IBL News

Author: IBL News

  • Chegg’s Value Fell Nearly 50% As ChatGPT Started to Hurt Revenues

    Chegg’s Value Fell Nearly 50% As ChatGPT Started to Hurt Revenues

    IBL News | New York

    California-based Chegg (CHGG.N), which provides online study guides, saw its shares tumble after the company admitted that ChatGPT is hurting its growth.

    Its revenue would be between $175 million and $178 million this quarter, far below the analyst consensus estimate of $193.6 million.

    Chegg shares were down 48.41% to $9.06 during Tuesday trading. That means nearly $1 billion in market valuation.

    “In the first part of the year, we saw no noticeable impact from ChatGPT on our new account growth and we were meeting expectations on new sign-ups,” CEO Dan Rosensweig said during the earnings call this Monday. “However, since March we saw a significant spike in student interest in ChatGPT. We now believe it’s having an impact on our new customer growth rate.”

    Chegg is developing its own AI assistant, CheggMate, which is meant to help students with their homework. The product is built in collaboration with OpenAI. However, analysts estimate that the impact of the product is uncertain.

    Across the education sector share fell sharply on Tuesday as

    Overall, investors bet that artificial intelligence could upend business models in the education sector.

    Pearson’s share fell by 15% while language-learning platform Duolingo was down by 10%, Coursera by 6.68%, 2U by 15.32%, and Udemy by 5%.

  • OpenAI Attracts Another $300 Million From Prominent VCs At $29 Billion Valuation

    OpenAI Attracts Another $300 Million From Prominent VCs At $29 Billion Valuation

    IBL News | New York

    Venture Capital firms — including Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, and K2 Global — have put in over $300 million at a valuation of $27 billion – $29 billion in OpenAI, TechCrunch reported.

    Outside investors now own more than 30% of OpenAI. The company declined to comment or confirm the story. This is separate from the $10 billion investment from Microsoft, which has integrated OpenAI’s APIs with its Azure infrastructure and Office 365 productivity suite.

    OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been a hit, with more than 1 billion visitors to its website in February, says SimilarWeb.

    In addition, hundreds of businesses have started deploying GPT and ChatGPT into their products and services.

  • Quora Issues a Feature to Launch User-Created Bots

    Quora Issues a Feature to Launch User-Created Bots

    IBL News | New York

    Q&A site Quora issued this week a new feature on its chatbot Poe that allow users to make their own chatbot based on a short text prompt and an existing bot, like ChatGPT, as the base.

    Poe is the latest product from Quora as the company tries to expand into the search market by allowing consumers to play with technologies like OpenAI and Anthropic via simple mobile interfaces.

    The new chatbot offers the ability for users to create their own bots using prompts — that is, adding text to direct a chatbot to perform as a favorite author, in a particular format, or aimed at a certain audience, among other things. Poe targets a new creator class within the field of prompt engineering.

    Once created, the chatbot, based on either Claude or ChatGPT, will have its own unique URL (poe.com/botname). Users will access the bots via Poe’s iOS app or Android app on mobile or via its desktop web interface.

    “It’s amazing how much value prompting can unlock from language models,” Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo said.

    Quora plans to offer bot creators feedback about how people are using their the tool, along with an API that would allow anyone to host more complex bots from a server they operate potential. It’d a new business for Quora, as well.

    To date, the mobile app version of Poe has 1.17 million installs and has generated $520,000 in gross revenue, according to app intelligence firm data.ai. The app is currently ranked No. 32 in the Productivity category on the App Store.

  • Chegg Will Launch in May a Personalized AI Companion for Its Students

    Chegg Will Launch in May a Personalized AI Companion for Its Students

    IBL News | New York

    The learning platform Chegg (NYSE: CHGG) announced the launch of CheggMate, an AI conversational study companion built with OpenAI’s GPT-4, in May 2023.

    The Santa Clara, California – based company explained that CheggMate will deliver personalized learning pathways, tailor-made quizzes and tests, and help guide for each student’s journey.

    Students will be able to input a written text, photo, math query, or diagram in order to get answers, drill down into concepts they don’t understand, or master subjects.

    “CheggMate will enable students to have an instantaneous AI conversation that is personalized to their learning style and needs, supported by our substantial proven and reliable content library,” said Dan Rosensweig, CEO & President of Chegg, Inc.

    “We believe AI has the potential to provide tailored learning experiences to everyone and improve the way people around the world learn,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. “We are very excited to work with Chegg, given their history as the leading student-first learning platform.”

    “Chegg understands learners like no one else. We are building generative AI into our powerful and proprietary learning tools to support students’ active engagement in their learning process,” said Nina Huntemann, Ph.D, Chief Academic Officer of Chegg Inc.

    Chegg’s personalized AI companion will offer the ability for students to pick up exactly where they left off or begin new learning interactions at any time, according to the company.

    The company plans to open a limited access of CheggMate in May 2023.

  • AI-Powered Platform iLearningEngines, to List on NASDAQ Via Merger

    AI-Powered Platform iLearningEngines, to List on NASDAQ Via Merger

    IBL News | New York

    Bethesda, Maryland-based training software company iLearningEngines Inc has agreed to go public on Nasdaq through a merger with blank-check company Arrowroot Acquisition Corp (ARRW.O) in a SPAC deal that values the combined company at $1.4 billion.

    The deal will provide iLearningEngines with $143 million in gross proceeds, some of which will be used for future acquisitions.

    This publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company is sponsored by Arrowroot Capital, a 10-year-old private equity firm specializing in enterprise software.

    iLearningEngines supplies companies with personalized training materials using AI-powered automation tools and software.

    Founded in 2010, the company builds “Knowledge Clouds” from an organization’s internal and external content and data, creating a central repository of all enterprise intellectual property. Then, it distributes knowledge into enterprise workflows in order to drive autonomous learning, intelligent decision making, and process automation.

    The company is a profitable $300 million annual revenue business that provides services to companies in 12 core verticals, including industries like oil & gas, education, healthcare and insurance.

    Arrowroot Acquisition Corp raised $290 million through its initial public offering in 2021, with the aim of merging with companies in the enterprise software sector.

    iLearningEngines, a company with over 100,000 engineering research and development hours invested in its platform, priced the deal at 3.3x estimated 2023 revenue.

    The combined company will continue to be led by iLearningEngines’ existing CEO and founder, Harish Chidambaran.

    Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) startups globally have raised about $12.1 billion so far this year, according to PitchBook.
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  • edX Launches “Try It Courses”, an Initiative that Offers a Free Preview of Boot Camps

    edX Launches “Try It Courses”, an Initiative that Offers a Free Preview of Boot Camps

    IBL News | New York

    2U’s edX platform announced this month the launch of a new initiative named Try It Courses.

    The idea is based on one-two hour introductory, ungraded, online courses designed to give learners a preview of in-demand skills — such as Python, UI/UX Design Thinking, HTML, GitHub — and gain familiarity with these technical subjects before they make the decision to enroll into full boot-camps offered in edX in partnership with 50 non-profit colleges.

    Each course includes one hour of instruction and one hour of practical exercise, followed by a brief assessment.

    “It’s a meaningful, accessible on-ramps to online education opportunity offered by top universities or leading companies,” said Anant Agarwal, Founder of edX and 2U’s Chief Platform Officer.

    Currently, the portfolio of courses include the following:

    edX plans to launch additional Try It Courses that connect learners to its degree portfolio and executive education courses.

    According to a report of World Economic Forum, half of all employees worldwide would need to reskill or upskill by 2025. And a recent survey by IBM, found that 40% of employees said the greatest barrier to professional skill development is knowing where to start.
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  • Sal Khan Demoed Khanmigo AI Tutor Described As “A Teacher’s Aide on Steroids” [Video]

    Sal Khan Demoed Khanmigo AI Tutor Described As “A Teacher’s Aide on Steroids” [Video]

    IBL News | New York

    Khan Academy’s Founder & CEO Sal Khan demoed its Khanmigo AI tutor during the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit, held in San Diego on April 17–19.

    Powered with OpenAI’s GPT-4, this classroom assistant was described by Sal Khan “as a teacher’s aide on steroids that will unlock a whole new dimension of learning that was science fiction a few months ago.” 

    The American nonprofit educational organization Khan Academy started using Khanmigo as a personalized learning tool a few weeks ago. It spent over six months of prompt-engineering with the help of pedagogical experts.

    During its talk, Khan said, “Kids are going to cheat, and if someone doesn’t put guardrails around it, it won’t capture the benefits, and that was our framework around Khanmigo.”

    “We’ve already started using AI not just to help the teachers with lesson plans and to help the students but to help communication between the parents and teachers and students. The future is where the teacher talks to AI and says, ‘What are the kids up to?’ And the AI says, ‘Three kids finished that assignment and three kids haven’t, and I helped Billy with binomials, and a couple of students are having trouble so let’s put a rubric together.”
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    Also, Sal Khan gave a recent TED talk, with a similar demo. The founder of Khan Academy highlighted that “We’re at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.”

     

  • Users Will Be Able to Turn Off Their Chat History in ChatGPT

    Users Will Be Able to Turn Off Their Chat History in ChatGPT

    IBL News | New York

    OpenAI.com is now letting users to disable their chat history in ChatGPT so it won’t be used to train the AI company’s model. The San Francisco – based research company said that when chat history is turned off, it will retain the new conversations only for 30 days to review them if necessary to monitor for abuse. Later, they will be permanently deleted.

    A new Export option will be available in the settings sidebar, allowing users to submit a file containing their conversations and relevant data via email.

    Analysts saw these moves as a privacy safeguard for people who share sensitive information with OpenAI’s chatbot.

    In addition, the company announced that it will launch “in the coming months” a Business subscription for professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.

    OpenAI summarized in ten tasks what ChatGPT allows to do:

  • Generative AI Will Affect 80% of All Occupations, A Research Cautions

    Generative AI Will Affect 80% of All Occupations, A Research Cautions

    IBL News | New York

    Generative AI and GTP (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models will significantly influence or augment at least 80% of all occupations, but not necessarily replace them. Jobs requiring a college education will see the highest impacts, with half of the tasks performed by people affected.

    These are the main findings of a research paper from OpenAI, OpenResearch, and the University of Pennsylvania.

    “Considering each job as a bundle of tasks, it would be rare to find any occupation for which AI tools could do nearly all of the work,”     researchers observe.

    Programming and writing skills are more likely to be influenced by generative AI. They include the following:

    • Interpreters and translators
    • Survey researchers
    • Poets, lyricists, and creative writers
    • Animal scientists
    • Public relations specialists
    • Writers and authors
    • Mathematicians
    • Tax preparers
    • Financial quantitative analysts
    • Web and digital interface designers

    Tasks involving science and critical thinking skills are less likely to be affected.

    The authors caution that accurately predicting future job applications in the labor market is a significant challenge, even for experts.

    However, they add that some occupations may eventually disappear, but those that can harness the productivity and power of AI will create new innovations and services that improve people’s lives.
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    • Timothy B Lee: Why I’m not worried about AI causing mass unemployment

  • Hugging Face Releases an Open-Source Chatbot Alternative to OpenAI’s

    Hugging Face Releases an Open-Source Chatbot Alternative to OpenAI’s

    IBL News | New York

    Hugging Face, a leading AI startup valued at $2 billion, launched today an open-source chatbot named HuggingChat.

    This chatbot is designed to be an alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and is part of a growing trend of open-source alternatives in the AI industry.

    The AI model of HuggingChat was developed by a German nonprofit Open Assistant.

    “We want to build the assistant of the future, capable of not only writing emails and cover letters but also performing meaningful work, using APIs, dynamically researching information, and much more, with the ability to be personalized and extended by anyone,” wrote Open Assistant on its GitHub page.

    However, this chatbot can easily make mistakes and hallucinates, as shown in the image below, captured during a test at IBL News.

    “HuggingChat can derail quickly depending on the questions it’s asked — a fact Hugging Face acknowledges in the fine print,” TechCrunch wrote.

    HuggingChat is part of a growing list of open-source alternatives to ChatGPT. Last week, Stability AI released StableLM, a set of models that can generate code and text based on basic instructions.


     

    Stability Releases Its New LLM, Open-Source, and Free to Use Commercially

    Open-Source Initiatives Challenge Closed, Proprietary AI Systems With New LLMs