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Canadian privacy commissioner launches investigation into ChatGPT (BETAKIT)
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said on Tuesday that the case was launched in response to a “complaint alleging the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information without consent.”
In A.I. race, Microsoft and Google choose speed over caution
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
The urgency to build with the new A.I. was crystallized in an internal email sent last month by Sam Schillace, a technology executive at Microsoft. He wrote in the email, which was viewed by The New York Times, that it was an “absolutely fatal error in this moment to worry about things that can be fixed later.”
Meet the Canadian startups participating in Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 Demo Day (BETAKIT)
Around six Canadian-related startups are participating in Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 cohort including three AI firms.
Business operations focused Ariglad sports its Vancouver origins in the accelerator while tech-support company Sidekick and marketing-booster SpeedyBrand have loose Canaidan connections in their respective co-founders.
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Register for Inventures 2023 today.
Samsung workers made a major error by using ChatGPT
(TECHRADAR)
The company allowed engineers at its semiconductor arm to use the AI writer to help fix problems with their source code. But in doing so, the workers inputted confidential data, such as the source code itself for a new program and internal meeting notes data relating to their hardware.
The upshot is that in just under a month, there were three recorded incidences of employees leaking sensitive information via ChatGPT. Since ChatGPT retains user input data to further train itself, these trade secrets from Samsung are now effectively in the hands of OpenAI, the company behind the AI service.
VCCI-backed Kensington Capital Partners secures $158 million first close for third venture fund (BETAKIT)
Now over halfway towards its $290 million target, Kensington is the first of four fund managers selected by the Government of Canada's Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative to announce it has closed its financing.
With its first close, Kensington Venture Fund III (KVFIII) surpassed the $150 million size of Kensington's last venture fund. KVFIII will serve primarily as a fund-of-funds, backing Canadian venture capital funds, with a quarter of its capital reserved for direct investments in tech startups.
Stability AI is on shaky ground as it burns through cash and looks at a management overhaul (SEMAFOR)
Stability AI, one of the hottest companies in artificial intelligence, is burning through cash and has been slow to generate revenue, leading to an executive hunt to help ramp up sales, according to people familiar with the matter.
Its image generator Stable Diffusion competes with products like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Midjourney. But the name recognition and early traction have not translated into enough revenue to counter sky-high server costs and the rapid recruitment of employees around the world, people familiar with the company say.
Fidu places third at American Bar Association pitch competition (BETAKIT)
Saskatoon-based Fidu placed third place at a pitch competition held by the American Bar Association (ABA) for legaltech startups, placing highest amongst five other Canadian startups that were finalists including AI-focused startups Jurisage AI, Haloo, and Wisedocs.
Anthropic’s $5B, 4-year plan to take on OpenAI (TECHCRUNCH)
A pitch deck for Anthropic’s Series C fundraising round says that it plans to build a “frontier model” — tentatively called “Claude-Next” — 10 times more capable than today’s most powerful AI, but that this will require a billion dollars in spending over the next 18 months.
How startups can access an untapped pool of talent in Canada (BETAKIT)
Pablo Listingart, Executive Director of tech skills school ComIT, explains what founders need to be aware of when hiring rural employees.
Universities express doubt over tool to detect AI-powered plagiarism
(FINANCIAL TIMES)
Turnitin, which is already used by more than 10,000 educational institutions worldwide, is launching a service on Tuesday that it said can identify AI-generated text with 98 percent confidence. OpenAI, makers of popular ChatGPT services, has said its plagiarism detection system works only 26 percent of the time.
Universities are worried the tool may falsely accuse students of cheating and are doubtful it can do the job well given the rapid development of AI.
Yoshua Bengio, major tech leaders call for six-month pause on advanced AI development in open letter (BETAKIT)
“The speed at which (AI development) is moving is outpacing our ability to make sense of it, know what risks it poses, and our ability to mitigate those risks,” Future of Life Institute's Emilia Javorsky said at a press conference.
“Six months gives us the time to create governance around it and to understand it better. It buys us time for those conversations, risk analyses and risk mitigation efforts.”