On Sunday, November 3rd 1957, Russian space dog Laika was launched into orbit, circled the earth four times, and then died alone in space from overheating. Hailed a hero, Laika was memorised in monuments and still is a household name more than 50 years later. It wasn’t really her boldness but she truly went where no dog, or human, had gone before.
In August last year, we applied for a startup grant to continue working on our text generation experiments. We put together our first Silicon Valley-level pitch deck, a tiny collection of slides that received more polishing than any presentation file in our long history of teaching. We went in front of seasoned suits to speak about our hopes and dreams. We secured around €200.000 of funding. There are still some obstacles to get out of the way but it looks like we will kick off 2022 with creating a writing tool powered by machine learning. In total ignorance of her fate we called the project LAIKA. We’re definitely boldly going somewhere. May the heat in our spacecraft be exciting and fine instead of boiling our blood.
The Writing With AI Workshop that we’re hosting next week is part of the kick-off of LAIKA. It’s sold out but you’re more than welcome to sign up for the waiting list which is already long enough to warrant a second workshop.
To quote the inscription on the Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow that features Laika: And our efforts were rewarded, once overcoming rightlessness and darkness, with our victory over the fall of the Guardian and the completion of the city. (Completion by the prototype of our software in bold).
Happy New Orbit Around the Sun! Don’t forget we’re all conquerors of space!