A Week Reminiscent of 2022?

Bitcoin rising above $42k 💹

Elon Musk running his mouth and dropping the F-bomb 💣️

• OpenAI Agreed to Buy $51 Million of AI Chips From a Startup

• Millions of New Materials Discovered with Deep Learning

• Students Pitch Transformative Ideas in Generative AI at MIT Ignite Competition

• Weekly productivity hacks

• Quick snips of other AI updates

Read time: 5 minutes

OpenAI Agreed to Buy $51 Million of AI Chips From a Startup

OpenAI has reportedly placed a $51 million order for Rain AI, an AI chip startup that is working on a neuromorphic processing unit, or NPU, designed to replicate features of the human brain. Rain AI claimed that the NPU could potentially boast 100 times more computing power and be 10,000 times more energy efficient than GPUs.

Since its establishment in 2017, Rain had multiple rounds of capital injection, and it was reported that its first hardware will launch as early as October 2024.

⚡️Insights:

The rest of the article talks about the bumpy road Rain AI had securing funding from Prosperity7 Ventures (Saudi Arabia-affiliated fund), in which a US gov’t agency forced Prosperity7 to sell its stake due to national security reasons. Interestingly, it was also highlighted Baidu also invested in the company, which did not cause any repercussion.

The line is pretty blurred but that tells us that Santa is not afraid to enforce the naughty list for national security reasons, if he so chooses. 🎅 

Millions of New Materials Discovered with Deep Learning

Google researchers have developed a deep learning tool called Graph Networks for Materials Exploration (GNoME), which has enabled the discovery of 2.2 million new crystals. Among these, 380,000 stable materials have the potential to power future technologies such as supercomputers, next-generation batteries, and more efficient electric vehicles.

GNoME utilizes AI to predict the stability of new materials, significantly increasing the speed and efficiency of discovery. The predictions made by GNoME have been validated by external researchers, who have experimentally synthesized 736 of the newly discovered structures.

⚡️Insights:

I’m not a material scientist but why does this sound like the Holy Grail of material science?! 🤯

Nothing to say other than huge props to the research team for making the 380,000 materials available to public in their online database. To us regular people, that means 380,000 more possibilities to have our lives improved in areas like energy, medicine, infrastructure, environment and robotics etc.

Students Pitch Transformative Ideas in Generative AI at MIT Ignite Competition

12 teams of MIT students and postdocs competed in the first-ever MIT Ignite: Generative AI Entrepreneurship Competition, which I thought would be interesting to see what the bright minds from MIT can come up with.

And I want to highlight 2 teams that came up with more different ideas:

1. eMote - helps users who are struggling emotionally identify and visualize their emotions which could be used to assist school counselors and therapists.

2. Gen EGM - uses LLM to analyze literature and produce evidence gap map (EGM) in making informed socioeconomic development policies. (EGMs of qualitative studies map the evidence on ‘how’ and ‘why’ interventions/policies work)

More details in the link!

After the Pomodoro Technique from last week, we introduce 2 more methods in better planning/executing your day.

1. Eat the Frog

   The “frog” is THE most important task of the day. Do it the first thing in the morning. Don’t check your email, don’t catch up on the news etc. The reason? People tend to overestimate how much can be done in a day and it helps to build a habit.

2. Eisenhower Matrix

   

   Image source: todoist

Report: Google delays its biggest AI launch of the year, but it's still coming soon - Link

How AI could power the climate breakthrough the world needs - Link

4 key takeaways from new global AI security guidelines - Link

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