Gm. The TikTok algorithm lives to see another day. Thank the heavens.

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POLLS

Good job here people:

Hip Hop: “Fun and expressive” Correct.

EDM: “Euphoric, perfect for dance OR work OR sleep” Ah man do I have stories about EDM.

Rock…You’re all boomers. Nah jk rock is cool too.

Got a thought-provoking one for you all today

🏠 AI

ChatGPT On The Go

In recent weeks, there has been an increasing number of reports on the race to bring generative AI capabilities to mobile phones. Makes sense. Not only do people primarily surf the web on their phones, but it would actually be cheaper to maintain mobile AI models.

AI on phones was inevitable, the only question was who would get there first. Well, we now know the answer, and it’s a predictable one:

OpenAI.

The ChatGPT App

Yep, the leader in AI development has done it once again with the release of the official ChatGPT iOS app.

The app is free to use and brings all of ChatGPT’s features to your dopamine addiction enabler phone:

• Sync your history across your devices.

• Offers GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 for ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

• Integrates Whisper, OpenAI’s open-source speech-recognition system, enabling voice input.

• Can generally do everything that the desktop version can do.

Sounds pretty cool, and it looks even cooler.

But, for OpenAI’s Big Tech peers, this news is not all sunshine and rainbows.

A Damaging Blow?

As TechCrunch correctly points out (credit where credit is due), Apple and Google have to be sweating at least a little bit from this news.

On the Apple front, it’s well known that Siri isn’t up to par and they are lagging behind on AI. On the Google front, they are on an all-out push to modernize (translation: add AI to) search (translation: what pays their bills).

What if people start using Whisper instead of Siri? What if they start using ChatGPT instead of google? Is this the beginning of a new world order, or the kick-in-the-ass the incumbents need to get in gear?

All we can do is wait and see.

The Big Picture: With mobile ChatGPT, plugins, Altman’s Congressional testimony, and a new open-source model all coming this week, OpenAI has re-established itself as THE dominant AI force.

🏠 LEGAL

Section 230 Is (Thankfully) Safe

Back in the pre-SVB collapse days, we wrote about Gonzalez v. Google, a Supreme Court case that was to determine the fate of the all-important Section 230.

As a quick refresher:

• Gonzalez was brought by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a US citizen who died during a terror attack in France.

• The family accused YouTube and Google of being at least partly responsible for Nohemi’s death because their algorithms recommended extremist content to the terrorist.

• But, for the plaintiffs to win, the Court would have to change Section 230, the law that gives internet companies legal protection for basically all third-party content hosted on their sites.

Without Section 230, the internet would look much different. Every current algorithm would be obsolete. Gates would be thrown up everywhere you turn. AI search engines would be impossible to run.

So, yeah, lot at stake here. And now we have an official answer.

In two rulings, both Gonzales v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh (same premise, just for Twitter), the Court definitively affirmed Section 230.

The reasoning? Just because social media sites host undesirable content doesn’t mean they are liable for how people react to that content.

Hear that?

That’s the sound of Silicon Valley taking a collective sigh of relief.

Why should I care? If you like TikTok, Bing, ChatGPT, YouTube, or any other internet site that uses an algorithm, you should be mailing the Supreme Court a thank you letter.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

What else is going on?

• Montana has officially banned TikTok.

• Mojo may be the biggest programming language advance in decades.

• Researchers were able to treat severe depression by reversing brain signals.

• StableDiffusion released StableStudio, the open-source version of their DreamStudio text-to-image app.

Stat: $187.7 Million: How much VCs invested into deepfake startups in 2022, up bigly from just $1 million in 2017. Fire up ChatGPT boys, we’re about to be rich.

Rabbit hole: Galton, Ehrlich, Buck (Astral Codex Ten)

🤑 FUNDING FRIDAY

If you want a full list of startup raises including all the boring ones, you can go check Crunchbase. If you want the 2 coolest raises of the week, then check here every Friday.

🌕 Moon Surgical

Modern medicine is a marvel, and it can get a whole lot better once robots start handling surgeries. Don’t believe me? Robot surgeries are already saving lives.

That future medical utopia got a bit closer this week with Moon Surgical’s $55.4M raise. What Moon Surgical does is provide surgeons with a robotic assistant to aid in soft tissue procedures, increasing the chances of a successful surgery.

Robots may not be good for everything, but they are definitely good here.

🧠 Somethings

Depression is on an all-time bull-run right now. And it’s especially affecting the youth population. Thankfully, there are some promising futuristic solutions in development, but for now, good old talk therapy is still the holy grail of treatment. The problem is that good therapy can be difficult to find, especially for young people.

Enter Somethings, a startup that connects teenagers with trained mentors who provide mental health assistance. It’s a straightforward but effective idea, and it’s one that VCs believe in, as they just closed a $3.2M seed round.

That’s an idea worth supporting.

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we came across this weekend that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

🎴 Gamma instantly produces docs, decks, and webpages.

🎳 WebWhiz allows you to create an AI chatbot that knows everything about your product and can instantly respond to your customer's queries.

📄 ScholarTurbo lets you unleash ChatGPT on PDFs.

💉 DOPAMINE HIT

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