It’s this practical use (and the revenue that comes with it) that makes Akin potentially valuable.
out of this world
NASA was Yearsley’s customer at Cognia, and Aiken’s first customer was the company’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which builds space-deployed robots. Aiken’s AI is used in the Earthly replica of the Moon base. In time, it could be used to control living conditions on another planet. Aiken is also designing companion robots to aid in missions and crew mental health on future deep space missions.
“At NASA’s JPL, we built an ambient AI manager called PAL because it’s similar to HAL, but better,” Yearsley says. “This is pure software that looks at all the people in a habitat and asks them what their resources are. What are their jobs? How are they doing? Do they like each other? Let’s help.” Huh?
“Then we also built some physical robot embodiments that were manufactured in Australia. I did.”
Liesl Yearsley works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Inset: Robotic technology by Akin.
Akin has received early funding from AI-focused Silicon Valley venture capital firm Comet Labs and Westpac VC fund Reinventure Group. But where that valuation and Mr. Yearsley’s fortune could skyrocket is the next round of funding.
VC excitement
Yearsley said the VCs he spoke to in Silicon Valley are thriving as a variety of high-profile AI companies board the ChatGPT train. According to US-based Pitchbook, in the first quarter of 2023, a staggering $1.7 billion ($2.5 billion) will be invested in generative AI startups in 46 deals, and he’ll have an additional $10.68 billion. A deal worth $10,000 was announced. , but not yet completed.
Yearsley cites San Francisco-based ChatGPT rival Anthropic as an example of a company comparable to Akin. The company has raised a ton of VC funding, reaching a valuation of $4.1 billion.
When it comes to today’s big question—whether we need to stop AI development to save humanity, Yearsley believes we can’t stop runaway progress. The key, she says, is giving AI a value that we can endure.
“If you were building internal combustion engines 150 years ago and someone said ‘stop’, someone else would do it and that country or company would take over the economy and destroy you.
“But if the same day that combustion engine came out, the government would have had the foresight to think, ‘What if we put a carbon tax?'” Then things would develop quite differently. may have achieved
“We are at that stage now with AI… this has a cost and someone is making a profit, so that cost needs to be borne and managed properly. Make money We just can’t afford to bear the costs of bringing it into our ecosystems and societies.”
