✨ Issue #39

Clark Valberg
March 05, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Your weekly briefing on all things AI

The dominance of AI in white-collar work continues to progress. Microsoft’s Copilot for Finance automates routine tasks, while Stack Overflow’s Google partnership enhances the Cloud with expertise, saving developers hours in their workflow. This global AI trend transforms the workplace, ushering in a smart, dynamic era of professional evolution.

📈 Microsoft's Copilot for Finance can summarize, reconcile, & forecast budgets.

👨‍💻 Gemini will be trained on vast, validated, coding questions & answers.

💰 Amazon’s $1B AI and robotics fund is focused on warehouse management.

📰 AI in the News

Revolutionizing Finance Workflows: Introducing Microsoft Copilot for Finance

Microsoft's new Copilot for Finance, part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot suite, is now in public preview. It's already attracting attention from major firms like Dentsu, Northern Trust, and Visa, highlighting its potential to revolutionize finance department operations.

It's designed to automate and enhance finance tasks by integrating AI into tools like Excel and Outlook. Key features include AI-driven variance analysis in Excel, streamlined reconciliation, and automatic customer account summaries in Outlook. These enhancements aim to improve financial accuracy, expedite collections, and easily convert data into presentations.

This role-specific functionality brings a lot of clarity to the value of leveraging AI in your business. The median salary in the US of an entry level financial analyst is over $65k/yr. While true pricing won’t be listed until later this year, Microsoft Copilot’s current pricing is $360/yr per user. (Full Story)

Stack Overflow and Google Cloud Unite: Integrating Expert Knowledge with AI Technology

Stack Overflow is rolling out OverflowAPI, enabling developers to access its comprehensive knowledge base within Google Cloud’s platform. This collaboration also integrates Stack Overflow's expert answers into Google Cloud's Gemini, aiming to enhance the Google Cloud console with a rich layer of validated knowledge.

Similar to what we discussed last week, Stack Overflow’s (and Reddit’s) evaluation/validation systems make their data so much more valuable. This collaboration highlights the crucial role of human expertise in validating AI-generated content, aiming to provide developers with a reliable, efficient toolset that combines the best of human insight and artificial intelligence.

We are far from being able to rely solely on AI for coding, but things get interesting when you consider that a senior developer costs about $40k/yr more than a junior developer, but a junior developer that leverages AI tools like these could theoretically be equally effective as a senior developer that isn’t. (Full Story)

📈 Venture Deals

Glean raised $200M for its AI-powered work assistant (link)
Abridge raised $150M for AI model for clinicians (link)
Exodigo raised $105M to make underground maps (link)
AI Chip Startup DeepX Nears $90 Million in Fresh Funding (link)
Intenseye raised $64M to develop AI that can detect and help fix potential hazards in the workplace (link)
Fabric raised $60M to grow its conversational healthcare platform (link)
Napier raised £45M for its financial crime and regulation technology compliance software (link)
Qloo raised $25M to expand cultural reach with AI (link)
Bria raised $24M for its image generator trained on licensed content (link)
Collov AI raised $10M to revolutionize home furnishing (link)

💡 Industry Impacts

⚖️ Legal

OpenAI’s Altman Probed Over Possible Investor Miscommunication: The SEC is investigating OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, for potentially misleading investors during a November boardroom crisis. This probe focuses on Altman's communications and his brief removal as CEO, which was reversed after an employee pushback. The investigation highlights concerns as OpenAI, valued at $80 billion, faces scrutiny from antitrust regulators in both the U.S. and Europe. (link)

🔐 Cyber Security

Here Come the AI Worms: In a demonstration by Ben Nassi from Cornell Tech, Stav Cohen from the Israel Institute of Technology and Ron Bitton from Intuit, the Morris II worm capable of breaking the safeguards of AI models and directing them to steal sensitive data like social security numbers and credit card information. (link)

🏡 Real Estate

Redefining Prime Real Estate: The rise of AI is driving a surge in demand for data centers, now considered prime real estate. These centers, often situated in regions like Northern Virginia and Columbus, Ohio, are essential for AI technology due to their ability to process and store vast amounts of data. (link)

✈️ Travel / Tourism

Dublin Tourism Enhanced by AI-Itinerary Tool: OpenAI has partnered with Dublin City Council to create "A Day in Dublin," an AI-based tool designed to customize travel plans for tourists using GPT-4. This collaboration, part of Dublin's initiative as the European Capital of Smart Tourism, aims to enhance visitor experiences through technology. It includes a workshop to investigate more AI uses in tourism, highlighting a shared focus on innovative tourism solutions. (link)

🛠️ Tool of the Week

Glean is changing the game with enterprise search, using generative AI to create a personalized knowledge graph that gives you accurate, AI-generated answers. They integrate with over 100 connectors (no vendor lock-in here!) plus, they support various Large Language Models (LLMs) so you can find the best fit for your business needs. The median salary in the US of an entry level data analyst is over $92k/year.

Glean

More Tools

Emilio: An AI for your inbox. What set’s Emilio apart is it’s ability to provide a digest of all your unread emails.
Dataiku: A platform that enables businesses to build and deploy AI and machine learning models, simplifying data science and analytics workflows for teams of all skill levels.
Desksense: Embed generative AI into your regular internet usage with a chrome extension that you can use while browsing, in docs, and in emails.
Runecontent: Make learning course templates on any topic instantly.