Google Invests in a New AI Program Tied to Crypto Company FTX
Technology has come a long way in the last few years and one of the most impressive achievements is the AI chat programs. It´s a website where you can type in almost anything asking the Artificial intelligence a question or ask it to rewrite a text or just make it explain something you´d like to know. The amount of detail and work that has gone into the making of these are incredible and they will revolutionize the world. The fact that they are not at their full capacity yet and are still in working progress it´s a wonder what they can do in a few years.
Great Investment but in the Wrong Site?
One of the many AI chat sites is Anthropic, started by a small group led by Dario Amodei, who left the other AI giant OpenAI when there was a disagreement over the company´s direction. Microsoft had invested in OpenAI´s site ChatGPT, and it seemed like they were heading in a more commercial direction than originally planned. Google then played a big investment into Anthropic, approximately $300 million. In return, Google got a 10% stake in the company and is working together with them to develop AI computing systems. Google confirmed the deal but did not go into further details regarding the contract with Anthropic.
Google isn´t the only investor though. Prior to the investment made by Google, Anthropic had already raised over $700 million. $500 million came from an investment made by the crypto company Alameda research, controlled by Sam Bankman-Fried. The very same who also owned the crypto transfer firm FTX, a business that filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Bankman-Fried was arrested just a few days later in the Bahamas for using Alameda research as a backdoor by transferring FTX customer funds unnoticed by its investors. FTX bankruptcy estate has said that Anthropic can be used as an asset in helping those creditors with recoveries.
Designed for a Better Cause
Anthropic is really designed to help people, designed as a safety AI they are calling it an AI safety and research company. It´s a computer that can generate text and images without any difficulties and since it follows a simple natural language principles via self-improvement they can use this method to train the AI as a harmless assistant. The main reason Google chose to invest in this AI seems to be most likely because Microsoft invested big in ChatAI which is technically their rival in all this. Even with everything going on with Anthropic it´s still in its beta version while ChatAI is out for the public view. The future for Anthropic seems unsure at the moment, but with investments that big both from good and from bad companies its future is still out there somewhere.