The Pulse #90: Devin reversing ambitious claims
The “world’s first AI developer” tones down expectations and has been outperformed by an open source tool. Also: hiring upticks at Big Tech; a very realistic AI video generator by Microsoft, and more.
The Pulse is a series covering insights, patterns, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Send me a message.
Today, we cover:
Industry pulse. Fintech valuations rising again; pre-earnings layoffs at Tesla and Google; Google fires staff trying to interfere with business; Rippling offering a secondary to its employees, and more.
Devin: Reversing ambitious claims. A month ago, Devin launched with fanfare as “the world’s first AI developer,” claiming that it “even completed real jobs at Upwork.” Upon closer inspection, this claim did not hold up. The company behind Devin had since toned down expectations. Also: open source solution AutoCodeRover is offering even better performance than Devin’s closed-source and not-yet-publicly available tool. This space is commoditizing rapidly.
Microsoft’s disturbingly realistic AI video generator. Microsoft Research showcased a tool that generated very realistic videos from a single image. The #1 use case will surely be fraudulent deepfakes generation. This development could well speed up AI regulation in several countries.
Hiring upticks at Meta, Netflix and Amazon? Data from interview preparation website interviewing.io suggests hiring is back at full speed at Meta, Netflix and – possibly – Amazon.