Turing’s quiet data revolution

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In focus

For this edition, we cover:

• A startup fueling the AI arms race
• Robot brains, anyone?
• Sea Group posts strong Q1 with $411m profit

Hello reader,

I recently asked ChatGPT how many people look themselves up using its app. I did this, of course, right after “googling”* myself on ChatGPT. You know, just to see what Sam Altman has on me.

The app lawyered up. It immediately gave me some weasel words about “publicly available data,” noting that “OpenAI has not released statistics on the frequency of users inquiring about themselves.”

So, yes, they know exactly how often this happens.

(*And Googling? I know, it sounds weird. I asked if there were any new slang terms for using ChatGPT to check one’s online presence. It said there wasn’t, but it did suggest “prompt-stalking.” Creative? No. Darkly accurate? Absolutely.)

It’s a little concerning how a tech that was developed in hopes of connecting people is increasingly making us look inward. But what we all want to know is this: Am I important enough to be scraped into the piles of data that make up the industry’s large language models (LLMs)?

I’ve always assumed that most of what AI models know, they get from online web crawls. But in a recent conversation with Turing CEO Jonathan Siddarth, I learned that I had been missing the obvious: Sometimes data – custom-built by real humans (experts, no less) – is just made to train models for specific applications.

In today’s newsletter, you can find out what Siddarth has to say about data and where it comes from. After all, Turing’s rise to prominence in the AI world is all thanks to its ability to make data for GPT-3.

Then, in Spotlight, you can read about Menlo Research, an AI-focused startup with the stated mission of helping machines see, think, and act in the real world.

If that sounds like a robot, it’s because it is. The company even calls itself the “anti-dumb robot club” on its website. If the prospect of AI-powered robots doesn’t grab your attention, feel free to go back to stalking prompts.

Scott Shuey, journalist and editor

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