#79 The $6 AI Model? France’s $85B Bet, DeepSeek's Censorship & The Python Upgrades You Need

Send us a text

Welcome to the cozy corner of the tech world where ones and zeros mingle with casual chit-chat. DataTopics Unpluggedis your go-to spot for relaxed discussions around tech, news, data, and society.

Dive into conversations that should flow as smoothly as your morning coffee (but don’t), where industry insights meet laid-back banter. Whether you're a data aficionado or just someone curious about the digital age, pull up a chair, relax, and let's get into the heart of data, unplugged style!

This week, we break down some of the biggest developments in AI, investments, and automation:

• France’s AI Boom: $85 billion in investments – A look at how a mix of international and domestic funds is fueling France’s AI ecosystem, and why Mistral AI might be Europe's best shot at competing with OpenAI.
• Anthropic’s AI Job Index: Who’s using AI at work? – A deep dive into the latest report on how AI is being used in different industries, from software development to education, and the surprising ways automation is creeping into unexpected jobs.
• The $6 AI Model: How low can costs go? – Researchers have managed to create a reasoning model for just $6. We unpack how they pulled it off and what this means for the AI landscape.
• AI Censorship & Model Distillation: What’s really going on? – A discussion on recent claims that certain AI models come with baked-in censorship, and whether fine-tuning is playing a bigger role than we think.
• PromptLayer’s No-Code AI Tools – Are no-code AI development platforms the next big thing?
• Predicted Outputs: OpenAI’s approach to efficient code editing – A look at how OpenAI’s "Predicted Outputs" feature could make AI-assisted coding more efficient.
• MacOS System Monitoring & Dev Tooling: The geeky stuff – A breakdown of system monitoring tools for Mac users who love to keep an eye on every process running in the background.
• Snapshot Testing with Birdie – Exploring the concept of snapshot testing beyond UI testing and into function outputs.
• BeeWare & the Python Ecosystem – A look at how BeeWare is helping Python developers build cross-platform applications.
• Astral, Ruff, and UV: Python’s performance evolution – The latest from Charlie Marsh on the tools shaping Python development.