First, it was Anthropic dropping a suite of new models and now Inflection AI is getting in on the fun. 

The startup, founded by Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, which raised a huge $1.3 billion last year, announced its latest flagship model, Inflection-2.5. 

Built on the learnings of Inflection-1, Inflection-2.5 is designed to take on AI heavyweights like GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini. It outperforms the company’s original model fairly significantly and gets close to GPT-4 across several metrics like mathematics, coding, and multi-task language understanding (MMLU). 

While 2.5 doesn’t beat GPT-4 outright, it has to be pointed out that this near-GPT performance has been achieved with much more efficient training. According to the launch announcement, it took only 40% of the FLOPs (compute) of GPT-4 to get to this level. 

Inflection-2.5 is currently powering the company’s chatbot, Pi. If you’re new to Pi, it’s the company's alternative to ChatGPT, and it strikes a more empathetic, witty, and fun tone. Back when it launched last year, it was particularly adept at offering personal and emotional advice, with its human-like voice setting it apart. 

Currently, Inflection-2.5 is available to play around in Pi on iOS, Android, web, and desktop, and the chatbot itself boasts an average conversation time of 33 minutes with over 4 billion messages exchanged so far. 

https://inflection.ai/inflection-2-5

Inflection-2.5: meet the world's best personal AI

First, it was Anthropic dropping a suite of new models and now Inflection AI is getting in on the fun.   The startup, founded by Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, which raised a huge $1.3 billion last year, announced its latest flagship model, Inflection-2.5.   Built on the learnings of Inflection-1, Inflection-2.5 is designed to take on AI heavyweights like GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini. It outperforms the company’s original model fairly significantly and gets close to GPT-4 across several metrics like mathematics, coding, and multi-task language understanding (MMLU).   While 2.5 doesn’t beat GPT-4 outright, it has to be pointed out that this near-GPT performance has been achieved with much more efficient training. According to the launch announcement, it took only 40% of the FLOPs (compute) of GPT-4 to get to this level.   Inflection-2.5 is currently powering the company’s chatbot, Pi. If you’re new to Pi, it’s the company's alternative to ChatGPT, and it strikes a more empathetic, witty, and fun tone. Back when it launched last year, it was particularly adept at offering personal and emotional advice, with its human-like voice setting it apart.   Currently, Inflection-2.5 is available to play around in Pi on iOS, Android, web, and desktop, and the chatbot itself boasts an average conversation time of 33 minutes with over 4 billion messages exchanged so far.   https://inflection.ai/inflection-2-5

Todd Smith

Regulators in the U.S. and EU should ramp up their scrutiny. Tim O’Reilly made a very strong case that these deals are anticompetitive because they amass more power under a few firms. 

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ai-has-an-uber-problem?utm_campaign=article_email&utm_content=article-12471&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sg&rc=gzsl71

Regulators in the U.S. and EU should ramp up their scrutiny. Tim O’Reilly made a very strong case that these deals are anticompetitive because they amass more power under a few firms.   https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ai-has-an-uber-problem?utm_campaign=article_email&utm_content=article-12471&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sg&rc=gzsl71

“The economic problem of society…is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.” —Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” Silicon Valley venture capitalists and many entrepreneurs espouse libertarian values. In practice, they subscribe to ...

AI Has an Uber Problem

Bobby

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Microsoft’s recent deal with the AI startup Inflection, according to someone familiar with the situation. The agency is evaluating whether the deal, in which Microsoft paid $650 million for the rights to the company’s technology and hired nearly all of its staff, should be considered an acquisition that Microsoft would have been obligated to report to the government.

Microsoft didn’t buy equity in the startup, but Inflection’s board made the unusual move to redistribute the $650 million that Microsoft paid to Inflection’s shareholders

A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “confident” that it has complied with merger laws and that its deal with Inflection was meant to recruit talent “capable of accelerating Microsoft Copilot,” its AI chatbot software. News of the FTC probe was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/ftc-investigates-microsofts-deal-to-hire-inflection-staff?utm_campaign=%5BREBRAND%5D+%5BTI-AM%5D+Th&utm_content=1095&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio&utm_term=124&rc=gzsl71

In prior eras, a current and aspiring corporate titan would team up via an acquisition, or perhaps a strategic investment through which the titan’s company might get a board seat. Those deals had to submit to a variety of regulatory and shareholder reviews. 

But regulators have their eyes on big tech now. And so instead of acquisitions, these companies are pursuing complex relationships governed by legal documents, undoubtedly hundreds of pages long, that outline all sorts of technology and business rights. They aren’t acquisitions, but they sure involve access to a lot of the things one gets in an acquisition. 

Consider how Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella describes his company’s relationship with OpenAI, in this interview quoted in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman:

“We have all the IP rights and all the capability. If OpenAI disappeared tomorrow, I don’t want any customer of ours to be worried about it, quite honestly, because we have all of the rights to continue the innovation. Not just to serve the product, but we can go and just do what we were doing in partnership ourselves. We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything.”

That sounded a lot like what Natasha, Aaron and I reported today about the structure of a deal Microsoft pulled off this week to hire the people and the leaders of Inflection AI, a struggling AI company. 

That unusual deal included a $620 million licensing payment, a roughly $30 million payment in exchange for the company waiving liability for the mass hiring, and the restructuring of a loan Microsoft had made to the company. That loan was in part to help the company buy Microsoft services, among other things. 

There’s a pattern forming here, and we’re going to see more of it. AI startups are already struggling to compete with Google, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic. They are looking for the exits. Those exits are going to be to the strategic companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) that backed them, loaned them money and sold services to them.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-agreed-to-pay-inflection-650-million-while-hiring-its-staff?rc=hwneun&utm_campaign=article_email&utm_content=article-12471&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sg

In prior eras, a current and aspiring corporate titan would team up via an acquisition, or perhaps a strategic investment through which the titan’s company might get a board seat. Those deals had to submit to a variety of regulatory and shareholder reviews.   But regulators have their eyes on big tech now. And so instead of acquisitions, these companies are pursuing complex relationships governed by legal documents, undoubtedly hundreds of pages long, that outline all sorts of technology and business rights. They aren’t acquisitions, but they sure involve access to a lot of the things one gets in an acquisition.   Consider how Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella describes his company’s relationship with OpenAI, in this interview quoted in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman:  “We have all the IP rights and all the capability. If OpenAI disappeared tomorrow, I don’t want any customer of ours to be worried about it, quite honestly, because we have all of the rights to continue the innovation. Not just to serve the product, but we can go and just do what we were doing in partnership ourselves. We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything.”  That sounded a lot like what Natasha, Aaron and I reported today about the structure of a deal Microsoft pulled off this week to hire the people and the leaders of Inflection AI, a struggling AI company.   That unusual deal included a $620 million licensing payment, a roughly $30 million payment in exchange for the company waiving liability for the mass hiring, and the restructuring of a loan Microsoft had made to the company. That loan was in part to help the company buy Microsoft services, among other things.   There’s a pattern forming here, and we’re going to see more of it. AI startups are already struggling to compete with Google, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic. They are looking for the exits. Those exits are going to be to the strategic companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) that backed them, loaned them money and sold services to them.  https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-agreed-to-pay-inflection-650-million-while-hiring-its-staff?rc=hwneun&utm_campaign=article_email&utm_content=article-12471&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sg

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Nate

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Microsoft’s recent deal with the AI startup Inflection, according to someone familiar with the situation. The agency is evaluating whether the deal, in which Microsoft paid $650 million for the rights to the company’s technology and hired nearly all of its staff, should be considered an acquisition that Microsoft would have been obligated to report to the government.  Microsoft didn’t buy equity in the startup, but Inflection’s board made the unusual move to redistribute the $650 million that Microsoft paid to Inflection’s shareholders  A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “confident” that it has complied with merger laws and that its deal with Inflection was meant to recruit talent “capable of accelerating Microsoft Copilot,” its AI chatbot software. News of the FTC probe was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.  https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/ftc-investigates-microsofts-deal-to-hire-inflection-staff?utm_campaign=%5BREBRAND%5D+%5BTI-AM%5D+Th&utm_content=1095&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio&utm_term=124&rc=gzsl71

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Microsoft’s recent deal with the AI startup Inflection, according to someone familiar with the situation. The agency is evaluating whether the deal, in which Microsoft paid $650 million for the rights to the company’s technology and hired nearly all of its staff, should be considered an acquisition that Microsoft would have been obligated to report to

Briefing: FTC Investigates Microsoft’s Deal to Hire Inflection Staff

Jerome Cody

Cyril

Microsoft is launching a new artificial intelligence hub in London focused on researching and developing large-scale generative AI, the company said on Sunday. The hub will be a part of its newly formed consumer AI organization, overseen by Mustafa Suleyman, former CEO of AI startup Inflection, whom Microsoft hired alongside most of Inflection’s staff in an unusual deal last month.

Todd Smith

A group of likeminded people in Artificial Intelligence are talking about this.