One of the twists in the AI wars has been Google sort of bouncing back, this surge by Gemini versus OpenAI's ChatGPT. Sam Altman calling this code red. You've said before that it's hard to know who a winner will be. Interestingly, on Pivot, we thought Google was going to do this because they had all the pieces. If they didn't, what a bunch of idiots, that kind of thing.
"The vast majority of Codex is built by Codex," OpenAI told us about its new AI coding agent. In interviews with Ars Technica this week, OpenAI employees revealed the extent to which the company now relies on its own AI coding agent, Codex, to build and improve the development tool. "I think the vast majority of Codex is built by Codex, so it's almost entirely just being used to improve itself," said Alexander Embiricos, product lead for Codex at OpenAI, in a conversation on Tuesday.
It may sound like a trip through the produce aisle, but leading AI companies have something much more important on their lists. Meta, OpenAI, and Google have all relied on food-related names for their sometimes secretive plans for future AI models. Thinking with your stomach is nothing new for Silicon Valley, just look at the assortment of desserts Android assembled over the years before Google had its fill.
An anti-AI activist in California has been missing for about two weeks, according to The Atlantic, and now his friends are scared for his safety while San Francisco police fear he could target OpenAI employees. The activist in question, a 27 year old named Sam Kirchner, helped start the Stop AI group last year with a commitment to non-violent protest, but became frustrated and angry that the group's efforts didn't go quickly or far enough as he increasingly saw AI as a
"It takes about $80 billion to fill up a one-gigawatt data center," he said. "That's today's number. If one company is going to commit 20-30 gigawatts, that's $1.5 trillion of [capital expenditure]." Considering the "total commits" of "chasing AGI" amounts to 100 gigawatts, he reasoned, that's "$8 trillion of [capital expenditure]." "It's my view that there's no way you're going to get a return on that because $8 trillion of [capital expenditure] means you need roughly $800 billion of profit just to pay for the interest," he concluded.
Zuckerberg, Chen said, has personally "hand-cooked" and "hand-delivered" soup to researchers he wanted to recruit away from OpenAI. And it wasn't a joke, the executive insisted. "It was shocking to me at the time," Chen admitted. But in Silicon Valley, if the enemy brings broth, you must respond in kind. Chen confessed he has now adopted the tactic, delivering soup to his own recruits as he hopes to poach talent from Meta.
