• Secret CTO
  • Posts
  • Weekly Newsletter - 23rd October 2024

Weekly Newsletter - 23rd October 2024

PLUS Penguin Random House stands firm against AI bookworms

Spare Cores streamlines cloud pricing comparisons, 🤖 Zyphra's Zyda-2 improves LLM training, and Perplexity enhances AI search. 📚 Penguin Random House blocks AI from using its books, while Worldcoin rebrands with a new identity verification Orb. 🚀 TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 unites startups and investors to drive innovation.

Industry Insights 🔎

Perplexity's AI Search Engine Goes Deep to Get Your Answers

Technology insights by Tech Radar

Perplexity's AI search engine introduces Internal Knowledge Search and Spaces, enhancing collaborative capabilities. These features integrate online and internal data searches and create virtual environments for teamwork. This innovation benefits both professional and personal projects, offering efficient, real-time information access and collaboration, potentially saving time and resources.

Technology Innovation by Venture Beat

Zyphra Technologies has released Zyda-2, a 5 trillion token dataset designed to train small language models with high accuracy. By distilling top datasets and using advanced processing, Zyda-2 enhances model performance, reducing training costs and improving efficiency for enterprises, particularly in edge and consumer device applications.

Interesting Startup Idea Benchmarking Cloud Platform Pricing

Technology Analysis by Pragmatic Engineer

Spare Cores, a startup, offers a platform for comparing cloud provider pricing, focusing on AWS, GCP, Azure, and Hetzner. Funded by a €150K EU grant, the team uses advanced benchmarking tools. They plan to develop a Container-as-a-Service product to sustain operations post-grant.

Technology Evaluation by CIO

UL Solutions has entered the genAI evaluation market, focusing on assessing AI model transparency and trustworthiness. Despite challenges in evaluating complex AI systems, UL offers a scoring system to rate transparency. This initiative addresses the growing need for reliable third-party evaluations amid the rapid expansion of AI technologies.

Editor’s Essentials ✏️

Crypto Technolgy by The Verge

Worldcoin, now rebranded as World, has introduced a new Orb device for human identity verification. The updated Orb is more efficient, using 30% fewer parts, and aims for global accessibility. Despite privacy concerns, World has verified nearly 7 million users, expanding its reach to multiple countries.

AI Insights by The Verge

Penguin Random House explicitly prohibits using its books for AI training, marking a first among major publishers. This stance, noted on copyright pages, aligns with EU laws and underscores their commitment to protecting authors' intellectual property. Unlike some academic publishers, they resist AI training deals, prioritising authors' rights.

Events 🗓️

Date: 28-30 October 2024
Location: San Francisco 

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, held in San Francisco from October 28-30, is a pivotal event for startups and investors. It offers networking, expert insights, and opportunities to scale businesses. Featuring renowned speakers and the Startup Battlefield competition, it is essential for those seeking innovation and growth in the tech industry.

A publication from Contentive’s Technology Media Division