Google supercomputer ‘47 years’ faster than rivals

Hey, Yawn here. Happy Thursday.

Today we’ve got computing that sounds like science fiction, AI replicating the power of sight, and an AR company that’s a step ahead of Apple.

Let’s dive in:

• Google quantum computer ‘47 years’ faster than any other 💨

• AI helping blind people see the world 👀

• Apple Vision Pro rival Xreal nearing 200k AR glasses shipments 🥽

• 3 tech funding snapshots 💰

💾 Google quantum computer is ‘47 years’ faster than any other

Google has developed a quantum computer that can instantly perform calculations that would take the best existing supercomputers 47 years to complete, establishing its supremacy over conventional machines.

Quantum computers, based on the principles of quantum physics, have the potential to create powerful machines that can address challenges like climate change and drug discovery, but they also pose a security risk by undermining encryption systems.

In 2019, Google claimed "quantum supremacy," but faced skepticism from rivals who questioned the difference between its machine and traditional supercomputers.

Their new paper titled "Phase Transition in Random Circuit Sampling" presents a more powerful 70 qubit machine, making it 241 million times more powerful than the 2019 machine.

The calculation speed comparison shows that Frontier, the leading rival supercomputer, would take 6.18 seconds to match Google's 2019 53-qubit computer, but it would take 47.2 years to match their latest quantum computer.

👀 AI helping blind people see the world

Developers are leveraging multimodal AI to create solutions for blind people, allowing them to process text and images and generate conversational responses, resulting in greater independence.

One example is the app "vision," launched in 2018 for reading text on images, later available for Google Glass. More recently, ‘Ask Envision’ was introduced, a virtual visual assistant powered by GPT-4, capable of recognizing faces, objects, colors, describing scenes, and enabling video calls.

Another app called ‘Be My Eyes’ connects blind or low vision individuals with volunteers. It has integrated GPT-4 to allow users to send images to a virtual assistant, helping with tasks like identifying refrigerator contents and providing recipes and cooking assistance.

Sina Bahram, a blind computer scientist, shared how ‘Be My Eyes’ empowered him to learn about his companion's activities in real time, highlighting the transformative impact of these AI-powered tools.

Microsoft's ‘Seeing AI’ is another free app that narrates the world for blind individuals, offering similar visual recognition capabilities in multiple languages.

Potential risks associated with these AI tools include the fabrication of information and biases found in language models, exposing blind users to potential inaccuracies and biases in sensitive decisions like medication choices.

🥽 Apple Vision Pro rival Xreal nearing 200k AR glasses shipments

Xreal, the augmented reality (AR) glasses company formerly known as Nreal, anticipates reaching shipments of 200,000 units soon. Their Air glasses are priced at $379, significantly lower than Apple's Vision Pro headset, which is expected to cost $3,500 upon release next year.

The pace of Xreal's sales and growth remains uncertain, but the company finds the acceptance of its new form factor and experience encouraging. Xreal's Air glasses and Apple's Vision Pro headset offer different technologies and capabilities, but both aim to replicate the physical screen time experience through spatial computing.

💰Tech funding snapshots

Neko Health, co-founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, raises $65M

The healthcare firm has its sights set on developing a new medical scanning concept that allows for “broad and non-invasive” collection of health data. The company’s 10-minute scan uses technology designed to help medical teams spot diseases such as skin cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Typeface bags $100M in Series B round

Typeface, a platform enabling businesses to leverage their own data and generative AI for creating promotional content, announced they secured $100M in a Series B funding round (led by Salesforce Ventures) at a $1B valuation.

Runway AI raises $141M for text-to-video software

Runway AI, whose AI software can generate a video from a text prompt, has raised $141M in funding from Google, Nvidia, Salesforce, and others. They’ve raised $237M since 2018 and sit at a $1.5B valuation.

That’s it for this week.

You’ll hear from us on Monday…

🥱 until the next,
Roberto Nickson & Colby Shelton