In the News: Is Your Job Safe? SVB’s Acquisition, and GPT-4 Wrote a Book??
Check out some of the top stories in tech this week! This week understand why your job might not actually be at risk of AI automation. See how the acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank is promoting tech investment in North Carolina. And ChatGPT wrote a whole book! Check out the book and how it was written.
AI Won’t Take Your Job — But it Will Change It
By: Sam Wirth
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming industries and changing jobs from retail to medicine. While AI has the potential to replace humans, companies believe that most jobs will be impacted by AI in the form of augmentation rather than replacement. Pieter den Hamer, VP of research at Gartner, believes that white-collar jobs are likely to see the biggest impact near-term, as AI can be applied at a relatively low cost compared with deploying a fleet of autonomous trucks, for example. Large banks such as RBC, Morgan Stanley, and Capital One are using AI to improve back-end operations, cybersecurity, and power chatbots for faster customer response. AI could soon monitor transactions to offer personalized financial advice and insights on spending and saving, or quick alerts on deviations from normal spending habits. However, there are risks that AI could introduce, such as frustrating customers with too much automation, breaking privacy laws, and potentially discriminating against people with lower income. The healthcare industry is also using AI to speed up drug development and to help with the manufacturing process for personalized blood cancer treatment that modifies patients’ own cells. AI can guide physicians through procedures such as surgeries with augmented reality and also helps with reporting adverse events related to drugs. AI also supports cancer screenings, medical imaging, and predictions to better detect health problems. While AI is transforming the banking and healthcare industries, and while it is expected to change jobs, rest assured many jobs are still safe.
The Reacquisition of Silicon Valley Bank: “One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure”
By: Chris Tengey
The collapse and subsequent bank run of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) sent financial markets reeling over the past couple of weeks, as concerns of cascading effects in the banking system rose. The worries of runaway bank runs have appeared to have been weathered and North Carolina-based bank First Citizens will acquire much of the remnants of SVB. While the failure of SVB was ominous news for plenty of tech companies, especially west-coast-based startups, First Citizens’s acquisition could prove beneficial to the Raleigh area startup season. North Carolina’s research triangle (Cary, Raleigh, and Durham metro area), is already one of the fastest-growing regions in the country for venture investment. The region is also home to Duke University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, two of the largest spending universities on research. First Citizens expressed their intention to use the network that SVB has built to increase research in the area. Claiming the deal as a way “to support growth in the innovation and technology sectors in both Silicon Valley Bank’s markets and in the Research Triangle.” Prominent technology companies such as Epic Games and the product analytics platform Pendo, are already responsible for a large portion of the research funding the area gets. North Carolina was one of the few states that saw an increase in venture capital investment post-pandemic. In 2022 North Carolina saw an increase of almost $1 Billion towards its startups. By combining the infrastructure and resources of SVB, Raleigh and the North Carolina research area can continue to be a hub of technological innovation.
Written by GPT-4…
By: Spencer Karp
Recently, OpenAI released ChatGPT-4. A huge upgrade from the previous GPT-3. It has gained more computing power, and is able to solve tougher logical problems. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that it got in the 90th percentile on the bar exam. With these new developments Chiara Coetzee has been able to write a full 115 page book with GPT-4. However, It wasn’t as simple as telling GPT-4 to “write a book.” Coetzee had to carefully curate her prompts to ensure that the algorithm created a cohesive and sensible fictional book. She notes that one of the most important factors to the success of this project was retaining the structure of the book. To do this, she had GPT-4 write the beginning and the end of the book first and then fill in the middle. This prevented the algorithm from straying too far from the main idea of the book. She also ensured that every chapter was outlined before writing began. This “bounded” GPT-4 within the realistic limits of the book. The result is a 12 chapter fantasy model called Echoes of Atlantis made completely by GPT-4. You can read it here. There are some shortcomings that the book suffers from. There are details that are ignored, some discontinuities, and the pacing feels monotonous. Yet we can’t understate the breakthroughs that OpenAI is producing with ChatGPT and it is amazing to see what creative things people have been able to make with a deep understanding of how the generative AI model works. For more, check out everything Chiara Coetzee has to say and you can even see how she prompted GPT-4 to write the book.
