NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

Apple leaps into AI: 3 things you need to know

You can’t talk about the past week without talking about Apple’s annual developer conference and its announcements on AI.

Here are the key points you need to know.

1. Apple is putting AI everywhere (just like Google and Microsoft). Called "Apple Intelligence," it’s a suite of AI features across all its hardware and software products, including the iPhone, Mac, Mail, Messages, and Photos.

2. Siri is getting a major upgrade. For example, now you can enable the voice assistant to parse messages for addresses or locate photos in the phone's library based on voice prompts. Plus, to give it even more firepower, Apple is partnering with OpenAI so that if Siri can’t answer you with enough expertise, the system switches you to ChatGPT with your permission.

3. Apple is once again leading the charge in privacy and security (I really like this about Apple). Apple aims to keep most of the computing power needed for Apple Intelligence features on its devices so that your data never leaves the device. If needed, Apple will send it to its cloud.

ps. The OpenAI partnership did not go well with Elon Musk, who thinks it’s a terrible idea. “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI,” Musk said on X. “They’re selling you down the river.”

What do you think?

Legal AI co-pilot Harvey eyes $2 billion valuation

Are you a lawyer, or do you know one? Pretty soon, every lawyer might have their own AI sidekick, an "AI co-pilot" in industry lingo. If you’re in any doubt that AI assistants will be pervasive in the legal industry, consider this: Harvey, the AI co-pilot for lawyers, has reportedly skyrocketed to a $2 billion valuation in just two short years.

Founded by ex-Meta AI researcher Gabriel Pereyra and former lawyer Winston Weinberg, Harvey is generative AI platform designed specifically for lawyers to make them more efficient and productive.

How does it work? Harvey leverages AI trained on vast legal datasets (both public and private to a law firm) to provide valuable insights, recommendations, and even draft legal documents.

Mega law firm Allen & Overy rolled out Harvey as a legal co-pilot to its 3500 lawyers, and other well-known firms like KR, Gleiss Lutz, Maples, Calder, and PwC are also using Harvey’s AI to streamline their legal processes.

According to Harvey, it reached $10 million in annual recurring revenue in 2023. Bloomberg reports that Harvey is now raising $600m (at a $2b valuation). One way it will spend this money: it’s looking at acquiring vLex, a major legal research firm with an extensive collection of legal and regulatory information, to train its AI co-pilot with more data.

Here’s the deal: 350,000 new cases filed annually in the US translate to an avalanche of legal information. An AI assistant could be a game-changer for lawyers, but only if it can avoid the pitfalls of inaccuracy and potential legal missteps.

ps. Harvey's not alone in this race. Rivals like Casetext (recently acquired by Thomson Reuters for $650 million), Robin AI (backed by Temasek), and newcomers like EvenUp are all vying for a piece of the legal co-pilot pie.

Trend alert: China starts to apply generative AI

In general, one hasn’t heard much about generative AI outside the US. Yet, Kai Fu Lee, former President of Google China and Founder of 01.ai, has pointed out a key dynamic in the global AI race: while the US leads in AI research and innovation, China excels in AI application and implementation.

So, if you’re noticing more and more news from China, don’t be surprised.

Case in point: two stories from China this week

• Kuaishou's Kling, a text-to-video AI tool that transforms textual content into high-quality video. The videos it generates from simple text prompts and a few in-app adjustments look incredibly realistic. See the awesome clip above. Imagine it being used across China’s own version of Hollywood.

• Alibaba says its LLM Qwen2 outperforms Meta's LLaMA 3 in math and coding tasks while also reporting that over 90,000 enterprises are using Qwen generative AI models to personalize products for their customers.

My take: It’s always good for consumers to have more choices when it comes to AI, and it’s always good not to have just one geography or a handful of companies dominate access to a transformative technology like AI.

😎 I’d love to see more news from Asia, Latin America and Africa in Generative AI. You may not see a lot about what is happening in Generative AI in these regions but don’t underestimate them.

WOMEN IN AI

Meet Kate Crawford, a renowned scholar on ethical AI

Celebrating this week's woman in AI 🥳: Meet Kate Crawford, a globally renowned scholar on the ethical and political impact of AI.

Crawford is a Research Professor at USC Annenberg, a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, and the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

With a Ph.D. in Media Studies from the University of Sydney, Crawford has co-founded several interdisciplinary research groups, including the AI Now Institute at NYU and Knowing Machines at USC.

She has advised policymakers at the United Nations, the European Parliament, and the White House.

In her award-winning book "Atlas of AI," she uncovers how AI's dependence on labor, data extraction, and natural resources contributes to environmental damage, inequality, and potential threats to democracy.

I love Crawford's art piece, “Anatomy of an AI System,” exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It's a map that visualizes the complex lifecycle of an Amazon Echo smart speaker, tracing the device from its origins in resource extraction and manufacturing, through its use and data collection, to its eventual disposal. The map reveals the hidden environmental and human costs associated with AI technologies.

Crawford has been widely recognized for her work, most recently for raising concerns about the high energy and water consumption of generative AI’s computational demands compared to traditional AI.

😎 She was listed by Time Magazine as one of the "100 Most Influential People in AI" in 2023 and received the Ayrton Prize from the British Society for the History of Science.

ENTERPRISE AI CASE STUDY

Welcome to JPMorgan! Your first task: Master AI.

Industry: Finance

Congratulations, you just got a job offer from JP Morgan, one of the largest banks in the world! But wait, before you make a single trade, meet a single client, do a single risk assessment, or any other task at the bank, you need to undertake AI prompt engineering training.

That's right. JP Morgan has announced that every new employee must undergo AI prompt training.

But what exactly is prompt engineering, and why is it so important? Think of it as the art of communicating effectively with AI systems. We “prompt” ChatGPT when we give it tasks, but to be an effective prompter for market analysis, coding, customer service, etc. (think of all the various tasks in a bank), the prompter must be skilled at getting the answers and actions it needs from the AI quickly.

By streamlining tasks like information retrieval and eliminating repetitive work, JPMorgan wants employees to focus on higher-value activities. The company estimates that AI could generate $1 billion to $1.5 billion in value and impact roughly 70,000 employees across various departments. 🤯

CEO Jamie Dimon has been effusive about the power of AI, saying last October: "Your children are going to live to 100 and not have cancer because of technology. And literally, they'll probably be working three-and-a-half days a week."

A Wall Street insider told me JPMorgan was acting like a Silicon Valley company given the speed and scale at which it was implementing AI. See last paragraph if you have any doubts on the CEO’s commitment.

Learn, Connect and Grow

Fortune's AI Conference is coming to Singapore

After epic Brainstorm AI conferences in Silicon Valley and in London, Fortune's Brainstorm AI conference is comming to Singapore, July 30-31. And I’m super excited to be Co-Chair of the conference! 😎

The gathering will bring together the top minds among startups, investors, governments, and companies across Asia from the Fortune Global 500, Fortune Europe 500, and Fortune 500 lists to discuss The New Race for AI.

Topics include: the rise of AI-powered robots, investing opportunities in AI, emerging regulations globally, and green AI.

Keep your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in AI —reserve your spot.

Join us!