificial general intelligence (AGI).

⚡️Insights:

Microsoft currently holds a 49% stake of OpenAI, so let’s be real — a non-voting observer position is still a disgrace to the $10 billion committed capital.

Don’t forget Microsoft made William Henry Gates III (aka Bill Gates) the world’s richest person for over a decade in 1995-2007, and then again for a few more years in the 2010s. So if I was on the board of OpenAI, I would shut up and listen to what Microsoft has to say.

Amazon latest tech giant to announce AI chatbot

Amazon has introduced a new AI-powered chatbot, Q, to assist businesses in tasks such as summarizing documents and answering customer queries.

Q will be gradually integrated into Amazon's main business applications aiming to increase productivity. Amazon also emphasized its commitment to protecting companies from copyright issues related to the use of Q, following high-profile lawsuits against ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

⚡️Insights:

What took you so long Amazon…? Either their developers are cooking up something real revolutionary or they are all Internet Explorer users…

Anyway 😉, this is one of the major announcement in AWS re:Invent 2023, the biggest cloud event of the year from Amazon. AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2 were also announced and were claimed to make running generative AI, and other workloads faster, less expensive, and more energy efficient.

🧠 Extended Read:

Updates and announcements from AWS re:Invent 2023

IBM Collaborates with AWS to Launch a New Cloud Database

IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have joined forces to bring the general availability of Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to IBM’s Db2, the fully managed cloud that enables database customers to manage data for AI workloads across hybrid cloud environments.

With Amazon RDS, Db2 will now allow customers to modernize on premises, on AWS, or deploy a hybrid cloud architecture, optimizing AI workloads.

The collaboration aims to simplify database administration tasks and help organizations harness the full potential of their data for the next generation of applications, analytics, and AI workloads.

⚡️Insights:

Lots of big words and promises, but basically the integration of Amazon RDS should save time and allow the use of broader AWS services. And this new service is targeting the institutional clients, including some of the largest banks, supply chain operations, and retail/e-commerce businesses in the world.

🧠 Extended Read:

Amazon Relational Database Service Delivers Enhanced Database Performance at Lower Total Cost

Pomodoro Technique 🍅 

The technique has been around since the ’80s, and it’s seen a resurgence on TikTok advocated by burned-out Gen Zs.

Pomodoro, which means “tomato” in Italian, becomes a measurement for time (24 hours in a day x 60 minutes in an hour = 1,440 minutes a day / 25 minutes in a pomodoro = 57.6 pomodoros a day… AKA a buncha tomatoes).

The technique is simple:

1. Choose a task you want to complete

2. Set a timer for 25 minutes 

3. Work until the timer goes off

4. Take a 5-minute break

5. Repeat

After four 25-minute sprints, implement longer breaks (15-30 minutes)

Will this productivity hack make you crave for pasta? Probably. But it’ll also help you get more work done.

The technique has stuck around because people find the simplicity to be effective. The bite-sized time increments can break down overwhelming projects into something that feels more manageable.

Microsoft's $3.2 bln UK investment to drive AI growth - Link

Amazon Launches Free AI Classes in Bid for Talen - Link

Google AI and robots join forces to build new materials - Link

Cloud Platform Startup Together AI Raises $102.5 Million to Fuel Open Source AI - Link

That’s It For This Week, Catch Y’all Same Time Next Week!