GSV's AI News & Updates (05/03/24)
OpenAI's Rumored Search Engine, gpt2-chatbot, Amazon Q, Claude Team and iOS, GitHub Copilot Workspace, AI-Generated Population, CA Safety Checks, AI Spending
General 🚀
OpenAI rumored to be launching a search engine: rumors are swirling that OpenAI is challenging Google with Microsoft Bing’s support. They are registering SSL certificates for search.chatgpt.com and Sam Altman also talked about search + LLMs in his latest visit to Lex Fridman’s podcast.
Mysterious new “gpt2-chatbot” AI model appears suddenly: speculations are going wild from it being GPT-4.5 or GPT-5, or GPT-2 with Q* or a fine-tune for agentic reasoning. Many who have tested it have reached the conclusion that it’s probably not GPT-5 - the new mystery chatbot doesn’t seem to represent a large capability leap beyond GPT-4. “It may well be an OpenAI stealth preview of something”.
Claude launches Team plan and iOS app: a new enterprise-focused subscription (200k context window, access to the full Claude 3 model family, admin tools for managing users and billing) and iOS app (seamless sync of chat history across devices, vision capabilities).
Amazon Q, Amazon’s AI agent, is now available: Amazon Q Business is an AI assistant designed for coders and business professionals, allowing them to interact with code and company data using natural language, such as plain English, within a unified web-based chat interface.
GitHub launches new Copilot Workspace: within Copilot Workspace, developers can use natural language to brainstorm, plan, build, test, and run code, with the AI assisting at every step.
How good is OpenAI’s Sora video model — and will it transform jobs?: workers in animation, advertising and real estate test rival AI systems that create short text-to-video clips.
Scale AI’s 2024 AI Readiness Report: a report on how the world’s most ambitious companies are optimizing and securing generative AI - 56% fine-tune models, 58% indicated lack of suitable tools and frameworks as a challenge holding back their AI projects, 82% are testing and evaluating models.
Six Takeaways from Stanford University’s 2024 Report on the State AI: highlights include - AI beats humans on some tasks, but not on all; the staggering increase in costs of training; evidence of AI’s impact on productivity across sectors.
“The Hardest Part” by Washed Out is the first official music video made entirely with OpenAI’s Sora
Education and the Future of Work 📚
GenAI and education: Beyond the hype: despite nearly half of college students using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, only 4% of U.S. students turn to these tools first when stuck on a concept or assignment, mainly due to concerns about the accuracy of the information provided.
Duolingo’s CEO on Language Learning, AI and the End of CAPTCHAs
Los Angeles School District Launched a Splashy AI Chatbot. What Exactly Does It Do?: “Ed is not a replacement for anything, it is an enhancement. It will actually create more opportunities and free our teachers and counselors from bureaucracy and allow them to do the social, interactive activity that builds on the promise of public education,” said Carvalho.
Baltimore coach allegedly used AI voice cloning to get principal fired: a physical education teacher has been arrested and charged with using AI to create a fake audio recording of the school's principal making racist and antisemitic comments.
You’re probably doing a job that didn’t exist in 1940. Will yours exist in 2040?: Researchers found that about 60% of jobs in 2018 did not exist 1940. Since 1940, the bulk of new jobs has shifted from middle-class production and clerical jobs to high-paid professional jobs and low-paid service jobs.
The AI-Generated Population Is Here, and They’re Ready to Work: AI that can predict how specific humans will look, act and feel could do the jobs of fashion models, focus group members and clinical trial participants. Consulting firm Gartner refers to the technology as “digital humans”—and estimates that in five to 10 years companies might even have digital twins for every single one of their customers.
AI spending grew 293% last year. Here's how companies are using AI to stay ahead: Over a third of Ramp customers now pay for at least one AI tool compared to 21% one year ago. The average business spent $1.5k on AI tools in Q1, an increase of 138% year over year and evidence that companies using AI are seeing clear benefits and doubling down.
Startups and Tools 🛠️
AI Startup CoreWeave Nearly Triples Valuation to $19B in Five Months: CoreWeave operates a cloud platform specialized in graphics processing unit (GPU) workloads, focusing on use cases like artificial intelligence (AI) and graphics rendering.
Cubby: a private workspace to store files and links, annotate your content, and synthesize with AI.
Mindtrip.ai: AI-powered travel, personalized to you - interactive and customizable itineraries, consolidates all reservations, trip sharing.
Chat with Gemini in your Chrome desktop bar: type “@” in the desktop address bar and insert your prompt.
Regulation and Policy ⚖️
California Bill Proposes Strict Safety Checks for AI Companies: the legislation would set mandatory AI safety testing requirements before training or market release and would mandate an internal fail-safe be included in all AI systems to trigger an immediate shutdown if issues are detected.
Major U.S. newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft for copyright infringement: until now, The Times was the sole major newspaper to sue AI firms for copyright infringement. Others like the Financial Times, Associated Press, and Axel Springer chose to negotiate paid agreements with AI companies, totaling millions annually.
FKA twigs creates deepfake of herself, calls for AI regulation: the singer appeared on Capitol Hill to testify about the dangers of AI. ‘We must enact regulation now to safeguard our authenticity and protect against misappropriation of our inalienable rights’.
Microsoft bans US police departments from using enterprise AI tool for facial recognition: this policy change comes after Axon, a maker of tech products for law enforcement, announced a new tool using OpenAI's GPT-4 to transcribe and summarize body cam audio.
NIST launches a new platform to assess generative AI: NIST (The National Institute of Standards and Technology) GenAI will release benchmarks, help create “content authenticity” detection (i.e. deepfake-checking) systems and encourage the development of software to spot the source of fake or misleading AI-generated information
Other
AI discovers over 27,000 overlooked asteroids in old telescope images: the discovery also includes more than 100 Near-Earth Asteroids, which are of particular interest due to their proximity to Earth and potential threat to our planet.
Mongo DB is launching a consulting program to help enterprises build AI applications.
Friends From the Old Neighborhood Turn Rivals in Big Tech’s A.I. Race: Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, who both grew up in London, feared a corporate rush to build artificial intelligence. Now they’re driving that competition at Google and Microsoft.
Reid Hoffman meets his AI twin
Resources
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