Latest news with #Vercel
Business Insider
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Thanks to ChatGPT, the pure internet is gone. Did anyone save a copy?
In the post-nuclear age, scientists noticed a peculiar problem: steel produced after 1945 was contaminated. Atomic bombs had infused the atmosphere with radioactivity, which contaminated the metal. This made most steel useless for precise equipment such as Geiger counters and other highly accurate sensors. The solution? Salvage old steel from sunken pre-war battleships resting deep on the ocean floor, far away from the nuclear fallout. This material, known as low-background steel, became prized for its purity and rarity. Fast forward to 2025, and a similar story is unfolding — not under the sea, but across the internet. Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, AI-generated content has exploded across blogs, search engines, and social media. The digital realm is increasingly infused with content not written by humans, but synthesized by models and chatbots. And just like radiation, this content is tricky for regular folks to detect, is pervasive, and it alters the environment in which it exists. This phenomenon poses a particularly thorny problem for AI researchers and developers. Most AI models are trained on vast datasets collected from the web. Historically, that meant learning from human data: messy, insightful, biased, poetic, and occasionally brilliant. But if today's AI is trained on yesterday's AI-generated text, which was itself trained on last week's AI content, then models risk folding in on themselves, diluting originality and nuance in what's been dubbed " model collapse." Put another way: AI models are supposed to be trained to understand how humans think. If they're trained mostly on their own outputs, they may end up just mimicking themselves. Like photocopying a photocopy, each generation becomes a little blurrier until nuance, outliers, and genuine novelty disappear. This makes human-generated content, from before 2022, more valuable because it grounds AI models, and society in general, in a shared reality, according to Will Allen, a vice president at Cloudflare, which operates one of the largest networks on the internet. This becomes especially important as AI models spread into technical fields, such as medicine, law, and tax. He wants his doctor to rely on content based on research written by human experts from real human trials, not AI-generated sources, for instance. "The data that has that connection to reality has always been critically important and will be even more crucial in the future," Allen said. "If you don't have that foundational truth, it just becomes so much more complicated." Paul Graham's problem This isn't just theoretical. Problems are already cropping up in the real world. Almost a year after ChatGPT launched, venture capitalist Paul Graham described searching online for how hot to set a pizza oven. He found himself looking at the dates of the content to find older information that wasn't " AI-generated SEO-bait," he said in a post on X. Malte Ubl, CTO of AI startup Vercel and a former Google Search engineer, replied, saying Graham was filtering the internet for content that was "pre-AI-contamination." "The analogy I've been using is low background steel, which was made before the first nuclear tests," Ubl said. Matt Rickard, another former Google engineer, concurred. In a blog post from June 2023, he wrote that modern datasets are getting contaminated. "AI models are trained on the internet. More and more of that content is being generated by AI models," Rickard explained. "Output from AI models is relatively undetectable. Finding training data unmodified by AI will be tougher and tougher." The digital version of low-background steel The answer, some argue, lies in preserving digital versions of low-background steel: human-generated data from before the AI boom. Think of it as the internet's digital bedrock, created not by machines but by people with intent and context. One such preservationist is John Graham-Cumming, a Cloudflare board member and the company's CTO. His project, catalogs datasets, websites, and media that existed before 2022, the year ChatGPT sparked the generative AI content explosion. For instance, there's GitHub's Arctic Code Vault, an archive of open-source software buried in a decommissioned coal mine in Norway. It was captured in February 2020, about a year before the AI-assisted coding boom got going. Graham-Cumming's initiative is an effort to archive content that reflects the web in its raw, human-authored form, uncontaminated by LLM-generated filler and SEO-optimized sludge. Another source he lists is "wordfreq," a project to track the frequency of words used online. Linguist Robyn Speer maintained this, but stopped in 2021. "Generative AI has polluted the data," she wrote in a 2024 update on coding platform GitHub. This skews internet data to make it a less reliable guide to how humans write and think. Speer cited one example that showed how ChatGPT is obsessed with the word "delve" in a way that people never have been. This has caused the word to appear way more often online in recent years. (A more recent example is ChatGPT's love of the em dash — don't ask me why!) Our shared reality As Cloudflare's Allen explained, AI models trained partly on synthetic content can accelerate productivity and remove tedium from creative work and other tasks. He's a fan and regular user of ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and other chatbots such as Claude. And just like human-generated data, the analogy to low-background steel is not perfect. Scientists have developed different ways to produce steel that use pure oxygen. Still, Allen says, "you always want to be grounded in some level of truth." The stakes go beyond model performance. They reach into the fabric of our shared reality. Just as scientists trusted low-background steel for precise measurements, we may come to rely on carefully preserved pre-AI content to gauge the true state of the human mind — to understand how we think, reason, and communicate before the age of machines that mimic us. The pure internet is gone. Thankfully, some people are saving copies. And like the divers salvaging steel from the ocean floor, they remind us: Preserving the past may be the only way to build a trustworthy future.
Business Insider
26-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
I spoke with the CFOs of Vercel, Mercury, and Cribl about doing business in uncertain times
With a shaky IPO market, tariff uncertainty, and stock market jitters, these are not easy times to be the chief financial officer of a late-stage tech company. Against that precarious backdrop, I sat down last week with the CFOs of Mercury, Vercel, and Cribl at the San Francisco office of CRV, one of Silicon Valley's oldest venture firms and an early investor in all three startups. "I'm expecting a lot more uncertainty," said Daniel Kang, CFO of Mercury, a fintech banking startup that recently doubled its valuation to $3.5 billion after raising $300 million in its latest funding round. "There's a lot of impact from what's happening in DC." All the turmoil means CFOs have to be more nimble, said Kang. Marten Abrahamsen, Vercel's CFO, was more upbeat. He does not expect a recession this year and predicts a stock market rally in the fall. "I think a lot of this is going to be fueled by some of the investments we see in AI, and we're already seeing it for some of our products that weren't even here a year ago," said Abrahamsen. "I'm very, very bullish on the remainder of this year and beyond." After President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on imports from other countries on April 2, investors panicked and companies from the payments lender Klarna to the physical therapy startup Hinge Health halted their IPO plans. The pause turned out to be short-lived. Markets have rebounded after Trump rolled back the most severe tariffs and he said he would not fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Bankers are telling companies to go public while the window is open. This week, Hinge Health shares jumped 17% in its market debut after eToro, an Israeli trading platform, made a successful public debut on the Nasdaq, opening 34% above its IPO price. (Klarna's IPO is still on hold after the company reported mounting losses.) Abrahamsen does not think companies should wait until a better market comes along to IPO; instead, they should focus on what they can control. "There has been a fear of going public in Silicon Valley," he said. "Great companies can go public even if there's not a hot market out there. If you're an outstanding business, there's always going to be an opportunity." Asked why so few companies are going public, the panelists said companies do not want to deal with the headaches of being a public company when there is so much private financing available. There is also little pressure to IPO from investors and employees, according to Zachary Johnson, CFO of Cribl, a data management solutions startup that raised $319 million last year at a $3.5 billion valuation. "They understand that we're trying to build something that's going to be generational," said Johnson. "When we think about how we want to build this company, it's really about focusing on that durability and sustainability of growth." Johnson is hopeful that advances in AI can make Cribl even more attractive to investors when it goes public. He recently tasked everyone on his executive team to come up with an AI initiative. "There's some work to be done, but I'm optimistic that we can actually get some real returns on that by the end of this year," he said. "We're still in the early innings of AI."
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Vercel debuts an AI model optimized for web development
The team behind Vercel's V0, an AI-powered platform for web creation, has developed an AI model it claims excels at certain website development tasks. Available through an API, the model, called "v0-1.0-md," can be prompted with text or images, and was "optimized for front-end and full-stack web development," the Vercel team says. Currently in beta, it requires a V0 Premium plan ($20 per month) or Team plan ($30 per user per month) with usage-based billing enabled. The launch of V0's model comes as more developers and companies look to adopt AI-powered tools for programming. According to a Stack Overflow survey last year, around 82% of developers reported that they're using AI tools for writing code. Meanwhile, a quarter of startups in Y Combinator's W25 batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI, per YC managing partner Jared Friedman. Vercel's model can "auto-fix" common coding issues, the Vercel team says, and it's compatible with tools and SDKs that support OpenAI's API format. Evaluated on web development frameworks like the model can ingest up to 128,000 tokens in one go. Tokens are the raw bits of data that AI models work with, with a million tokens being equivalent to about 750,000 words (roughly 163,000 words longer than "War and Peace"). Vercel isn't the only outfit developing tailored models for programming, it should be noted. Last month, JetBrains, the company behind a range of popular app development tools, debuted its first "open" AI coding model. Last week, Windsurf released a family of programming-focused models dubbed SWE-1. And just yesterday, Mistral unveiled a model, Devstral, tuned for particular developer tasks. Companies may be keen to develop — and embrace — AI-powered coding assistants, but models still struggle to produce quality software. Code-generating AI tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and errors, owing to weaknesses in areas like the ability to understand programming logic. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Vercel debuts an AI model optimized for web development
The team behind Vercel's V0, an AI-powered platform for web creation, has developed an AI model it claims excels at certain website development tasks. Available through an API, the model, called "v0-1.0-md," can be prompted with text or images, and was "optimized for front-end and full-stack web development," the Vercel team says. Currently in beta, it requires a V0 Premium plan ($20 per month) or Team plan ($30 per user per month) with usage-based billing enabled. The launch of V0's model comes as more developers and companies look to adopt AI-powered tools for programming. According to a Stack Overflow survey last year, around 82% of developers reported that they're using AI tools for writing code. Meanwhile, a quarter of startups in Y Combinator's W25 batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI, per YC managing partner Jared Friedman. Vercel's model can "auto-fix" common coding issues, the Vercel team says, and it's compatible with tools and SDKs that support OpenAI's API format. Evaluated on web development frameworks like the model can ingest up to 128,000 tokens in one go. Tokens are the raw bits of data that AI models work with, with a million tokens being equivalent to about 750,000 words (roughly 163,000 words longer than "War and Peace"). Vercel isn't the only outfit developing tailored models for programming, it should be noted. Last month, JetBrains, the company behind a range of popular app development tools, debuted its first "open" AI coding model. Last week, Windsurf released a family of programming-focused models dubbed SWE-1. And just yesterday, Mistral unveiled a model, Devstral, tuned for particular developer tasks. Companies may be keen to develop — and embrace — AI-powered coding assistants, but models still struggle to produce quality software. Code-generating AI tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and errors, owing to weaknesses in areas like the ability to understand programming logic. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data
TechCrunch
22-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Vercel debuts an AI model optimized for web development
The team behind Vercel's V0, an AI-powered platform for web creation, has developed an AI model it claims excels at certain website development tasks. Available through an API, the model, called 'v0-1.0-md,' can be prompted with text or images, and was 'optimized for front-end and full-stack web development,' the Vercel team says. Currently in beta, it requires a V0 Premium plan ($20 per month) or Team plan ($30 per user per month) with usage-based billing enabled. We're releasing v0's AI model: • Specialized web-dev knowledge • OpenAI-compatible API • Use in Cursor, Codex, or your own app Now in beta in the API, AI SDK, or AI Playground. — v0 (@v0) May 22, 2025 The launch of V0's model comes as more developers and companies look to adopt AI-powered tools for programming. According to a Stack Overflow survey last year, around 82% of developers reported that they're using AI tools for writing code. Meanwhile, a quarter of startups in Y Combinator's W25 batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI, per YC managing partner Jared Friedman. Vercel's model can 'auto-fix' common coding issues, the Vercel team says, and it's compatible with tools and SDKs that support OpenAI's API format. Evaluated on web development frameworks like the model can ingest up to 128,000 tokens in one go. Tokens are the raw bits of data that AI models work with, with a million tokens being equivalent to about 750,000 words (roughly 163,000 words longer than 'War and Peace'). Vercel isn't the only outfit developing tailored models for programming, it should be noted. Last month, JetBrains, the company behind a range of popular app development tools, debuted its first 'open' AI coding model. Last week, Windsurf released a family of programming-focused models dubbed SWE-1. And just yesterday, Mistral unveiled a model, Devstral, tuned for particular developer tasks. Companies may be keen to develop — and embrace — AI-powered coding assistants, but models still struggle to produce quality software. Code-generating AI tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and errors, owing to weaknesses in areas like the ability to understand programming logic. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW
