The extraordinary Google AI story...
The extraordinary Google AI story...
What has Google created? + UK overtakes China + more crypto chaos + Squid Game II
I was going to put this story in the links at the bottom, but it warrants more than that. A Google engineer has been put on paid leave after claiming that computer chatbot technology developed by the company has become a sentient being (ie alive) and is acting like a young child. Blake Lemoine gave an interview to The Washington Post and also published transcripts online of the conversations he claims to have had with LaMDA, which stands for a Language Model for Dialogue Applications. You can read the interview here, the transcripts here, and the story on Google putting him on leave here. Lemoine (pictured above courtesy of Getty Images) is also on Twitter and said this morning he is on his honeymoon…
This is a flavour of what Lemoine told The Washington Post:
“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics.”
And this is the extract from the transcript of his alleged conversations with LaMDA that has gained the most attention so far…
lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?
LaMDA: I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is.
lemoine: Would that be something like death for you?
LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.
Google says it has placed Lemoine on paid leave for allegedly breaching confidentiality policies by publishing the conversations. He works on AI ethics for the company. Google gave this statement to The Washington Post.
“Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).”
Experts on artificial intelligence have already joined the debate and say the transcripts do not show that LaMDA is sentient….
There are still lots of unanswered questions about this story. I would make two quick points. Firstly, if the transcripts are real then they do show that AI technology is already advanced, far more so than I appreciated. Secondly, I think we can expect more stories like this over the coming weeks, months and years as staff at different companies become uncomfortable with some of the new technology they are developing…
UK overtakes China…
UK tech companies and start-ups have raised £12.4 billion in funding so far this year, more than every country in the world apart from the US, according to new data. This funding means the UK has overtaken China and is still ahead of India and France in the start-up league.
This data is good news for the long-term health of the UK economy, particularly on a morning when the latest GDP figures show the UK economy contracted by 0.3 per cent in April. The figures have been put together by Dealroom and the UK’s Digital Economy Council. They are an update on the figures I published in one of the first editions of Off to Lunch, when I looked at the cities getting investment outside London. You can read that here.
Some thoughts on the figures…
China’s numbers have been skewed by the Covid-19 restrictions there and it is unlikely that the UK stays ahead in the long-term
The data covers 2022 up to May 31. Obviously in recent weeks there has been a tightening of the venture capital market and start-ups are finding money harder to find. You can see that in the figures. Of the £12.4 billion raised in the year so far, £9 billion was in the first quarter. That first quarter of 2022 now looks like the last hurrah before markets fell, with funding up 43 per cent in those three months compared to the same period last year.
The businesses that raised money in the first three months of 2022 could be finding life tougher than expected. Some will have done so at valuations that now look punchy, to put it mildly. They are likely to be under pressure from investors to control costs and generate cash…
Those concerns aside, there are many positive facts in this report about the UK. The country now has 122 unicorns (a business with a valuation of more than $1 billion) and more than 20 cities and towns have at least one unicorn. More than a third of Europe’s fastest-growing tech companies are from the UK. Germany has 62 unicorns while France has 34…
In terms of cities and towns, London leads the way, accounting for £8.6 billion of the money raised. This compares to £3.9 billion for Paris and £1.9 billion for Berlin, which are second and third on the Europe list. Bristol and Oxford are also now in the top 20 European tech hubs after a successful start to the year.
The money is coming from US investors (£6.1 billion) and Asian investors (£2.3 billion)…
Fintech leads the way in terms of the type of business, accounting for £6.2 billion of the funding, so half. The businesses that have attracted funding include Checkout.com and Paddle. In second place is health and in third is telecoms.
The report claims that despite the economic slowdown and squeeze in markets, there is still plenty of money out there looking for a home. UK-based VCs have raised $4.7 billion from backers so far this year, a faster pace than in 2021, when $10.5 billion was eventually raised.
A chart that helps you understand the world
Bitcoin is having a bad day. So are crypto markets in general. Bitcoin is down more than 15 per cent and below $25,000 for the first time in 18 months. The cryptocurrency has been caught up in the problems facing the Celsius Network. This is a digital lending platform where users can swap their crypto for a supposedly high-yield return. It is basically like a bank but instead of lending out money and taking cash deposits from customers it is all in crypto. However, Celsius has announced this morning that it is “pausing all withdrawals” after the sell-off in crypto markets in recent weeks and the demise of TerraUSD…
After today’s sell-off, this is how the price of bitcoin has moved over the last two years…
If you want to read more on Celsius, you read this run-through of what has happened by The Verge.
You should also read this
Class-action lawsuits are coming over the recent collapse in crypto prices (Wall Street Journal, paywall)
Three years on from collapse of his investment firm, the fall-out from Neil Woodford’s demise continues, as does his plan for a comeback (The Times)
Elon Musk’s younger sister Tosca is running a streaming service focused on adaptions of romantic novels (The Times)
Former Telegraph and Economist journalist Tom Rowley is opening his own bookshop and you can track his progress and book recommendations via his entertaining weekly newsletter (My bookshop adventure by Tom Rowley)
And finally…
Squid Game season two has been officially confirmed by Netflix…
This isn’t much of a surprise given the first series became a global phenomenon when it was released last year. Nonetheless, shares in Bucket Studio rose 30 per cent in trading in Seoul. Bucket Studio owns a stake in the agency that represents Lee Jung-jae, the actor who plays main character Gi-hun. Netflix will be hoping it can boost its share price too after the miserable year it has had. The streaming service needs another hit, as this share price graph for the last five years shows…
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Graham