This Week in Australian Startups - Issue #17, 5th April 2023
This Week in Australian Startups - Issue #17, 5th April 2023
It’s been almost 12 years since Marc Andreessen wrote Why Software Is Eating the World, and it seems all the current news is about whether AI will do the same and potentially eat our jobs along the way.
According to Goldman Sachs, about 18% of jobs could be automated with AI. That’s a big number, but with advances in technology, automation always comes and that means manual tasks performed by humans are at risk. The same happened in the industrial revolution, except it didn’t impact white collar workers as much as it did blue collar.
There will be some jobs that can be fully automated, but in its present form at least AI will largely play the same role that technological advancements have - to aid humans.
I was at the AWS Summit yesterday in Sydney where Dimitry Tran Co-Founder of annalise.ai showed how their comprehensive medical imaging AI solutions were assisting medical professionals spot lung cancer early on and in a matter of days. In a customer testimonial video, a senior doctor explicitly mentioned they were not worried about AI replacing their jobs, as it only aided them to do their job better and help more patients and in less time.
But people are worried about AI, and 1,100+ people have signed an open letter asking ‘all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months’ - this includes notable industry leaders like Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk and Emad Mostaque.
AI is developing at a fast pace, and ChatGPT took the world by storm when it came out in December last year, and there should be some thought put into ethical and societal impact.
Unfortunately we’ve already had someone commit suicide based on conversations with an AI chatbot. Time magazine wrote an exclusive on how OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour back in January. In Italy we’ve seen regulators order ChatGPT ban over alleged violation of data privacy laws.
Personally, the most interesting piece I’ve read is by a freshman at Purdue University, Ersei on why they are saying goodbye to Github. Ersei writes that the GitHub has gone south since the Microsoft acquisition, and most notably the way they have trained AI (Copilot X).
The open-source community is as the name suggests an open community and one where giving back and contributing to allow everyone to benefit is fundamental. Ersei writes that GitHub trained their AI by laundering open-source code on GitHub and then turning it into a proprietary software they charge for. Not an equal exchange and the antithesis of the foundations the open-source community is built upon.
There’s a lot to consider on how AI will change, automate and replace the way the world works as we know it today. With every advancement in technology, by nature will lead to redundancies in the way we do things, but it always opens up new economies and jobs. When the computer first came out not many people would have thought how many jobs would be created from this one invention.
Top News
Australia
Amazon Web Services to invest $13bn in expanding Australian cloud computing (ARN | The Guardian)
Australia to ban TikTok on government devices, following US, UK (Al Jazeera)
‘I’m pregnant’: two words rarely heard at an ASX20 board table (AFR)
L’Oreal snaps up Australian skincare brand Aesop in record $3.7 billion deal (SMH | SmartCompany)
$15 billion National Reconstruction Fund passes Senate, setting stage for major investment in renewable and ‘value-adding’ tech (SmartCompany | Startup Daily)
Cut Through Venture's Australian VC Funding Report Q1 2023 (Read Here)
Aussie women in cyber security increases fourfold -- but barriers remain (ARN)
Raising Kiwicorns – Canva OG turned VC investor Mahesh Muralidhar on how to build a New Zealand tech unicorn (Startup Daily)
Around the World
Techstars 2023 State of Innovation Report (Download Here)
The takeaways from Stanford's 386-page report on the state of AI (TechCrunch)
TikTok fined $15.9 million after misusing children's data (Fortune)
Here's What Happens If the US Bans TikTok (Lifehacker)
Lucid to lay off 1,300 employees in restructuring (TechCrunch)
Apple has reportedly started a small number of corporate layoffs (The Verge)
Google to cut down on employee laptops, services and staplers for 'multi-year' savings (CNBC)
TikTok fined $15.9 million after misusing children's data (Fortune)
Salesforce reaches peace agreement with Elliott (Axios)
Google denies Bard was trained with ChatGPT data (The Verge)
Electronic Arts cutting 800 jobs, roughly 6 percent of workforce (The Hill)
Virgin Orbit files for bankruptcy after funding efforts fail (Space)
Microsoft’s Bing chatbot is getting ads (The Verge)
'He Would Still Be Here': Man Dies by Suicide After Talking with AI Chatbot, Widow Says (VICE)
Founder of buzzy financial app Frank arrested, charged with defrauding JPMorgan Chase (CNN)
E3 Has Been Canceled (IGN)
Senate bill seeks to break up Google and Meta ad businesses (Engadget)
Bard and ChatGPT — A Head To Head Comparison (HackerNoon)
Twitter takes its algorithm “open-source,” as Elon Musk promised (The Verge)
Australian Funding Rounds
Perth VC Purpose Ventures raised $37 million in 6 weeks to address chronic underfunding for WA-based startups (Startup Daily)
AirTree backs generative AI content creation and management platform Narrato (TechCrunch)
Drone seeding startup AirSeed Technologies is raising a Series A to deliver on a $200 million carbon capture fund (Startup Daily)
Firefighting virtual reality training startup FLAIM lands $6.7 million Series A (AFR | Startup Daily)
Software Combined snaps up Last Yard (ARN)
International Funding Highlights
Hygraph raises $30M to scale out a new, federated approach to managing digital content (TechCrunch)
The future of SaaS is savings, Spendflo raises $11M Series A (HackerNoon)
Kiwi agtech Halter plants NZ$85 million Series C for its cow collars (Startup Daily)
Autonomous agents and decentralized ML on tap as Fetch AI raises $40M (VentureBeat)
Recruiting marketplace Paraform gets $1.4M backing from Primer Sazze and Twitch founders (TechCrunch)
Orb, which helps B2B companies price their products, raises $19.1M (TechCrunch)
Translucent raises £2.7M to solve multi-entity accounting (Translucent)
Acorns acquires UK's GoHenry, a fintech focused on 6- to 18-year-olds (TechCrunch)