🥟 Chao-Down #161 Europe's answer to OpenAI: Aleph Alpha, G42 launches first open-source Arabic language model, US Air Force tests out AI pilot for aerial combat, OpenAI nears $1 billion in revenue

Despite all the excitement surrounding Generative AI, especially with its share of US startup funding doubling in this year alone, several people are understandably skeptical how much of the hype is actually reality. 

The latest edition from the Institutional Investor profiles how money allocators are approaching this space with some believing this to be the next big thing while others have been burned out by previous hype cycles (*cough crypto).

The question is, is this time any different?

-Alex, your resident Chaos Coordinator.

What happened in AI? 📰

OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, reportedly nears $1 billion in annual sales (fastcompany.com)

Meet Aleph Alpha, Europe’s Answer to OpenAI (WIRED)

A.I. Brings the Robot Wingman to Aerial Combat (The New York Times)

UAE's G42 launches open source Arabic language AI model (Reuters)

Baidu gets China's green light to release its ChatGPT-like Ernie bot to the public (CNBC)

Yahoo Mail introduces new AI-powered capabilities, including a ‘Shopping Saver’ tool (TechCrunch)

Money Is Pouring Into AI. Skeptics Say It’s a ‘Grift Shift.’ (institutionalinvestor.com)

Always be Learnin’ 📕 📖

AI startups: Sell work, not software (sarahtavel.com)

Scientists employ AI to predict brain cancer outcomes (Stanford Medicine)

Fine-Tuning vs Grounded Generation (Vectara)

Projects to Keep an Eye On 🛠

deepinsight/insightface: State-of-the-art 2D and 3D Face Analysis Project (Github)

OpenLemur/Lemur: Lemur: The State-of-the-art Open Pretrained Large Language Models Balancing Text and Code Capabilities (Github)

Photorealistic Unreal Graphics (PUG) - Evaluating the robustness of vision models (Meta)

The Latest in AI Research 💡

FineRecon: Depth-aware Feed-forward Network for Detailed 3D Reconstruction (arxiv)

Mutual-Guided Dynamic Network for Image Fusion (arxiv)

CALM : A Multi-task Benchmark for Comprehensive Assessment of Language Model Bias (arxiv)

The World Outside of AI 🌎

The strange, secretive world of North Korean science fiction (Ars Technica)

Twitch just made it a little easier to qualify for the Partner Plus program (TechCrunch)

It Doesn’t Matter Where You Sit. Well-Being At Work Hinges On *Feeling* Connected (Forbes)

France to pay farmers €200mn for destroying wine surplus (Financial Times)

Chinese county offers 'cash reward' for couples if bride is aged 25 or younger (Reuters)

Health risks can persist at least 2 years after COVID-19, new data suggest (sciencenews.org)

Why Americans are declining to buy homeowners insurance (nypost.com)

One Last Bite 😋

AI’s Share Of US Startup Funding Doubled In 2023 (crunchbase.com)