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Today’s Menu 🥠

• Top 3 AI Certifications For 2025

• What YC Data Says To Build With AI

• Everything Else You Need To Know

Read Time: 3.5 minutes

Fast Snacks 🥡

Why Specialized AI Models Beat Large Language Models
Specialized Language Models (SLMs) are emerging as vital tools alongside LLMs. Offering better accuracy, explainability, and control, SLMs excel in high-stakes industries like healthcare and finance, complementing their larger counterparts.

Large AI Models Struggle with Dementia-Like Cognitive Tests
A study finds leading AI chatbots, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini, showing signs of cognitive decline in dementia-like tests. Their performance raises doubts about AI's reliability in medical diagnostics and other critical fields.

Create Viral Clips From Long Videos
Say Goodbye to manual editing. Upload your video, and Submagic’s AI instantly finds the most engaging moments.‍ The system automatically curates clips that capture attention. Add captions, insert b-rolls, and refine your content then.

How To Set Yourself Apart
Top 3 AI Certifications to Land High-Paying Jobs in 2025

AI is accelerating job displacement at an unprecedented pace (faster than you can say "neural network”), and obtaining certification is your golden ticket to getting paid. Below are three certifications to catapult your worth in the marketplace:

IBM AI Engineering Professional Certificate

This Coursera course is your VIP ticket to AI engineering, teaching you machine learning, deep learning, and deploying models using tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch.

• What You’ll Learn: Deep learning frameworks, big data analysis, and scalable ML solutions.

• Duration: About six months.

• Career Opportunities: AI Engineer, Data Scientist, ML Developer.

Think of IBM’s certification as the Swiss Army knife of AI skills—practical, versatile, and just geeky enough to impress at parties. Check it out here.

Google Cloud’s Introduction to Generative AI

Generative AI is undoubtedly the most overused phrase of 2024, but this course gives you an inside look at how it works. Topics include neural networks, NLP, and ethical AI.

• What You’ll Learn: How to teach machines to understand language, solve problems, and not take over the world (fingers crossed).

• Duration: A few weeks.

• Career Opportunities: AI Engineer, Generative AI Specialist, Data Analyst.

To get an early start on your AI career, explore the program here.

Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate

If you’re into cloud AI (and let’s be honest, who isn’t?), this certification validates your ability to create AI solutions on Azure.

• What You’ll Learn: Cognitive services, machine learning models, and ethical AI deployment.

• Duration: A few months.

• Career Opportunities: Azure AI Engineer, AI Solutions Architect, Cloud AI Specialist.

Microsoft's certification shouts, "I am a cloud-based superman," to hiring managers everywhere. Check out the details.

These certs are like cheat codes for landing high-paying jobs in AI. Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned tech wizard, there’s something here to level up your game!

Test Your Skill
Snack Quiz: Choose The Real Image 🔍

How to make it in AI
400 YC Startups Reveal What to Build with AI 🤖

Ever wondered what you should actually build with AI? If you’re feeling stuck, you’re not alone. Thankfully, YCombinator (YC)—the startup accelerator that’s practically a crystal ball for tech trends—has backed 417 AI startups in its 2023 and 2024 cohorts. By digging into these companies, we can figure out which AI ideas are getting serious investor love.

YC invests $500,000 in each startup, gives them three months of mentorship, and helps them secure more funding. Basically, if YC’s behind it, it’s worth paying attention to.

Top AI Sectors:

These top sectors are where AI startups are getting the most attention from investors.

• Healthcare/Biotech (10.8%): Like Elythea, which uses AI to prevent maternal mortality.

• Fintech (9.1%): Think Arcimus, an AI-powered insurance audit tool.

• Developer Tools (8.9%): Tools like Sudocode that help developers code faster.

B2B or B2C:

Turns out, nearly all YC-backed AI startups are focused on B2B solutions.

• 81.1% B2B: Companies like GigaML (enterprise LLMs) and AiSDR (B2B sales tools).

• 18.9% B2C: Fewer, but promising. Examples include Rex (AI fitness coach) and Roame (AI trip planner).

What’s all this data mean? There is always more money to be made in Enterprise and B2B solutions, but there’s still room for great consumer-facing AI tools as well. The main sectors to focus your efforts in if you’re looking to build your own startup would be Biotech, Fintech, or Developer tools as this is where most AI startup investments are flowing.

Trending Now
Everything Else You Need To Know 📈

One Step Closer To Our Robotaxi Future: The NHTSA proposes a framework to ease deploying autonomous vehicles without traditional controls, like steering wheels and pedals, aiming for transparency and safety while sparking debates about readiness.

Italy Fines OpenAI €15M for ChatGPT Privacy Breaches: Italy's data protection authority fined OpenAI €15 million for multiple privacy violations related to ChatGPT. These include failing to report a data breach, lacking legal grounds for processing personal data, and inadequate age verification measures.

AI Is Dreaming Up New Oreo Cookie Flavors: Mondelez, the company behind Oreos and Chips Ahoy, has been using machine learning to develop new flavors since 2019. The AI tool optimizes sensory characteristics like saltiness, buttery notes, and vanilla intensity. Drawing inspiration from pharmaceutical algorithms, the tool uses historical recipes and ingredient data to innovate efficiently.

Google Adds AI Mode to Challenge ChatGPT: Google plans an "AI mode" button in its search, offering users a choice between traditional results and AI-powered answers. This move directly challenges ChatGPT’s growing influence.

Spotify Promotes Ghost Artists to Cut Royalties: A new book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by Liz Pelly, reveals that Spotify uses a program called "Perfect Fit Content" (PFC) to promote low-cost, generic music over real artists. Former employees describe internal pressure to add PFC tracks to playlists, while skeptical editors were replaced by those indifferent to the ethics of the practice.

Toolbox
5 Trending AI Tools

Browser Use: Browser Use allows developers to create state of the art web agents with a few lines of code—currently standing at 89% on Web Voyager dataset, which is the best web agent you can actually use.

CopyCat: CopyCat automates repetitive tasks by recording your processes and transforming them into streamlined, instant workflows (still only admitting beta users).

Asteroid: Provides runtime supervision for AI agents — delivering human-level oversight for every critical action before execution, combining automated guardrails, human oversight, and continuous evaluation to help companies deploy AI safely and confidently in any domain.

ZeroEntropy: An advanced AI-powered document retrieval pipeline that enables you to seamlessly index, search, and retrieve documents via API with exceptional precision.

FixAI: Automates frontend QA testing using AI agents that simulate real users on websites. With simple natural language prompts, e.g. "make sure the onboarding flow works", FixAI’s agents walk through flows and visually interact with the site to ensure critical bugs never reach users.

Referral Program
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