A|I: The AI Times – Public letter escalation: Bengio & Hinton sign another warning

Yoshua Bengio
Plus: Canadian AI computing startup Tenstorrent and LG partner to build chips.

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Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio warn “risk of extinction from AI” in public letter (BETAKIT)

Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Sam Altman are among the signatories of a new, one sentence, public letter that reads: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”


Canadian AI computing startup Tenstorrent and LG partner to build chips (REUTERS)

Canadian AI computer design startup Tenstorrent said on Tuesday it was partnering with South Korea's consumer electronics firm LG Electronics Inc to build chips that power smart TVs, automotive products and data centers.

LG will initially use Tenstorrent's AI chip blueprint to design its own chips, but the partnership is more strategic, said David Bennett, Tenstorrent's chief customer officer.


Ex-Panache, ScaleUp partners team up to launch new early-stage VC fund CMD Capital (BETAKIT)

Long-time Canadian technology startup investors Matt Roberts and David Dufresne have teamed up to launch their own early-stage VC firm, CMD Capital.

CMD Capital aims to raise up to $75 million CAD for startups that use artificial intelligence to solve problems across the B2B and enterprise sectors.


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The AI Founder Taking Credit For Stable Diffusion’s Success Has A History Of Exaggeration (FORBES)

Stability AI became a $1 billion company with the help of a viral AI text-to-image generator and — per interviews with more than 30 people — some misleading claims from founder Emad Mostaque.


Collision nears a one-year Toronto extension, efforts mount for a West Coast alternative (BETAKIT)

With Collision’s long-term future in Toronto still uncertain, efforts are mounting for a British Columbia alternative, as multiple Vancouver organizations have begun exploring the idea of luring Collision to the city.


Google Invests in AI Startup Runway to Wrest Cloud Business From AWS (THE INFORMATION)

Google is investing in Runway, a New York–based startup that lets customers generate video from text descriptions using artificial intelligence it pioneered, at a valuation of around $1.5 billion including the new capital, according to two people familiar with the matter.


SAAS NORTH producer reveals new Vancouver-based INNOVATEwest tech conference (BETAKIT)

A newly-launched website shows that Cube Business Media, the company behind Canadian tech events like SAAS NORTH, TechExit.io, and Tech Talent North, plans to launch a new tech event in Vancouver called INNOVATEwest in 2024.


A survey of the challenges women founders face when fundraising (and how to overcome them) (BETAKIT)

40 women founders from 25 different countries share their views for other women entrepreneurs fundraising.


OpenAI is pursuing a new way to fight A.I. ‘hallucinations’ (CNBC)

OpenAI is looking to fix AI “hallucinations,” when an AI fabricates a statement and presents it as fact, with a newer method for training artificial intelligence models.

OpenAI’s potential new strategy for fighting the fabrications: Train AI models to reward themselves for each individual, correct step of reasoning when they’re arriving at an answer, instead of just rewarding a correct final conclusion.


Report: 2021 VC boom in Canada was short-lived as market resets to pre-pandemic levels (BETAKIT)

A recent report published by BDC Capital, the investment arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada, found that the number of VC deals in 2022 dropped by 12 percent year-over-year, while the total amount invested declined by 34 percent.


AI is hot right now, but it's also being used to cool down buildings (BNN BLOOMBERG)

Companies like BrainBox AI are now using AI to make HVAC systems more predictive and intelligent.

The AI-driven systems use numerous factors including outside weather, forecasts, the type and cost of energy being used at different times, emissions from that energy, and occupancy to optimize a building’s energy usage and to lower emissions.


AbCellera receives $300 million in combined government funding for biotech campus (BETAKIT)

Vancouver-based AbCellera will receive $300 million through the Strategic Innovation Fund to upgrade existing facilities throughout Vancouver and to develop a “state-of-the-art” biotech campus featuring a preclinical antibody-development facility.


AI Deepfakes of True-Crime Victims Are a Waking Nightmare (ROLLING STONE)

“Grandma locked me in an oven at 230 degrees when I was just 21 months old,” the cherubic baby with giant blue eyes and a floral headband says in the TikTok video.

The baby, who speaks in an adorably childish voice atop the plaintive melody of Dylan Mathew‘s “Love Is Gone,” identifies herself as Rody Marie Floyd, a little girl who lived with her mother and grandmother in Mississippi. She recounts that one day, she was hungry and wouldn’t stop crying, prompting her grandmother to put her in the oven, leading to her death.

“Please follow me so more people know my true story,” the baby says at the end of the video.


BenchSci closes $95-million CAD Series D to expand AI drug-discovery platform (BETAKIT)

Toronto-based BenchSci, which helps pharmaceutical firms accelerate research and development using artificial intelligence, has secured $95 million CAD in Series D funding.


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Alex Riehl

Alex Riehl

Alex Riehl is a staff writer and newsletter curator at BetaKit with a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University. He's interested in tech, gaming, and sports. You can find out more about him at alexriehl.com or @RiehlAlex99 on Twitter.

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