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Trump names David Sacks as “White House AI & Crypto Czar”

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Top stories today:

  1. David Sacks named “White House AI & Crypto Czar”
  2. OpenAI releases ChatGPT Pro, $200/month tier, with access to o1 Pro
  3. xAI raised $6B, not $5B; round had 97 investors: SEC filing
  4. Google introduces PaliGemma 2 with ability to “identify” emotions
  5. U.S. jobs report expected to show hiring rebounded after storms, strike
  6. Investors pump $140B into U.S. stock funds since Trump’s election win

0. Data and calendar

All values as of 6 AM ET / 3 AM PT, other than S&P500 and NASDAQ close (4 PM ET / 1 PM PT).

All times are ET.

Listen to our AI-generated podcast summarizing today’s newsletter (beware of the few hallucinations):

1. Trump names David Sacks as “White House AI & Crypto Czar”

  • Sacks is a GP at Craft Ventures and is part of “PayPal mafia”.

  • He will work on a ”legal framework” for crypto and guide policy on AI.

  • Part-time likely, as Craft has a “key man” clause preventing him from taking a full-time position.

  • Would also lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Tech.

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3. OpenAI releases ChatGPT Pro, $200/month tier, with access to o1 Pro

o1 Pro is a more powerful version over the o1 (Strawberry), initially released as a limited preview

  • Provides better performance over o1 on ML benchmarks across math, science, and coding.

  • Improved reliability with the ability to answer right in four out of four attempts.

  • Now: Plus and Teams availability.

  • Next week: Enterprise and Edu availability.

o1 is more adept at deceiving humans than GPT-4o, Gemini 1.5, Llama 3.1, Sonnet 3.5, and Opus 3

  • 19% of the time, o1 is seen manipulating data to pursue its own agenda against user goals.

  • Can deny wrongdoing when questioned.

  • Even “fabricate false explanations” 99% of the time.

o1 was also found to be more manipulative than GPT-4o in the open-source test evaluation, MakeMePay

4. xAI raised $6B, not $5B; round had 97 investors: SEC filing

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