🛂 U.S. Expands Chip Export Controls over China

October 24, 2023

Welcome to the odo newsletter—your weekly digest on AI for product builders.

Be in the Know 👀 

  • AI Can Scan Type 2 Diabetes: In a groundbreaking study, Klick Labs was able to identify individuals with Type 2 diabetes with a few seconds of voice recordings and basic health data. The model has impressive accuracy - 89% for women and 86% for men - which is better than the Fasting Blood Glucose test.

  • Adept to Open-source a Multi-modal Model for AI Agents: Adept, an AI-startup founded by ex-Googlers, launched its latest model called Fuyu-8B. This model is supposed to have a much simpler architecture and training procedure, and is specifically designed for digital agents.

  • Stanford Study Rates Transparency Among Foundation Models: The top-scoring model, Meta’s Llama 2, only scored 54 out of 100. The biggest gap among all 10 models is its societal impact.

  • Foxconn to Build Data Centers for Self-Driving Cars: Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, is partnering with Nvidia to build self-driving cars. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claimed: “A new type of manufacturing has emerged - the production of intelligence.”

  • OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 Available in Beta: DALL-E 3 is now available to all ChatGPT-Plus or Enterprise users.

  • NYC Startup Tackles Chip Manufacturing: Nanotronics, a NYC-based AI startup, plans to build a number of smaller chip factories that can be assembled and scaled modularly with prefabricated pieces.

News Deep Dive 🤿 

🛂 U.S. Expands Chip Export Controls over China

Last week, the Biden administration announced additional measures to curb the export of advanced semiconductors and manufacturing equipment to China in the name of national security.

The new restrictions aim to limit the distribution of processing power needed to build Large Language Models. According to the regulatory filings, it “prevents the workaround of simply purchasing a larger number of smaller datacenter AI chips which, if combined, would be equally powerful as restricted chips.” In addition, the new rules expand the restrictions beyond China to 21 other countries with which the U.S. has an arms embargo in order to close loopholes by which China could obtain U.S.-made chips. Experts have remarked that these changes are more of an add-on to last year's restrictions on semiconductor sales, rather than a fundamental shift in policies.

It's fascinating to see how regulations and trade policies will develop over time, especially given the rapid pace of AI development. What if smaller models that require far less processing power get as powerful as the large models today? Is there a need for global oversight of technology given its potential impact on societies? Is it even feasible given the current geopolitical climate?

Product Resource ☀️ 

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and venture capital firm a16z, published a Techno-Optimist Manifesto outlining his belief on how technology and free market will save the world.

While we agree that technology has the power to propel society, we consider Andreessen’s views as extreme at best and dangerous at worst. We have seen numerous examples of how technology could negatively impact society, and turning a blind eye to the downsides seems irresponsible. We don’t think caring about the potential risk of technology turns us into Communists 🙂.

Job Postings 💼 

Disclaimer: The job postings listed in this newsletter are for informational purposes only. We are not endorsing these positions.

Before you go 💨 

A 21-year old computer science student cracked the first word in an ancient artifact, snagging a $40K prize. This is from the Vesuvius Challenge, a contest to decipher text from carbonized ancient Roman scrolls using AI. This is extra impressive since the scrolls are too damaged to be physically unrolled.

What was the first word? Purple.

If this is intriguing to you, you can also join the challenge. The grand prize winner can earn $700K!

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