All about Inflection, the AI startup that intrigues Bill Gates
Speaking about the future and the impact artificial intelligence (AI) will have on life and business, Bill Gates said he was particularly "impressed" by a couple of startups. One of these is Inflection AI, behind which there are two ex of DeepMind, an AI company controlled by Alphabet (Google), and the co-founder of LinkedIn. All the details
We will all be helpless in the face of the epochal change brought about by artificial intelligence (AI). To say it is not just anyone but Bill Gates, the father of Windows and the Internet as we know it today. According to him, in fact, the rapid progress that generative AI is making will revolutionize the relationship between humans and digital, with significant consequences also for giants such as Google and Amazon.
The real difference, for Gates, will be whoever manages to create "a personal assistant equipped with artificial intelligence" that "will change users' habits". And, again according to the billionaire, there is a 50% chance that the lucky one could be a startup.
He has staked two and one of these is Inflection AI, whose CEO and co-founder Mustafa Suleyman is the former executive of DeepMind, an AI company acquired in 2014 by Alphabet, the holding company that owns Google.
WHAT INFLECTION DOES TO…
“We are an AI studio creating personal AI for everyone.” This describes the startup founded in 2022 in Palo Alto, California. Inflection's first AI is called Pi, which stands for personal intelligence (personal intelligence) and is defined by its creators as "a supportive and empathic conversational AI".
As Suleyman told the Financial Times , “there are a lot of things [Pi] can't do. It won't write lists or codes, it won't plan trips, it won't write your marketing strategy or your school essay […] it was designed solely for relaxed, supportive and informative conversations."
The ambition of Inflection, which is structured as a public utility company, is in fact to develop software capable of making communication between man and computer possible. “If you think about the history of information technology – said Suleyman – we have always tried to reduce the complexity of our ideas to be able to communicate them to a machine. Even when we write a search query, we simplify, reduce, or write in shorthand so that the search engine can figure out what we want.”
…AND WHY IT COULD BE A REVOLUTION
That's why according to Gates whoever manages to create a personal assistant equipped with AI will bring "an epochal upheaval" as "it will ensure that no one will go to a search engine, a productivity site, Amazon".
Not only. Once it is able to understand people's browsing and purchasing needs and habits, it will use them to help them "read the things they don't have time to read".
Furthermore, unlike other chatbots such as ChatGpt or Bard, Inflection shows empathy with the user and for Suleyman “the goal is to make sure that the AI always knows it is an AI and never tries to imitate a human being” .
WHO FOUNDED INFLECTION AI
Together with Suleyman, Inflection AI helped found Karén Simonyan and Reid Hoffman.
Simonyan is Chief Scientist of the startup and is considered among the "most accomplished personalities of his generation" in the field of deep learning . He holds a PhD and a postdoctoral from Oxford and his first company was acquired by DeepMind. Among his experiences with AI, he has had key roles at AlphaZero, AlphaFold, WaveNet, BigGAN and Flamingo.
Hoffman, on the other hand, after a master's degree in philosophy at Oxford embarked on a career as an entrepreneur. He co-founded LinkedIn and is a partner at Greylock, one of the oldest US venture capital firms. Previously, he was a member of the board of directors and executive vice president of PayPal.
Suleyman, CEO of Inflection, is also a Greylock venture partner. At DeepMind, he was responsible for applied AI with a focus on the health and energy sectors and in 2019, he became vice president of AI products and policy at Google. He is also a member of the Economist 's board of directors.
THE TEAM
The team consists of around 30 AI developers, creative designers, writers and world innovators working together in a multidisciplinary way to create a new class of digital experiences.
Heinrich Kuttler, former research engineering manager of Meta AI and Joe Fenton, who left his role as senior product manager at Google, also recently joined the team . Additionally, Maarten Bosma and Rewon Child, two former Google Brain researchers, also boarded Inflection in April, according to LinkedIn reports.
FINANCING
In order to afford the best talent – even stealing it from its competitors – Inflection closed a $225 million “start-up round” with Greylock Partners, which incorporated it, and at the beginning of the year, according to the Financial Times , aimed to raise up to $675 million from investors. However, the company declined to comment on the news.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/tutto-su-inflection-la-startup-di-ia-che-intriga-bill-gates/ on Sun, 28 May 2023 05:55:00 +0000.