The Weekly #7

User Meetup at Dataiku

This week, we were pleased to host the most important people in our business, our users, in the office. This was our second meetup we’ve hosted, and it was really pleasing to see people remember each other from the first one. I truly hope these connections continue to develop so that we foster a wonderful community.

For us, the benefits of hosting a meetup are:

• Create a Community: The best way to learn is from each other, and if that can be extended to those outside your immediate teams, this is even better. We find that many of our users have common challenges and goals, and whilst nobody shares anything that is company confidential, being able to share what is working and what isn’t is something that’s well-received.
• Provide a Glimpse to the Future: In these type of sessions, it’s great if we can have some of our Product team or subject matter experts give a glimpse into how we’re thinking of developing the product or the overall direction we’re taking.
• A Chance to Listen: Last but not least, it’s crucial that we listen to our users, they are in the platform more than anyone else and listening to their feedback and comments ensures we’re taking the right decisions for them, and not ourselves.

I genuinely can’t wait for the next one!

OpenAI Raises $6.6bn

Wow, these are some hefty numbers. A single funding round of $6.6bn is more than most businesses are worth. And talking of worth, this now takes the OpenAI valuation to $157bn. This comes at a time when OpenAI announced they are creating a for-profit structure. Interestingly, the for-profit subsidiary will be fully controlled by OpenAI Nonprofit and be legally bound to pursue the Nonprofit’s original mission, which is oriented to research in the development of AGI.

Media Companies Training on Your Posts

At this point, it’s safe to assume that all social media sites are potentially using your public posts to train their own AI models. In the last few weeks, this was brought to many people’s attention as celebrities started posting text on Instagram asking Meta not to use their data. This would have zero effect, and they would be better off checking their profile settings. This week, I received an email from LinkedIn with an update on their Terms of Service. As can be seen below, this highlights how I can opt out of having my data used, but also that LinkedIn will not be using data from the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK at this time.