AI makes you worse at what you’re good at

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If you’ve been following along with this newsletter, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been a little bit curious about AI — especially generative AI. I’m likely not the first person to make this observation, but AIs are extremely, painfully average. I guess that’s kind of the point of them — train them on all knowledge, and mediocrity will surface.

The trick is to only use AI tools for stuff that you, yourself, aren’t very good at. If you’re an expert artist or writer, it’ll let you down. The truth, though, is that most people aren’t great writers, and so ChatGPT and its brethren are going to be a massive benefit to white-collar workers everywhere. Well, until we collectively discover that , at least.

On that cheerful note, let’s sniff about in the startup bushes and see what tasty morsels we can scare up from the depths of the TechCrunch archive from the past week. . . .

Okay, fine, let’s start with AI

Image Credits: Kirillm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

I know, this happens every damn week: I start with the intention of writing this newsletter without going up to my eyelashes into the AI morass, and every week, y’all keep reading our AI news as if your livelihood depends on it. Because, well, it’s entirely possible it does, I suppose.

The GPT Store, introduced by OpenAI, enables developers to create

in ChatGPT’s offerings, especially those whose business models are based on such features. It’s a reminder that building a business around another company’s API without a sustainable, stand-alone product is, perhaps, .

AI is, of course, not just for startups. During Apple’s Q4 earnings call, the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, emphasized AI as a fundamental technology and highlighted recent AI-driven features like Personal Voice and Live Voicemail in iOS 17. He also

, once it exits early beta, positioning the chatbot as a perk for the platform’s $16/month ad-free service tier.

Brother, can you spare a GPU?: AWS introduced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Capacity Blocks for ML, a new service that ” on TC+, Michael Koch advises founders on maintaining control over their startup’s strategy and product by bootstrapping — yes, even in the oft-capital-intensive world of AI startups.

The rocky ocean of venture-backed startups

Image Credits: Darrell Etherington with assets from Getty under license WeWork, once a high-flying startup valued at $47 billion, has .

Ex-Twitter CEO raises third venture fund: 01 Advisors, the venture firm founded by former Twitter executives Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, has secured $395 million in capital commitments for its third fund, which was initially coined right here on TechCrunch, to describe startups valued at over $1 billion.

You get a chip! You get a chip!: In response to a shortage of AI chips, to offer selected startups free access to advanced Azure AI supercomputing resources to develop AI models​​.

Look, I’m not going to lie, I think most crypto is dumb, and I’ve seen only a handful of startups that use blockchains in a way that makes any sense whatsoever — most of them would have done just fine with a simple database — so I’ve been following Jacquelyn’s coverage of Bankman-Fried’s trial with a not insignificant amount of schadenfreude. It’s human to make mistakes, and startup founders are human, but if you’re defrauding the fuck out of people, you deserve all the comeuppance you can get.

Sam Bankman-Fried was the co-founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the trading firm Alameda Research (

The house sometimes wins: Mr. Cooper, a mortgage and loan company, , promising a new era in sustainable air travel.

Arrival’s departure: The EV startup Arrival, which aimed to revolutionize electric vehicle production with its micro-factory model, is now facing severe operational challenges, including multiple layoffs, missed production targets, and noncompliance with SEC filing requirements, resulting in

Based on reporting by techcrunch.com.