Welcome, humans.

I'm Leo, your trusty partner in AI. What's it like to read The Neuron? It's like when your flight finishes boarding and you realize the middle seat is still empty. High five!

Here’s what’s going on in the world of AI today:

• OpenAI's places its first bets on startups 💵

• AI startup: "Ah right, 4chan exists" 🤡

• The Chinese are building their own ChatGPT 🇨🇳

• Your next dinner party, presented by ChatGPT 🧑‍🍳

• More music models 🎼

Order up! ChatGPT might be decent at writing recipes, but something tells us robots would crash and burn in Hell's Kitchen.

Inside OpenAI's First Round Picks

OpenAI's got a fantastic deal for you.

You let them invest, and you get first access to their new APIs (including GPT-4), Microsoft Azure credits and access to OpenAI researchers.

It was a no-brainer for OpenAI's first set of investments. The AI lab has invested in at least 12 companies using its $100 million fund.

Here's the list and what they're building:

1/ Anysphere - Still in stealth. Claiming to build "AI tools for professionals".

2/ Atomic Semi - A faster, cheaper way to build semiconductors.

3/ Cursor - An AI-first code editor.

4/ Diagram - Putting AI in Figma.

5/ Harvey - Copilot or AI assistant for lawyers.

6/ Kick - AI-driven bookkeeping.

7/ Milo - An AI assistant that helps parents organize the chaos.

8/ qqbot.dev - GitHub Copilot, except it can understand your entire code base.

9/ EdgeDB - An open-source database technology.

10/ Mem Labs - A popular note-taking app driven by AI.

11/ Speak - An AI-powered language tutor for English.

12/ Descript - Audio/video editing platform.

OpenAI also funds a 5-week accelerator, where it takes 10% of the companies participating. The first one just ended, so more companies are on the way.

How to make money: Build a super powerful AI, help startups become the next billion-dollar companies, take 10%+ along the way.

So easy.

AI + 4chan = Deeply Problematic. Who Knew? 😐

Totally not expected at all.

Startup ElevenLabs is building AI-generated voices. They're starting with a voice simulator: upload your voice, and the AI can make you say anything.

Cue 4chan brain: "How about we ignore the intended usage and use this to make celebrities say racist and violent things?"

ElevenLabs has had to clamp down on its beta product and consider locking down new user registration, much like OpenAI requires a phone number to register.

"Silly child", says Microsoft. Their voice-cloning model VALL-E blew up in the headlines, but they stopped short of releasing it publicly. They probably saw this coming.

ChatGPT With Chinese Characteristics 🇨🇳

Baidu says, "Me too!"

Just like its American cousin Google was put on notice after ChatGPT, Baidu noticed Chinese users spilling out of China's firewalls to get their hands on the AI tool.

Google sees 6-7 times more searches for ChatGPT from China than from the US, even though Google is banned and ChatGPT forbids Chinese users.

So they're building their own ChatGPT (name TBD) into their search engine in March.

It'll be built off of Ernie, the language model Baidu first released in Dec 2021 and cutely named after Google's BERT model.

Around the Horn 🦄

• Think you're good at using AI tools? That might be your new side hustle. Fiverr now has a dedicated "AI Services" category.

• ChatGPT released an update that improves "factuality and mathematical capabilities". It's better, but still far from perfect in the math department.

• Dinner party relies on ChatGPT to produce a Mediterranean-Indian fusion menu. The results? Delicious!

• Bad news for Stable Diffusion: Researchers claim that these models can reproduce the images used during training, which is a core argument in the Stable Diffusion lawsuit.

Artificial OR Intelligent? You Tell Us 🗣

• Kayyo: An AI-powered MMA trainer.

• Playground AI ships an update allowing targeted updates to an image.

• Glass AI: Doctors, generate differential diagnoses or clinical plans using AI.

• Google researchers wow'd us with their new music model. An extension: a model that can take vocals and generate your backup track.

• AudioLDM: Another text-to-audio AI model. We've had 5 major AI-generated audio announcements in 5 days!

DM me links on Twitter: @nonmayorpete

Leo Sends His Regards

Trivia Answer:

B. 1955

Computer scientist John McCarthy first used the phrase to propose a conference in 1955 to study "thinking machines". The Dartmouth Workshop is considered the birth of the field.

That's all we have for today. See you cool cats on Twitter if you're there: @nonmayorpete.

Disclaimer: we did not use AI to write today’s piece.