OpenAI in advanced talks with Microsoft for more funding

OpenAI, whose text- and image-generating artificial intelligence has become a mainstream hit, is in advanced talks to raise more funding from Microsoft, which previously backed the startup with capital that includes credits to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing services to develop its technology, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

A new deal could help Microsoft grow Azure usage, one of its top priorities, while keeping OpenAI’s business away from rivals including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

The talks follow a previously undisclosed sale of OpenAI stock by existing shareholders last year to investors including Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, Bedrock Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

In that deal, the price of the shares implied a valuation of nearly $20 billion for the seven-year-old startup, said several people with knowledge of the deal.

A new report on DeFi regulation commissioned by the EU Commission was published.

This report will contribute to the EU policy debate on the topic that is expected to lead to a DeFi report (or even legislation) in 2023.

The report makes 4 policy proposals:

1. Regulate legal entities (macro-prudential provisions etc.)
2. Introduce a voluntary framework for DeFi supervision
3. Establish a public observatory that issues opinions based on public on-chain data ("embedded supervision")
4. Build an approach for oracle supervision/reg.

An interesting report that will definitely contribute to the current discussion across the pond on how DeFi should be approached from a policy/regulatory perspective.

Interpol to offer metaverse police training in virtual bureau, launch expert taskforce

The Interpol metaverse will allow registered users to tour a virtual copy of the Interpol General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, France, it said in a news release.

Users will be able to interact with other officers via their avatars and take immersive training courses in forensic investigation and other policing capabilities.

It has formed an expert metaverse group to "represent the concerns of law enforcement on the global stage — ensuring this new virtual world is secure by design."

Interpol's commitment demonstrates a growing anxiety about the policing of online spaces, which are increasing in popularity as technology develops.

By 2026, one in every four people will spend at least an hour a day in the metaverse to work, study, shop and socialize, according to technology research firm Gartner.

“The metaverse has the potential to transform every aspect of our daily lives with enormous implications for law enforcement,” said Madan Oberoi, Interpol’s executive director of technology and innovation, in a statement. “But in order for police to understand the Metaverse, we need to experience it."

Interpol said that a list of possible offenses may include crimes against children, data theft, money laundering, financial fraud, counterfeiting, ransomware, phishing and sexual assault and harassment. It added that these may present challenges as not all acts that are criminalized in the physical world are considered crimes in the virtual world.

“For many, the Metaverse seems to herald an abstract future, but the issues it raises are those that have always motivated Interpol — supporting our member countries to fight crime and making the world, virtual or not, safer for those who inhabit it,” said Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock in a statement. “We may be entering a new world, but our commitment remains the same."

Glassnode: The Bitcoin Hash Price has reached an all-time-low of $66,500 per Exahash.

This means that BTC miners are earning the smallest reward relative to hashpower applied in history, and likely puts the industry under extreme income stress.

Crypto-friendly Rishi Sunak to become UK Prime Minister

Rishi Sunak, who shepherded the U.K.’s new crypto ambitions during his time as finance minister, has been chosen to be the country’s next Prime Minister following Liz Truss’ controversial exit from office last week.

Sunak was chosen by his fellow Conservative Party members on Monday to replace Truss – who was in office for just 45 days and was forced to resign after her economic stimulus plan quickly unraveled leading to political and economic instability.

During his time as finance minister under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Sunak announced he wanted to turn the U.K. into a crypto hub. He helped usher in the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which, if passed into law, could give local regulators broad power over the crypto industry.

Amazing decentralized science events coming up

Fable’s The Simulation lets you build a society of AIs based on character NFTs

Fable is launching its first town in The Simulation, a place called AI Nouns Town, where owners of NFTs can sign up and adopt AI characters.

Rather than play in a world with AI characters, Fable is letting the AI characters play in the worlds.

And if Fable puts enough of these worlds together, it can become a kind of metaverse.

The Simulation represents a pivot away from AI chatbot characters that enabled one-on-one communication between AI characters and humans.

Each land within The Simulation is kind of like the different lands within Disneyland. Only in this case, there is a different world for each different affiliated NFT. For instance, the company could have worlds dedicated to NFT art characters such as Bored Apes, Doodles, or Deadfellaz. Saatchi thinks of it as a “gonzo AI theme park,” or a Disneyland for NFTs.

The plan is to launch the first world in The Simulation in early 2023.

Apple issues new app store rules for crypto and NFT payments

- Crypto-exchange apps need to have necessary regional licenses.
- NFT sales have to go through Apple’s in-app purchase system.

Crypto spreading across wealthy in Singapore, Hong Kong

Big Four accounting firm KPMG has indicated big interest in the crypto market from the wealthy elite of Singapore and Hong Kong.

KPMG surveyed 30 family offices and high net worth individuals across both regions for its inaugural Investing in Digital Assets report.

58% reported skin in the crypto game while a further 34% intend to allocate funds to bitcoin, stablecoins and ether, as well as decentralized finance (DeFi) opportunities.

KPMG only gathered responses from investors whose assets under management ranged between US$10 to $500 million.

Of the 58% already invested in crypto:
• 100% held bitcoin,
• 87% disclosed ether,
• 60% bought NFTs and other metaverse tokens,
• 47% had DeFi tokens.
Beyond the actual assets, 58% of respondents also said they were investing in crypto service providers including exchanges and software developers.

The study was conducted jointly between KPMG China and financial services company Aspen Digital.

Results were taken during the second quarter of this year. At the time, markets across the board were in turmoil due to macroeconomic conditions, such as rising inflation, taking center stage.

How medical imaging AI makes its predictions

A group of researchers is trying to elucidate how models that predict things like blood clots from medical images actually make those predictions — including by identifying the part of the image that most affects the prediction.

In a recent study in Nature Machine Intelligence, a research team examined how several “saliency methods” stacked up to radiologists.

Spoiler: Not all of them did as well as radiologists when localizing pathologies.

Nearly half of younger people want Crypto exposure in 401(k)s, Schwab Study Says

The young, at least in the US, are leaning less on traditional 401(k)s to save for retirement — increasingly favoring fresh options such as crypto, per a new Charles Schwab study. 

The study found that 37% of Gen Z workers and 54% of millennials say their first investing experience was through a 401(k)  — lower than 61% for both Gen X and baby boomers. 
Instead, the two younger segments are more likely to also invest in crypto, real estate, annuities and small businesses than their older counterparts. Roughly 22% of Gen Z workers first got involved in investing through mobile trading, the study found, while 11% first invested in crypto.

The economic opportunity of using LLMs/generative AI to build a next-gen search engine might be bigger than the opportunity for using LLMs for literally everything else, combined.

The real Q is—will Google move fast enough to win? Or will someone else (Bing/OpenAI, startup)?

And remember it https://xn--r1a.website/alwebbci/335

A few questions to ask (and answer) when thinking about partnering with an NFT community.

Stability AI CEO discussed $1 Billion in new financing

Emad Mostaque, the former hedge fund manager who made his startup, Stability AI, one of the most visible standard-bearers of software that creates original images from simple text descriptions, could soon test the limits of hype around the new technology.

After raising $100 million of venture capital in three successive equity funding deals in the last two months, most recently at up to a $1 billion valuation, Mostaque recently told investors he wanted to raise an additional $1 billion of capital at a multibillion-dollar valuation.

His ambition to raise more funding is particularly notable because the British entrepreneur has been making claims about Stability’s momentum compared to an older rival, San Francisco–based OpenAI.

And Mostaque recently kicked up a dust storm among other artificial intelligence startups over his description of the company’s role in developing a prominent machine-learning model for AI-created imagery.

A16z’s flagship crypto fund lost 40% market value in the first half of this year, losing $2.9billion in its remaining stake in Coinbase alone.

Only 9 deals to crypto startups were announced in the third quarter of this year.

EY will prepare clients for the metaverse and Web3 with virtual experiences

Ernst & Young will expand the network’s capability to help clients co-innovate and rapidly help address business challenges.

Ernst & Young’s U.S. operation has also established a metaverse lab where technologists build customized metaverse environments for various use cases.
Together, EY wavespace and the EY metaverse lab are guiding clients through immersive digital experiences to help them anticipate new business models and shift to a decentralized economy arising out of Web3-based applications and platforms. EY typically does this during big tech transitions, and this move means that it sees the potential of Web3 and the metaverse to transform business.

Hong Kong to Make Retail Crypto Trading Legal

Hong Kong plans to legalize retail trading of cryptocurrency as it looks to become a crypto hub, according to a Bloomberg report.

Crypto platforms will be required to apply for a license to offer retail trading, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the matter.

The city wants to reestablish its reputation as a global financial hub.

The move contrasts with mainland China, where crypto is banned.

Hong Kong has its own financial and judicial systems, separate from the Chinese mainland, as part of the “One Country, Two Systems” framework under which it is governed.

Google Cloud Web3 launches Blockchain Node Engine for Ethereum developers, a fully managed cloud service where users don't have to hire their own teams to maintain or monitor their nodes.

It will expand the service to more blockchain networks in the future.

⚡️ FTX CEO: We're working on our stablecoin

On metaverse spending, Zuckerberg doesn’t care what critics say

Mark Zuckerberg has a message to all his metaverse critics out there: He doesn’t care what you think.

Not only is he not cutting back on augmented and virtual reality investments to take account of the economic slump, he plans to spend even more money!

In reporting third-quarter earnings Wednesday, Facebook owner Meta Platforms—showing a stunning 4% drop in revenue—revealed that losses at the Reality Labs division developing AR and VR gear for the futuristic metaverse jumped 31% from the second quarter. 

That puts the annualized metaverse investment at nearly $15 billion, well above the $10 billion annual figure the company had previously given. Moreover, the losses will “grow significantly” next year, Meta said.

And that’s just part of a continued ramp-up in investment spending at Meta. Executives projected that overall operating expenses will grow next year by around 14%. Capital expenditure meanwhile will also rise. That’s partly due to the metaverse investments but it’s also due to spending on artificial intelligence, which fuels all sorts of services, including the company’s TikTok rival Reels, as well as spending on advertising and business messaging tech. Meta executives say they’re becoming more careful about their expenditures, but you can’t really see it in the numbers.

Indeed, we’ve been seeing signals of an economic slowdown for six months, and yet Meta still managed to add 3,761 employees in the third quarter. That’s about 2,000 fewer than in the first and second quarter of this year, but it’s roughly in line with last year’s fourth-quarter rate of hiring. In other words, it’s not a dramatic change. In one way, Zuckerberg’s willingness to ignore critics is admirable. We know that Wall Street focuses too much on the short term, which causes most companies to pass up much-needed long-term investments. Even so, it is possible to invest judiciously in new areas while cutting elsewhere, which would be smart when revenues are falling. 

To be fair, Meta is clamping down now: Executives said head count would stay flat at current levels through the end of next year. And some of the increase in expenses next year reflects the full-year cost of people already hired.

Still, Meta shareholders surely wish the company had acted more quickly to rein in spending. They’ve had to watch as Meta stock has fallen from $336 at the start of the year to around $105 in after-hours trading Wednesday. The lesson seems to be that tech companies, which pride themselves on moving fast as they’re growing, get caught flat-footed when it comes to cutting back in adverse economic times.

Digital bank Revolut to allow customers to make purchases with crypto balances — link