Deep Minds Think Alike
By Keith Teare • Issue #320
Deep in the heart of summer and @Om links to the 200 best dance songs of all time. I’m passing it on as a gift. And DeepMind figured out the structure of 200m human proteins. Now that really is a gift. Data and Science are crucial to humanity’s future. Deep Minds think alike is this week’s theme.
Content
Editorial
Last week there was no video version of That Was The Week, and so no Podcast either. Andrew was on vacation. This week we return to our normal pattern and as a thank you for your patience, I have included a great link from Om Malik — Rolling Stones 200 best ever dance songs as a Youtube playlist.
Happy Summer 2022.
And it is a happy week. Deepmind, the British startup acquired by Google a few years ago has moved on from beating the world champion at Go and spent time learning about the proteins that are the building blocks of the human body. As The Guardian puts it:
“Proteins are the building blocks of life. Formed of chains of amino acids, folded up into complex shapes, their 3D structure largely determines their function. Once you know how a protein folds up, you can start to understand how it works, and how to change its behaviour. Although DNA provides the instructions for making the chain of amino acids, predicting how they interact to form a 3D shape was more tricky and, until recently, scientists had only deciphered a fraction of the 200m or so proteins known to science.” (see below)
Most of us will be familiar with science-based news stories that describe how complex proteins are. It has been beyond human capability to decipher them to date. Medical science has been blocked from the next steps as a result. but now, for the first time, well over 90% of these proteins have been discovered, and their structures made predictable.
Deepmind has published the results of this work as an open source database to the world’s community — otherwise known as humanity.
Machines are often depicted in fiction as being full of risk and danger. Their intelligence is frowned upon as being threatening. Here is a wonderful real-world example of how human ingenuity can leverage machines to extend human knowledge just as earlier machines extended our agricultural or industrial capabilities.
What is DeepMind? Essentially it is two things. Data and computation. The latter acts on the former to learn. Today it can be targeted to learn very specific things, one at a time. The more important those things are, the larger the impact. Learning Go and beating the champion was a great demonstration, but the consequences are few. Learning about proteins seems to have taken about two years, and the consequences, while unknown, are likely to be vast.
Data and computation will make many things easier. Humans define the problem set (at least for now) and then define the approach to learning, and the machine goes through the process of perfecting its abilities in that domain by trial, error, correction, and eventually perfection.
Mike Butcher from TechCrunch met data and computation this week also. His image was placed in a virtual world where he danced live to the music. He was at Glastonbury, getting a demo of this 3D live capability from Condense — another British-based deep tech company.
Jumping into a flatpacked, chipboard room wasn’t my usual experience of the U.K.’s legendary Glastonbury Music Festival. But here I was, doing my best to dance around and test out this crazy new way of putting myself into the so-called Metaverse.
It turned out to be a legit experience, as Bristol, U.K.-based startup Condense, showed me how my badly dancing body had been instantaneously transported into a full-blown 3D landscape. What didn’t compute, at least for me, was how they’d done it so fast. Not just fast, but literally live.
The meta world, and Mike’s body, required data and computation to appear together as if one.
The next decades will see machines enhance human capability in almost every field of life. When combined with robotics, many complex and mundane tasks will be possible without further human input. Human ingenuity will be able to move on to new and bigger challenges.
It is a time for optimism about humanity and our collective ability to seek and meet challenges. This week shows that to be so, and @Om’s dance songs from Rolling Stone seem especially relevant.
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Summer Gift from @OM and Rolling Stone
From Chic to Skrillex, from Chicago house classics to festival rave anthems, from songs that filled the floor at the Loft and the Warehouse to ones that blew up on TikTok.
What do we mean by “dance songs”? Good question. In a sense, any song that ever got any one person moving in any perceptible direction is a dance song. The Beatles made great dance songs — as did Slayer. Nearly all the hip-hop and reggae ever made is great dance music. But to make our list of The 200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time, a song had to be part of “dance music culture.” It’s a more specific world, but an enormous one too, going back nearly fifty years and eternally evolving right up to today and into the future.
After paying homage to the godfather of the extended groove, Mr. James Brown, our story of dance music begins in the mid-1970s with disco, and moves into early Eighties club sounds like electro and Latin freestyle. It gets born again when disco is re-engineered as house music in Chicago and techno in Detroit, and mutates with almost comic velocity into the Nineties rave explosion that produced everything from jungle to trance to gabba to garage, and eventually the EDM and dubstep bonanzas of the 2000s. These sounds all had peak moments of exposure, but they never fade away: drum ”n’ bass is having a new moment right now, and there are house songs here from the past few years.
The list doesn’t attempt to incorporate every ripple in this oceanic confluence of sub-genres. We were looking for tracks that seemed to transcend and feel more universally canonical, and we were especially mindful of the moments where dance music has intersected with the wider musical world– with synth-pop, hip-hop, funk, Miami bass, R&B, indie-rock, Latin music and pop. That’s why you’ll see Prince, Robyn, Britney Spears, Shakira, and Justin Bieber in here bumping up against Adonis, Frankie Knuckles, Moodymann, Goldie, and SOPHIE.
If you’re wondering how we got to a summer where Drake and Beyonce are suddenly releasing house records, this is that story — or, at least, our version of it.
Essays of the Week
Success of AlphaFold program could have huge impact on global problems such as famine and disease
Artificial intelligence has deciphered the structure of virtually every protein known to science, paving the way for the development of new medicines or technologies to tackle global challenges such as famine or pollution.
Proteins are the building blocks of life. Formed of chains of amino acids, folded up into complex shapes, their 3D structure largely determines their function. Once you know how a protein folds up, you can start to understand how it works, and how to change its behaviour. Although DNA provides the instructions for making the chain of amino acids, predicting how they interact to form a 3D shape was more tricky and, until recently, scientists had only deciphered a fraction of the 200m or so proteins known to science.
Jumping into a flatpacked, chipboard room wasn’t my usual experience of the U.K.’s legendary Glastonbury Music Festival. But here I was, doing my best to dance around and test out this crazy new way of putting myself into the so-called Metaverse.
It turned out to be a legit experience, as Bristol, U.K.-based startup Condense, showed me how my badly dancing body had been instantaneously transported into a full-blown 3D landscape. What didn’t compute, at least for me, was how they’d done it so fast. Not just fast, but literally live.
Listen now | Episode 87 Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.On this week’s show, we are lucky to be joined by Gaurav Jain, Co-Founder of Afore Capital, one of the largest pre-seed funds in the US with nearly $300MM in AUM across 3 funds. Afore says that no investment is “too early,” and that they prefer to get involved as early as possible to help the company get to the next stage where traditional VCs typically jump in.We had a great conversation covering the pre-seed market, how the current market affects their investment model, and how they are able to execute on so many initiatves with a lean team.
Web3 is in a weird place. Some existing platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, are tiptoeing into the internet’s next phase with NFT profile pictures, the metaverse and crypto. But according to Christopher Gulczynski, one of Tinder’s co-founders, a former Bumble CPO and a former Facebook engineering manager, those platforms can’t “ever compete in what Web3 will be.”
“There’s so much development happening in Web3,” said Gulczynski, who was responsible for Tinder’s “swipe right, swipe left” on matches. “All the tech startups are based and rooted in Web3. It’s stuff that you haven’t heard about yet because everyone’s building.”
Gulczynski and Zaven Nahapetyan, a former engineering manager and organizational lead for Facebook, left their respective platforms to help build Niche, which lets people form communities around shared interests or topics, like sports or Taylor Swift. The platform is still in beta, with applications opening up on Monday. Gulczynski and Nahapetyan said members of a Niche community will act as part owners, and it won’t rely on ads to generate revenue.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
After what may have seemed like an endless wait for Sky customers in the U.K. and elsewhere across Europe, the Sky Go app is now available to download on Apple TV.
The availability of the Sky Go app means that subscribers will be able to stream live Sky’s broadcast content on their Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K devices, rather than having to rely on Sky’s set-top box or the equivalent app on their iPhone or iPad.
Over 100 channels can be streamed through the Go app, as well as on-demand access to box sets of popular TV series, all through the familiar blue Sky programming interface. However, it doesn’t include the full gamut of Sky channels, and there are some other restrictions to be aware of.
The Go app is only available for Sky Q Multiscreen and Sky Glass Whole Home customers, and allows them to access content included in a Sky Cinema or Sky Sports package, but the app can’t be used on Apple TV to stream content if the Sky Go account subscription was an add-on purchase for a mobile device.
The availability of Sky Go on Apple TV will be a welcome addition for many customers, given that the app has been on iPhone and iPad for years. Last December, Apple’s own TV+ app rolled out to Sky Glass TV and Sky Q set-top boxes, allowing subscribers to access Apple TV+ movies and shows on Sky’s platform. Tags: Europe, SkyThis article, “Sky Go Launches on Apple TV With Over 100 Live Streaming Sky Channels” first appeared on MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forums
Instagram will walk back some recent changes to the product following a week of mounting criticism, the company said today. A test version of the app that opened to full-screen photos and videos will be phased out over the next one to two weeks, and Instagram will also reduce the number of recommended posts in the app as it works to improve its algorithms.
“I’m glad we took a risk — if we’re not failing every once in a while, we’re not thinking big enough or bold enough,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in an interview. “But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup. [When] we’ve learned a lot, then we come back with some sort of new idea or iteration. So we’re going to work through that.”
The changes come amid growing user frustration over a series of changes to Instagram designed to help it better compete with TikTok and navigate the broader shift in user behavior away from posting static photos toward watching more video.
On Monday, the TV star and entrepreneur Kylie Jenner — along with her sister Kim Kardashian — posted memes asking the company to “Make Instagram Instagram again.” And on Twitter, nearly every day people post tweets criticizing the new Instagram that quickly go viral.
Redesigns often incur the wrath of users who are hostile to change, but in this case the high-profile dissatisfaction was backed up by Instagram’s own internal data, Mosseri said. The trend toward users watching more video is real, and pre-dated the rise of TikTok, he said. But it’s clear that people actually do dislike Instagram’s design changes.
“For the new feed designs, people are frustrated and the usage data isn’t great,” he said. “So there I think that we need to take a big step back, regroup, and figure out how we want to move forward.”
The company also plans to show users fewer recommendations. On Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that recommended posts and accounts in feeds currently account for about 15 percent of what you see when you browse Facebook, and an even higher percentage on Instagram. By the end of 2023, that figure will be around 30 percent, Zuckerberg said.
But Instagram will temporarily reduce the amount of recommended posts and accounts as it works to improve its personalization tools. (Mosseri wouldn’t say by how much, exactly.)
Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the social network will walk back some recent changes to the app that have led to intense criticism from users. Mosseri revealed the news in an interview with reporter Casey Newton. Instagram will phase out a test that turned users’ home feeds into a TikTok-like full-screen experience that prioritized video in the coming weeks. The company will also temporarily reduce the number of recommended posts that users see, as it plans to improve and rework its algorithms.
Mosseri says users’ concerns about the changes were reflected in Instagram’s own internal data, which is why the company plans to take a step back and figure out how to move forward. The changes come as users have expressed frustration over the app’s gradual transition away from being a place where users could mainly see photos of their friends and family into an app that’s filled with recommended posts and videos in an attempt to compete with TikTok. Even the most followed women on Instagram, Kylie Jenner and her sister Kim Kardashian, expressed their frustrations with Instagram’s recent changes and shared petitions that said, “Stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends.”
The news comes a day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that about 15% of content in Facebook feeds are served by Meta’s AI and that number is even a little bit higher on Instagram. Zuckerberg went on to note that the company expects these numbers to double by the end of next year. Mosseri told Newton that Instagram will temporarily reduce the number of recommended posts that users see but didn’t specify by how much, in order to get better at ranking and presenting recommendations to users. Once Instagram improves its recommendation algorithm, it will start to grow again, Mosseri says.
Google is again delaying plans to phase out Chrome’s use of third-party cookies — the files websites use to remember preferences and track online activity. In a blog post, Anthony Chavez, Google’s VP of Privacy Sandbox, said that the company is now targeting the “second half of 2024” as the timeframe for adopting an alternative technology.
It’ll be a long time coming. Last June, Google said it would depreciate cookies in the second half of 2023. Before then, in January 2020, the company pledged to make the switch by 2022.
“We’ve worked closely to refine our design proposals based on input from developers, publishers, marketers, and regulators via forums,” Chavez wrote. “The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new … technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome.”
Google’s efforts to move away from cookies date back to 2019, when the company announced a long-term roadmap to adopt ostensibly more private ways of tracking web users. The linchpin is Privacy Sandbox, which aims to create web standards that power advertising without the use of so-called “tracking” cookies. Tracking cookies, used to personalize ads, can capture a person’s web history and remain active for years without their knowledge.
The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against Meta and Within, the startup behind the VR fitness app Supernatural. The agency is asking a federal court for a preliminary injunction to stop the two companies from proceeding with an acquisition, alleging the deal would limit competition.
Meta announced its plans to acquire Within in October. The startup’s VR fitness app Supernatural has been a surprise hit, and Mark Zuckerberg has called fitness a key part of his company’s strategy to broaden the appeal of VR beyond hardcore gaming.
Through a series of key acquisitions and pricing strategies, Meta has turned its VR business into the market’s most dominant platform, with a 90% market share in hardware, according to IDC, and subsidiaries behind some of the most successful VR apps, like best-selling rhythm video game Beat Saber. Acquiring yet more software makers could further cement that dominance, critics and regulators have contended.
The FTC alleges this acquisition would be harmful to consumers and competitors alike. “Instead of competing on the merits, Meta is trying to buy its way to the top,” said FTC Bureau of Competition Deputy Director John Newman in a statement. “Meta chose to buy market position instead of earning it on the merits. This is an illegal acquisition, and we will pursue all appropriate relief.” Meta would be able to close the acquisition of Within by the end of this month if no preliminary injunction is granted, according to the filing.
A Meta spokesperson called those arguments “not credible.” “The FTC’s case is based on ideology and speculation, not evidence,” the spokesperson said in a statement provided to Protocol. “By attacking this deal in a 3–2 vote, the FTC is sending a chilling message to anyone who wishes to innovate in VR. We are confident that our acquisition of Within will be good for people, developers and the VR space.”
Facebook parent company Meta has just reported its earnings for the second quarter of 2022, and it was another quarter of shrinking profits. Total revenue of $28.8 billion was only down one percent compared to Q2 one year ago, but net income dropped 36 percent to $6.7 billion. Making almost $7 billion in profit is not a bad quarter for anyone, but the size of the decline compared to a year ago is pretty significant. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, this is the first-ever drop in revenue for Meta / Facebook — so even though we’re only talking one percent, it’s still noteworthy.
Revenue from advertising and Meta’s “family of apps” was essentially flat year-over-year, and Reality Labs (home to hardware like the Meta Quest and other metaverse-related initiatives) actually grew 48 percent year-over-year to $452 million. But Reality Labs accounted for a $2.8 billion loss this quarter, a 15 percent larger loss than Q2 one year ago. At this rate, it seems likely that Reality Labs will lose Meta more than the $10 billion it cost the company in 2021. Indeed, the company said it expects Reality Labs revenue to be lower in the third quarter.
This comes the same day that the FTC announced it was seeking to block Meta’s acquisition of Supernatural VR workout app maker Within, a proposed sale that was announced last year. “Instead of competing on the merits, Meta is trying to buy its way to the top,” John Newman, deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement.
In June, Meta said that it had 2.88 billion daily active users in its family of apps (which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) and 3.65 billion monthly active users, both of which are up four percent compared to a year ago. Facebook-specific growth was smaller, though — average daily and monthly users only increased three percent and one percent, respectively.
Buried in today’s press release is a somewhat unusual leadership change announcement as well. As of November 1st, the company will welcome its first Chief Strategy Officer, David Wehner, who is currently Meta’s Chief Financial Officer. VP of Finance Susan Li will be promoted to the CFO position when this change goes into effect. As CSO, Wehner will “oversee the company’s strategy and corporate development,” a presumably broader scope of responsibilities compared to his current role.
On today’s call with investors, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that about 15 percent of the content that people see on Facebook and Instagram are AI-driven “recommendation” posts, and he said that he expects that to double over the next year. So if you’re already frustrated by the drastic changes that Meta is making to Facebook and Instagram, things aren’t going to go backwards any time soon.
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Meta on Tuesday began telling its news partners in the U.S. that the company no longer plans to pay publishers for their content to run on Facebook’s News Tab, sources tell Axios.
Why it matters: As the company moves forward with sweeping changes to the Facebook experience, news has become less of a priority.
Meta’s VP of media partnerships, Campbell Brown, told staffers the company was shifting resources away from its news products to support more creative initiatives, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Catch up quick: Facebook brokered a slew of three-year deals with publishers in 2019. At the time, the company was ramping up its investment in news and hired journalists to help direct publisher traffic to its new tab for news.
The deals were worth roughly $105 million in the U.S., sources told Axios. In addition to that, the company spent around $90 million on news videos for the company’s video tab called “Watch.”
What they’re saying: “A lot has changed since we signed deals three years ago to test bringing additional news links to Facebook News in the U.S. Most people do not come to Facebook for news, and as a business it doesn’t make sense to over-invest in areas that don’t align with user preferences,” a Facebook spokesperson told Axios.
Be smart: The $105 million spent on additional news content for the News Tab was for incremental links. News companies could still publish content to the Facebook platform at will.
Although hundreds of news publishers are still eligible to have their content included in the News Tab, the funding to roughly 50 publishers for their content will not be renewed.
Meta spent more than $10 million on its news partnership with the Wall Street Journal, more than $3 million on its deal with CNN, and more than $20 million on its partnership with the New York Times, sources told Axios. In some cases, the partnerships also unlocked paywalled content.
Meta’s titular division just took another blow.
The social media giant disclosed this afternoon that its metaverse-specific division suffered losses of $2.81 billion this quarter. That puts the division’s year-to-date losses at an eye-popping $5.77 billion.
The division, Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), is distinct from Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Whatsapp, and focuses on building the hardware, software, and content central to Meta’s push into the metaverse.
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In its Q2 2022 earnings report, FRL generated $452 million in revenue in the period, down 35% from last quarter. Last year, the division posted a staggering annual loss of $10.2 billion. It is currently on track to exceed that figure in 2022.
“This is obviously a very expensive undertaking over the next several years,” conceded Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “But as the metaverse becomes more important in every part of how we live… I’m confident that we’re going to be glad we played an important role in building this.”
The U.S. Senate voted 64–33 Wednesday to approve a $280 billion piece of legislation that will dole out a batch of chip manufacturing subsidies and research funding that’s designed to return chip production to the U.S. in some meaningful fashion.
The vote likely marks the end of more than two years of debate, which stalled in recent weeks amid disagreements between the two houses of Congress and within parties. The Senate bill is now set to travel to the House and is expected to pass there, according to several D.C. insiders Protocol spoke with this past week. If or when the House passes the bill, it will head to President Biden, who has signaled he supports this effort to boost U.S. chip manufacturing and plans to sign the bill.
The semiconductor manufacturing-related legislation the Senate passed is a reworked version of the House’s bill that strips out some of the components that bogged down passage in favor of ensuring the chip-related funding passes.
Broadly, the Senate version includes roughly $52 billion in subsidies to bolster chip manufacturing in the U.S., spread over five years, and a $24 billion tax credit to support the industry. Beyond the manufacturing subsidies, the bill also adds $200 billion marked for research.
International Week
China’s billionaire tech boss Jack Ma plans to cede control of Ant Group, the fintech powerhouse closely affiliated with Alibaba, the e-commerce giant he founded, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. If realized, the move will mark another important turn in Ant’s restructuring and power shuffling since China called off its $35 billion initial […]
Startup of the Week
Web3 domain name provider, Unstoppable Domain has reached a $1 billion valuation after it closed a $65 million series A funding round led by Pantera Capital.
The post Web3 domain provider Unstoppable Domains raises $65 million, becomes newest crypto unicorn appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Web3 startup Unstoppable Domains became the latest unicorn after a $65 million Series A led by Pantera Capital at a $1 billion valuation.
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Founder at SignalRank Corporation. Publisher of That Was The Week, Founder at archimedes.studio.
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20K FollowersFounder at SignalRank Corporation. Publisher of That Was The Week, Founder at archimedes.studio.
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