IN THE SPOTLIGHT
A shot at fixing a century-old mess

The current education system? It’s like trying to run the latest apps on a dinosaur of a computer—totally outdated.

We’re stuck with rote learning, meaningless grades, and a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t fit anyone.

It’s time to hit ‘F5’ on this system.

Enter The Network School, Balaji’s latest venture. It’s like his vision of a digital community, but this time, it’s happening on an island near Singapore for three months, starting September 23.

As Balaji puts it, The Network School runs on Bitcoin and stands on four pillars:

1. Learn: A hands-on solution to today’s broken education. Participants join mini-classrooms to solve ‘the problem of the day.’ Once solved, they earn a cryptocredential (think NFT) as ‘proof-of-learn.’ These badges build a cryptoresume, showing what you’ve learned.

2. Burn: Push your limits with a focus on fitness—running, lifting, eating, and sleeping right.

3. Earn: Strengthen your finances with crypto prizes and bounties. There’ll be office hours on jobs, careers, funding, and more, plus guest appearances from tech leaders.

4. Fun: Imagine being surrounded by people who share your belief in tech progress, globalism, and capitalism—all in one place.

The Network School is open to anyone who can cover the rent: $1,000/month with roommates or $2,000/month solo. Day passes for visitors are also available.

Balaji says this Internet-first institution is for the ‘dark talents’ of the world—those who want Silicon Valley without San Francisco. It’s a product he wishes existed when he was an aspiring young engineer.

Interested? Here’s the link to apply.

We’re excited to see how The Network School will bridge the gaps and change the world, one step at a time.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The world's first AI scientist is here!

Sakana AI, a Japanese R&D company, is making waves with its groundbreaking AI model, now valued at around $1 billion after raising $100 million this June.

Founded just a year ago by tech and AI experts David Ha, Llion Jones (formerly of Google), and Ren Ito (formerly of Stability AI), Sakana aims to leverage Tokyo’s deep pool of AI talent, government support, and innovative energy while creating the foundation model based on nature-inspired intelligence.

Earlier this year, the team developed methods to merge the knowledge of multiple large language models (LLMs) and discover new ways to fine-tune them. This led to the creation of "The AI Scientist" an AI system that automates the entire research lifecycle.

It generates novel ideas, writes code, runs experiments, summarizes results, and even prepares scientific manuscripts—all open-source and available here.

The team also introduced an automated peer review process capable of near-human accuracy in evaluating and providing feedback on papers.

Key demonstrations include AI Scientist's work in ML research, contributing new insights into diffusion models, transformers, and grokking. Sakana AI uses LLMs like GPT-4o, Sonnet, DeepSeek, and Llama 3, noting that Sonnet currently produces the highest quality papers. Each paper costs about $15 to produce.

Looking ahead, the team plans to address current limitations, such as the lack of vision capabilities and occasional errors, while also emphasizing the importance of ethical considerations. They urge the ML community to ensure the responsible and ethical use of such powerful tools.

Although it's early days, we're on the brink of seeing an AI system that might soon collaborate with human scientists, capable of working autonomously and uncovering discoveries we haven't even imagined yet.

SUBSTRATES
What else is happening?

WEB3

• Tether rolls out USDT on Layer 1 Aptos.

• UAE recognizes crypto as a valid form of salary payment.

• Base launches Basenames, human-readable onchain subdomains.

• Bitwise acquires ETC Group, marking a major expansion into the European market.

• Sony is launching Sonieum, an Ethereum Layer-2 solution developed in collaboration with Startale Labs, with the testnet coming soon.

• Magic Eden launches the ME token, enabling cross-chain trading and enhanced interoperability.

• A Colorado chapel is being tokenized to purchase the $2.5 million church building.

AI

• Perplexity rolls out new features including code interpreter and plot rendering.

• Microsoft releases the Phi-3.5 series, featuring three distinct models.

• OpenAI partners with Condé Nast to showcase content from Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired, and more in ChatGPT and SearchGPT. Moreover, the company launches fine-tuning for GPT-4, allowing developers to customize the model further.

• Midjourney’s web platform is now open to everyone, and free trials have been reactivated.

• ElevenLabs' Reader app is now available globally, supporting 32 languages with high-quality AI voices.

• Grammarly is launching Authorship, a feature to ensure content provenance, this September.

• AMD acquires ZT Systems for $4.9 billion to expand its AI chip and hardware offerings.

FROM THE REPOSITORY
Check this out!

• What crypto can do for AI? [link]

• Eric Schmidt’s prophecy on AI for the next 2 years. [link]

• A POV of the state of crypto founders. [link]

Use now or save for later:

• Chordio acts as your AI-driven UX/UI designer mate.

• Use ViaLabs to build cross-chain apps seamlessly.

• Read more in less time with TidyRead.

Visual of the week: Which countries use ChatGPT the most?

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