Meetup Recap, We're Planning a Hackathon, and more | AITX Newsletter #21

Hello everyone! AITX Team here with more updates this week.

If you’re new here, welcome! 👋 At AITX, we aim to:

• Connect you with like-minded peers passionate about AI.

• Provide a space for sharing ideas and receiving feedback on AI projects you’re building.

• Share helpful tools and invaluable resources.

May Meetup Recap

Before jumping into the teams that demoed, if you want to watch their pitches, you can find them here

MemARY Julian Saks

MemARY is an open-source project developed by a group of students from the Entrepreneurship club for Texas Momentum at the University of Texas at Austin. The project aims to provide long-term memory capabilities for autonomous agents, allowing them to understand and track user preferences and knowledge through their interactions.

Key features of MemARY include:

1. Knowledge graph: MemARY runs a knowledge graph in the background to store and organize information.

2. Memory modules: The project includes built-in memory modules that enable agents to track the breadth and depth of a user's knowledge.

3. Context-aware responses: By passing the collected information into a new context window, MemARY enables agents to retrieve and produce more relevant responses.

4. Integration with llama index: MemARY is set to become a package within the llama index ecosystem, making it easily accessible through a simple pip install memory command.

Since its open-source release in late April 2024, MemARY has gained significant attention, with the repository garnering nearly a thousand stars and over 50,000 views.

The team behind MemARY is excited to demonstrate the project's potential and welcomes contributions from the community. They are also looking for individuals skilled in video animations to help with freelance work.

The team encourages users to star the GitHub repository to help them reach their goal of 1,000 stars.

Cortal Insight Preetham Rajkumar

Cortal Insight is a data management platform aimed at simplifying dataset complexities for data scientists.

The company's mission is to allow data scientists to dedicate more time to innovation and less time dealing with complex data problems.

Cortal Insight offers automation solutions for the entire data pipeline, from the moment a dataset is stored in a data lake until it is ready to be used in a model.

By streamlining this process, the platform helps data scientists save time and effort in managing their datasets.

Currently, Cortal Insight is searching for early design partners who work with visual datasets.

The company believes that their platform can significantly reduce the headaches associated with managing visual data, making it an attractive solution for data scientists working in this domain.

If you are a data scientist working with visual datasets and are interested in simplifying your data management process, Pritha encourages you to reach out to Cortal Insight.

The company is confident that their platform can save you a considerable amount of time and effort, allowing you to focus on what matters most - innovation.

Learn more here.

Surge AI Ferris Jumah

Surge AI is a company that uses internet trends to help users find their next great idea.

The company aims to make the process of researching ideas for marketing, products, brands, and competition much faster and more efficient.

Ferris’ personal experience with the time-consuming nature of research motivated him to start Surge AI.

The company's goal is to provide users with real-time insights into what's trending across the entire internet, enabling them to quickly conduct market research, understand consumer preferences, and stay ahead of the curve without investing significant effort.

Surge AI mines data from various platforms, including

• TikTok

• Instagram

• YouTube

• Reddit

• Snapchat

• Google

• Amazon

• and Walmart

Over a trillion times every day...

This extensive data mining allows the company to provide up-to-date information on what people are buying, shopping for, interested in, and talking about.

The team behind Surge AI consists of experienced AI professionals who have worked at major tech companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Airbnb for over 15 years.

Instead of joining a division at OpenAI, they have chosen to work with Surge AI to help users find their next great idea.

Lear more here.

Twisty AI Michael Powers

Twisty.ai is a company that aims to automate video content marketing for social media platforms.

They have developed both an iPhone and an Android app to help creators, mid-sized businesses, and agencies generate and publish engaging content on a daily basis.

The company's primary goal is to assist users in battling the algorithms on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, which require 6-8 pieces of engaging content per day to maintain visibility.

Twisty.ai recognizes that creating this volume of content can be expensive and challenging, so they have developed a solution to address this problem.

Twisty.ai generates AI-driven video content from scratch, creating compelling stories and social-ready templates.

The app is currently available for use, and the company is actively seeking feedback from users to improve their product.

In addition to feedback, Twisty.ai is looking for businesses interested in participating in their pilot program and agency partners to collaborate with.

By working with a diverse range of users and partners, the company aims to refine its product and better serve the needs of its target audience.

Learn more here.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Artists & the Age of AI: June 2024 Meetup

• When: Thursday, June 13 | 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM CST

• Where: 701 Brazos St 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX

• What: Connect with other artists, creatives, and technologists and stay updated on the latest developments in the arts and AI-tech space.

Generative AI & Copyright

• When: Tuesday, June 11 | 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM CST

• Where: Capital Factory 701 Brazos Street Suite 150 · Austin, TX

• What: One of the key legal issues currently being debated around Generative AI is whether or not tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney are in violation of copyright, namely, whether the act of using existing artistic content as training data to produce new content is a derivative or transformational use of the training data.

  In this talk, Ed Cavazos will walk us through both what current copyright law has to say about the legal status of AI art, as well as what he believes the legal framework around AI art should be going forward

Main Street AI: Practical AI & Automation Strategies for Small Business

• When: Wednesday, June 5 | 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM CST

• Where: Lazarus Brewing Co. 4803 Airport Blvd · Austin, TX

• What: a relaxed and informative meetup designed specifically for small business owners like you who are curious about practical AI applications.

Elevate Your Content Game with AI: Michael Daigler's Transformative Strategies

• When: Wednesday, June 5 | 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM CST

• Where: Capital Factory 701 Brazos St · Austin, TX

• What: Join Michael Daigler, a creator, accomplished entrepreneur, and passionate community builder, as he shares his groundbreaking insights on the exciting intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and content processes.

Hacky Hour @ Lustre Pearl East for Austin LangChain Users Group

• When: Wednesday, June 12 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM CST

• Where: Lustre Pearl East 114 Linden St · Austin, TX

• What: casual gathering is the perfect opportunity for AI and LangChain enthusiasts to come together, hack on labs, and share knowledge in a relaxed environment.

COMMUNITY STORIES

Valkyrie's Andromeda Secures Record-Breaking $4.5M Pre-Seed Funding for Unbiased Decision Intelligence

Andromeda, a subsidiary of Valkyrie, has announced the successful completion of a $4.5 million pre-seed funding round, setting a new record for the largest pre-seed round in Austin, Texas, in 2024.

The company's decision intelligence platform integrates transformers (LLMs) and knowledge graphs to provide unbiased, fact-based insights for warfighters and other mission-critical decision-makers.

Andromeda's unique architecture eliminates the risk of AI hallucinations, ensuring reliable and actionable intelligence for high-stakes operations.

Need-to-know:

• Andromeda raised $4.5 million in a pre-seed funding round, the largest in Austin, Texas, in 2024

• The platform integrates transformers (LLMs) and knowledge graphs to deliver unbiased, fact-based insights

• Andromeda's architecture eliminates the risk of AI hallucinations, ensuring reliable intelligence

• The platform has already supported U.S. national security for years and will expand to tackle industry challenges

• Andromeda will be available for deployment in private or government cloud, on-premise, and offline environments

The funding round was led by Trust Ventures and other prominent investors, enabling Andromeda to accelerate product development, expand its engineering team, and drive market adoption among key target segments, including the defense and intelligence communities.

With its hallucination-free insights, actionable plans, and interactive knowledge graph visualizations, Andromeda is poised to revolutionize decision-making processes for high-stakes operations across various sectors.

Learn more here.

UT System Hosts Inaugural AI Symposium to Address Promise and Concerns in Healthcare

The University of Texas System is hosting the inaugural UT System AI Symposium in Health Care to foster collaboration and promote the responsible integration of AI in healthcare.

Experts from eight UT institutions will convene to address the transformative potential of AI in enhancing education, training, and patient care while ensuring its ethical and responsible use.

Need-to-know:

• AI is already being used in various healthcare applications, from cancer detection to predicting effective treatments

• The UT System is integrating AI into degree programs to equip future healthcare professionals with emerging skills

• Collaborations with industry partners aim to set standards for AI deployment in healthcare

As AI reshapes the healthcare landscape, the UT System is committed to being at the forefront of its responsible deployment, ultimately improving patient outcomes and advancing community health.

Learn more here.

UT-Led Team Receives $12M NSF Grant to Revolutionize Operating Systems with AI

A team of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin has been awarded a major grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing program to develop AI-powered operating systems.

The project aims to boost the performance and energy efficiency of computer operating systems, enabling the integration of new advancements in hardware and applications.

By employing AI-aided intelligent resource management, the team seeks to create a "self-driving" computing infrastructure that can adapt to emerging technologies and applications.

Key Points:

• The project brings together computer scientists from UT, TACC, UIUC, UPenn, and UW-Madison, as well as industry partners from Amazon, Bosch, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and Broadcom

• The new AI-powered operating system could help usher in the era of affordable personal robots and apps that support day-to-day activities

• The project includes initiatives to create new curricula and cultivate leadership among underrepresented groups in AI and computer systems technology

• The grant, totaling $12 million over five years, represents one of the largest investments provided by the NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering

This research aligns with UT's ongoing initiatives, including the Machine Learning Laboratory and the Center for Generative AI, further advancing the University's commitment to developing groundbreaking AI innovations during its Year of AI.

Learn more here.

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHT

This week, we’d like to say thank you to the MemARY team for coming out to show the possibilities with long-term memory for autonomous agents (and making it open-source!).

Thank you to the presenting team:

• Julian Saks

• Kevin Li

• Seyeong Han

We are excited to see their progress as they continue to build!