Welcome to the odo newsletter—a free, weekly newsletter on AI for product builders. We'll cover:

• GPT-4 for Content Moderation

• AI Leaders Start Their Own Companies

• NYT May Sue OpenAI

• “Performance Review” of AI Tools

• …and more!

News of the week 🗞️ 

🔎 GPT-4 for Content Moderation

In a recent blog post, OpenAI highlighted that GPT-4 could be used to enhance content moderation systems. Specifically, it claims that GPT-4 can speed up policy changes and make labeling more consistent by interpreting rules and nuances in long documentation.

Likely not a panacea…AI is likely good at discerning content that is objectionably harmful to people (say, graphic or sexual content). This is promising as human moderators can be relieved from moderating this type of content day after day.

However, the jury is still out on whether AI can moderate content in the grey area effectively. For example, will AI be able to discern whether something is misinformation, which is still very tricky for most people to do? We've seen academic papers exploring this but have not yet seen any with meaningful success.

🚀 Prominent AI Leaders and Experts Strike Out on Their Own

A few prominent AI leaders and experts are forming new organizations to pursue their visions.

Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, started a new AI NGO focused on scientific research and development. Schmidt has been vocal about how AI can transform the scientific process by automating mindless tasks and freeing scientists to focus on creative discoveries. Schmidt has already hired two prominent scientists: Samuel Rodriques, founder of the Applied Biotechnology Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute; and Andrew White, a professor at University of Rochester and a pioneer of AI use in chemistry.

Llion Jones, a leading AI expert and a Google veteran, has recently started Sakana AI with David Ha, previous head of research at Stability AI and a former Google Brain researcher. Jones looks to nature as an inspiration to design AI models that are flexible, reactive, and economically efficient.

It’s all about the people…Big tech companies have been making impressive progress in AI lately. However, at the end of the day, it's all about the people. As experts strike out on their own, we will see how it impacts the pace of innovation in the ecosystem. Hopefully, we will see more divergent thinking leading to more innovative ideas.

⚖️ NYT may sue OpenAI for copyrights

The New York Times is considering whether to sue OpenAI for intellectual property rights. NYT claims that ChatGPT may become a direct competitor if people can get access to the Times' original reporting and writing by asking questions via ChatGPT. If OpenAI is found to have violated copyrights, federal law allows for infringed content to be deleted.

Rumor mill is strong…Although this is just a rumor for now, the case could have huge implications on both the tech and media industries regarding copyrights handling. A strong enforcement against tech companies can result in technical setbacks, as OpenAI may need to retrain its models using a different dataset. Human-generated, original content is only going to become even more valuable to society and technological progress. We think that both sides can come to a middle ground, as an extreme solution is likely going to pose an existential threat to the other.

AI product highlight ✋ 

Are you spending loads of hours going through LinkedIn and crafting personalized messages to reach your ideal customers? You might want to check out Clay, which is basically an Airtable on steroids for lead generation.

Disclaimer: We are not getting paid to highlight the product. We just think it’s cool and want to share!

For the AI nerds 🤓 

Performance Review of Various AI Tools

This week, we’d like to share Andrew’s “performance review” of various AI tools. He's been working with ChatGPT, Amazon Code Whisperer, and GitHub Copilot to assist in his development for odo and shared some early thoughts on how it's been going. It focuses on how it has helped him write eng docs and make high-level technical plans as well as accelerated his daily programming tasks, especially when he's been working in popular languages and frameworks he is less familiar with.

Before you go 💨 

🔮 Have you ever thought, I wish I could get some life advice? Look no further. Google is working on 21 different tools for life advice, planning, and tutoring. It comes with its fair share of warnings (users could experience “diminished health and well-being”), but hey, what's life without a little risk?