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Embattled cryptocurrency exchange FTX has abruptly stopped the sale of its stake in AI firm Anthropic, valued over $500 million, as reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday.

FTX had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last November, followed by allegations against co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried for money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Court documents filed recently alleged that Bankman-Fried and other high-ranking executives at FTX were involved in commingling over $402 million in customer funds.

The collapsed exchange is reported to owe customers around $8.7 billion, with $6.4 billion in the form of fiat currency and stablecoins.

FTX’s Efforts to Repay Creditors

In January, FTX was given the green light by a federal judge to sell off some assets to repay creditors.

Among the assets FTX has offloaded is derivatives trading platform LedgerX, sold for $50 million – a stark loss compared to the $300 million FTX paid for LedgerX in 2021.

Earlier this month, FTX, with the assistance of financial services firm Perella Weinberg Partners, had shown intentions to offload its shares in Anthropic as part of its clawback strategy to repay creditors.

A clawback in bankruptcy is a legal process where a bankruptcy trustee retrieves property or payments made by the company prior to filing for bankruptcy.

Anthropic’s Success Story

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has become a front-runner in the current AI boom.

The firm launched Claude AI in March after receiving a $400 million investment from Google earlier this year, supplemented by another $450 million in Series C funding in May, led by Spark Capital.

In May, Anthropic made significant advancements in Claude AI, including the development of a rule-set based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, designed to promote ethical behavior and discourage undesirable actions.

A Pause on the Sale

The unexpected halt in the sale of Anthropic shares came after several potential buyers had evaluated private information about the stake.

Anthropic, which is privately-held, is currently valued at $4.6 billion, according to Semafor’s June report.

Buyers in the secondary market for shares in private companies have been eager to acquire stakes in Anthropic, even at a premium, indicating the significant potential of this AI startup.

FTX’s stake in Anthropic, amounting to a $500 million investment made by FTX and Alameda, is among FTX’s most coveted assets.

While the reason for this sudden halt remains undisclosed, it marks another twist in FTX’s ongoing legal and financial turmoil.

By Mukund Kapoor

OpenAI, a leading name in the AI industry, has unveiled its new web crawling bot, GPTBot, to broaden the dataset for training future AI systems, possibly including the next version named “GPT-5,” as indicated by a recent trademark application.

Gathering Public Data

The newly released GPTBot will collect publicly accessible data from websites while steering clear of paywalled, sensitive, and prohibited content.

Breaking 🚨

OpenAI just launched GPTBot, a web crawler designed to automatically scrape data from the entire internet.

This data will be used to train future AI models like GPT-4 and GPT-5!

GPTBot ensures that sources violating privacy and those behind paywalls are excluded. pic.twitter.com/oR3kY4buaU

— Shubham Saboo (@Saboo_Shubham_) August 7, 2023

This web crawler functions similarly to those of search engines like Google and Bing, assuming that accessible information is fair for use.

To block the OpenAI web crawler from accessing a site, the owner must add a “disallow” rule to a file on their server.

OpenAI has assured that GPTBot will scan the scraped data to eliminate any personally identifiable information (PII) or text that contradicts its policies.

However, the opt-out approach is generating ethical concerns around consent. Critics argue that OpenAI’s actions might lead to derivative work without proper citation.

Addressing Past Controversies

The launch follows prior criticism where OpenAI was accused of scraping data without permission for training its Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT.

In response, OpenAI updated its privacy policies in April.

The new web crawler represents OpenAI’s need for more current data to maintain and enhance its LLMs.

The move may indicate a shift from OpenAI’s initial focus on transparency and safety, understandable as ChatGPT remains the most used LLM globally.

OpenAI’s products heavily rely on the quality of data used for training, and the GPTBot aims to gather that essential data.

Competition in the AI Space

Meta, the social media titan, has also been working on AI, offering its model for free unless used by competitors or large businesses.

While OpenAI’s strategy revolves around using crawled data for profitable AI tool ecosystems, Meta aims to build a profitable business around its data.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT currently boasts over 1.5 billion monthly active users, and Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI is paying off, as ChatGPT integration has enhanced Bing’s capabilities.

As OpenAI’s GPTBot represents an advancement in AI capabilities, it also reopens copyright, consent, and ethics debates.

As AI systems become more advanced, striking the right balance between transparency, ethics, and technological capability will continue to challenge industry leaders.

The new web crawler’s launch highlights the complexities of innovation in the AI space, where benefits in efficiency and ability may come with potential ethical trade-offs.