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Top stories today:
1. Twitter will host Tucker Carlson's new show
2. Twitter launching encrypted DMs, to launch voice and video chat
3. OpenAI uses GPT-4 to explain neuron behavior in GPT-2
4. Meta announces ImageBind, multimodal AI to analyze information
5. Biden open to 14th Amendment as debt ceiling meeting fails to yield deal

0. Data and calendar

1. Twitter will host Tucker Carlson's new show

• Much younger audience: the median age of Fox News viewers was 65; on Twitter, it's 40. - Insider

• Carlson is suing Fox to get out of his contract, which would expire in January 2025, alleging fraud and breach of contract. - Axios

Elon denies any special deal was made with Carlson

Our view: Twitter is a threat to Youtube

• Twitter video is Youtube with easy shareability and comments from the world's most influential thinkers.

  • Watching Tucker Carlson get @CommunityNoted will undoubtedly be fun. It'll be interesting to watch if he continues with his election and vaccine conspiracies in a world of online fact-checking.

2. Twitter launching encrypted DMs, to launch voice and video chat

Our view: firing 80% of the staff hasn't slowed Elon

• He is rapidly transforming Twitter into a super-app. New features are coming at a rapid pace: paid subscriptions, long-form videos, audio and video calls, and certainly more to come.

• Encrypted communication is particularly helpful for users living under or exposed to authoritarian regimes, which is over half the population. It can also be extremely useful for sources to leak confidential material to the press.

3. OpenAI uses GPT-4 to explain neuron behavior in GPT-2

• Explanatory power is still very low: only 1K+ neurons, out of 307K neurons, had an “explanation score” of 0.8 or more.

• Code is fully open-source. And they're asking for community input: “We hope the research community will develop new techniques for generating higher-scoring explanations and better tools for exploring GPT-2 using explanations.”  - Techcrunch, OpenAI

• Sam Altman to testify on Tue to Congress: Senate panel about AI safety and regulation. - WaPost

Chief AI doomer Yudkowsky praised this work, saying that it can help with AI alignment

• Meanwhile, Anthropic is promoting “constitutional AI” as an early experiment to potentially improve alignment, in contrast to reinforcement learning from human feedback, or RLHF. - The Verge

Our view: this research work is important to reduce doomer risk and improve AI capabilities

• Understanding how LLMs work behind the scenes can be crucial to:

  • Learning how to modify specific neurons to improve alignment and reduce the odds of AIs killing humanity

  • Discovering new post-Transformer methods to make LLMs more scalable and intelligent.

4. Meta announces ImageBind, multimodal AI to analyze multiple forms of information

• Analyzes, doesn't generate new text. So less interesting for consumers, and more useful as a backend API. - The Verge, Meta

• Just an announcement. Like Google, Meta likes to announce products and publish papers, but rarely releases them. Certainly not bullish for the company.

5. Biden open to 14th Amendment as debt ceiling meeting fails to yield deal

• Biden: “I have been considering the 14th Amendment, and [Larry Tribe] thinks that it would be legitimate. But the problem is that it would have to be litigated, and in the meantime, without an extension, it would still end up in the same place.” - POLITICO

  • McCarthy and McConnell are open to defaulting, according to Biden.

• No to $1T coin, but nothing on premium bonds: “Biden also said his staff had not explored the idea for the Treasury Department to mint a trillion-dollar coin that it would deposit with the Federal Reserve to defuse the crisis.” - Bloomberg

  • As a reminder, premium bonds would mean replacing existing bonds with some with super-high coupons. They would have the same face value (the law's criteria for the debt ceiling) but a very different selling price, which means money inside the Treasury's coffers.

• U.S. CDSs pricing in a potential 25x return in case of a default, according to Bloomberg.

• 75% of Republicans are against a debt ceiling hike; 74% of Democrats are for it - WSJ

6. Today at 8:30 AM: CPI release

• CPI: exp. 0.4 MoM / 5.0% YoY in April, from 0.1% / 5.0%

• Core CPI: exp. 0.4% / 5.5%, from 0.4% / 5.6%

7. Today at 1 PM ET: Google I/O

• PaLM 2 / Multimodal Bard is the critical announcement to watch out for. Their new LLM is expected to be comparable to GPT-4. - The Verge

  • It will be great if they actually release new products, rather than just papers.

8. Chart: mentions of “generative AI” on conference calls worldwide

9. Other headlines

AI

• Builder.AI receives investment from Microsoft, to be integrated into 365.

• AI fake news detector Origin raises $3.5M.

• OpenAI tops CNBC Disruptor 50 list.

• Microsoft 365 expands paid AI preview from 20 to 600 companies.

Tech

• Airbnb revenue +20% YoY to $1.82B, first profitable Q1.

• Buzzfeed revenue -27% YoY to $67M, net profit was -$36M; even adjusted EBITDA (a phony metric) was -$20M.

• EA revenue +2% to $1.87B, erases profits.

• Apple to launch new Beats Studio Pro with transparency mode.

• APA says social networks “not inherently beneficial or harmful.”

• iOS virtual machines are legal, judge rules.

Biotech

• Breast cancer screening should start at 40, not 50: health panel.

• Longevity investment roundup.

Business

• U.S. banks’ profits +33% to 80B in Q1.

• Sohn Conference: 11 key insights from Sam Altman, Druckenmiller.

• Fox revenue +18% YoY to $4.08B; gives no apologies for election lies.

• Boeing sells 150-300 737 MAX planes to Ryan Air, deal valued at <$40B.

• India is increasingly seen as the main competitor to China in manufacturing.

• Some retail stores move to suburbs as 5-day commute falls.

Crypto

• Jane Street, Jump pull back crypto trading over regulatory uncertainty.

• SEC's proposed custody rule criticized by JPMorgan, a16z.

• Ex-Coinbase PM sentenced to 2 years for insider trading.

• Biden wants to cut tax loopholes for “wealthy crypto investors.”

• New book on SBF by Axios reporter Brady Dale.

• Grayscale seeks to launch Ethereum Futures ETF, others.

• U.S. extradites UK citizen behind crypto SIM swap attack.

U.S. politics

• Trump to pay $5M for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.

• George Santos criminally charged, charges sealed.

• Schwarzman holds off donating to DeSantis after meeting him.

• 2024 Senate map: 3 tossup states are Dem seats.

• E-verify would be bad for all American workers: Reason.

World

• Russia arrests 14 in anti-war art exhibition in St. Petersburg region.

• China arrests ChatGPT user who allegedly wrote fake articles.

10. Interesting tweets, memes, and images

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