Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Slideshows. Instagram had barely finished remaking itself in TikTok’s image when its biggest rival took a page from Insta’s book. The hottest new feature on TikTok is … photo carousels! Sorry Instagram, what’s old is new again.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Slide Decks. With market uncertainty rampant, the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road just aren’t investing at the same rate. But there’s one upside: fewer powerpoint presentations full of financial predictions of grandeur.

The top end of Stripe’s current valuation range, down from roughly $95 billion in 2021. Hey, $60 billion is a lot of money. But for some Stripe employees and later investors, it’s a bit like expecting to get a new bicycle for Christmas and ending up with a hand-knit sweater instead.

ChatGPT is about to get even better and Microsoft’s Bing could win big

THE SCOOP

Microsoft’s second-place search engine Bing is poised to incorporate a faster and richer version of ChatGPT, known as GPT-4, into its product in the coming weeks, marking rapid progress in the booming field of generative AI and a long-awaited challenge to Google’s dominance of search.

OpenAI’s latest software responds much faster than the current version, and the replies sound more human and are more detailed, according to people familiar with the product and rollout plans.

OpenAI is also planning to launch a mobile ChatGPT app and test a new feature in its Dall-E image-generating software that would create videos with the help of artificial intelligence.

OpenAI and Microsoft declined to comment.

REED’S VIEW

GPT-4 is one of the most anticipated technology product releases in years.

Its planned incorporation into Microsoft products will likely set off new competition in internet search: Something that has not happened since Google supplanted Yahoo as the most popular search engine.

The Information first reported Microsoft’s plans to use OpenAI’s underlying technology.

Now that OpenAI has released ChatGPT to the public, the technology will likely improve on a faster curve. And having a mobile app, instead of just a web interface, will bring an even broader user base into the service, making the curve steeper.

That’s because the information users input into the system serves as a way to improve the product. Each query serves as a form of feedback.

For instance, each ChatGPT answer includes thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. A popup window prompts users to write down the “ideal answer,” helping the software learn from its mistakes.

GPT stands for “Generative pre-trained transformer,” which is the underlying technology that powers ChatGPT and is characterized by its ability to parse through a vast dataset. For that reason, it is often called a “large language model.” The latest version of OpenAI’s software is called GPT-3.

The most interesting improvement in the latest version described by sources is GPT-4’s speed. Right now, it can take a while — sometimes minutes in my experience — for ChatGPT to answer.

One of the least-appreciated innovations of ChatGPT is what happens on the server every time someone enters a query.

In May, 2020, Microsoft announced it had built “one of the top five publicly disclosed supercomputers in the world” — in partnership and exclusively for OpenAI — that would be used to train “extremely large artificial intelligence models.”

It’s now clear what possibilities Microsoft and OpenAI saw in this technology that has caused the whole world to take notice.

But running these algorithms, which scour billions of pages of text, is expensive. Each ChatGPT search costs around a couple cents, according to Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO.

The supercomputer Microsoft and OpenAI built had 285,000 CPU cores and 10,000 GPUs, each with 400 gigabits per second of network connectivity.

The rush to capitalize on the generative AI craze that OpenAI and Microsoft started has made it hard for some companies to get their hands on Nvidia’s latest graphics processor, the H100 Tensor Core GPU, that is specifically designed to run “transformers” like those used in GPT. (I found one for sale online for $30,000.)

That shows just how important innovations on the server side will be to AI products rolling out. A big part of improving OpenAI will be figuring out how to run it more quickly and more cost-effectively.

All these improvements mean OpenAI is building a “moat” around its product. Anyone can build software similar to OpenAI’s. In fact, the “transformers” were first invented by Google and were made open source.

But only a handful of companies have access to massive supercomputers capable of running billions of parameters.

And now that OpenAI has opened its products up to the public, it’s getting invaluable real-world feedback that will help keep its products ahead of competitors.

As we reported last week, it has also hired contractors - including about 400 computer programmers - around the world, who are working to improve the company’s tools that automate software development.

Earlier this month, the Chinese state-backed newspaper Beijing Daily made a stunning announcement: The government was going to launch its own ride-hailing service, Strong Nation Transport (强国交通), which would handle up to 90% of the domestic transportation market. The news quickly dampened people’s hopes that DiDi Chuxing, China’s largest private ride-hailing app, would make a comeback after weathering two years of government scrutiny.

But then something bizarre happened. The article disappeared from the Beijing Daily’s website without a trace, and the Ministry of Transport denied any involvement with the project. Writer Tianyu Fang notes that the Chinese Communist Party may actually be building something far less ambitious: a mini-program that would aggregate third-party ride-hailing services, something Alibaba already does. It would live within the so-called “Little Red App,” which is used by CCP members.

As Fang writes, perhaps Chinese officials were surprised by how much international attention the initiative received, and needed to quickly “debunk any suspicion that DiDi was still in for another expensive ride with the regulators.” The incident is a reminder that the Chinese government is a vast organization, whose parts don’t always move in lockstep.

— Louise

One Good Text with... Jitesh Ubrani

The European Union is weighing whether to force tech giants to help cover the cost of setting up mobile infrastructure. One way to look at this is that European regulators don’t want to become like the U.S., where mobile consumers pay insanely high rates so everyone can watch unlimited Netflix. If tech companies didn’t install servers and equipment on mobile carriers’ networks, your “White Lotus” would look blurry and choppy on your iPhone.

That equipment is expensive to maintain and operate. In Europe, there’s too much competition to push that cost onto consumers. In private deals, tech companies have paid mobile carriers in cash for preferential treatment. But some carriers there — especially smaller ones — are tired of those hard-fought negotiations. Now, Europe is looking at taking what has historically happened over expensive wine and fancy food, and turning it into government regulation.

— Reed

On TikTok earlier this week, I saw a video of a woman yelling about race and gender politics while pounding her fists on the table in front of her. The rhetoric was so extreme that it seemed somehow fake, or at least not entirely genuine. “She must be rage farming the energy drinks that are always next to her,” one user wrote in the comments. In other words, her rants were a marketing stunt.

It turns out TikTok creators are posting stuff that’s intentionally irritating or politically divisive to boost engagement and get more eyeballs on their content, an old trick borrowed from partisans on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The #ragefarming hashtag on TikTok currently has over 720,000 views.

— Louise

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— Reed and Louise