How AI Changed Everything in 2024 (And What’s Next)

Happy New Year, AI enthusiasts.

That’s a wrap on 2024, and an absolutely insane year of AI news, mind-blowing releases, robotic advances, and industry drama is officially in the books.

If you want our full '2024: AI Year in Review' check it out here:

Let's take a look at our biggest year yet and a sneak peek into what's coming in 2025. Let’s get into it… 

In today’s AI news:

• AI Advantage's Year in Review: Our biggest year yet

• AgiBot publishes massive humanoid robotics dataset
• Hugging Face launches lightweight agent framework
• More AI & tech news

AI Advantage Year-In-Review: Our biggest year yet

The News: In the last year, AI Advantage has transformed into a leading newsletter for sharing actionable AI insights, reaching nearly 1.5 million people on LinkedIn, delivering impactful projects, and helping businesses unlock the true potential of artificial intelligence.

Our 2024 year in review:

• Connected with nearly 1.5 million people on LinkedIn, sparking vibrant conversations and sharing groundbreaking insights on AI.
• Delivered 700+ AI-driven projects, 100% sourced from newsletter subscribers and referrals.
• Represented at Google I/O, Meta Connect, OpenAI DevDay, and other flagship events.
• Maintained coverage of every single major AI development throughout the year included OpenAI’s o1 series, AI video generators, AI agents, humanoid robots, self-driving cars, and more.

A look into 2025: We’re thrilled to grow our newsletter further and launch two new initiatives designed to empower our audience. This year, we’ll introduce the Ask The Experts series, featuring exclusive interviews with AI leaders to share insider insights—starting with the first edition later today. We’re also unveiling AI Advantage Labs, offering tutorials, open-source tools, and behind-the-scenes content on scaling an AI agency. These initiatives aim to provide even greater value as we explore the limitless potential of AI together.

AgiBot publishes massive humanoid robotics dataset

The News: Chinese robotics company AgiBot just released AgiBot World Alpha, a new open-source dataset featuring over 1M trajectories from 100 robots designed to advance general-purpose humanoid training.

The details:

• The collection encompasses training data from a fleet of 100 robots performing diverse tasks across industrial, domestic, and commercial settings.
• Training scenarios range from basic object manipulation to complex multi-robot coordination tasks, with 40% focused on household activities.
• The dataset is also reportedly 10 times larger than Google's Open X-Embodiment in navigational data and covers 100x more scenarios.
• Researchers and developers can freely access the complete dataset through platforms like HuggingFace and GitHub.

Why it matters: Access to high-quality training data has been one of the biggest roadblocks in robotics development, and this massive open-source release could supercharge the next wave of household robotics innovation. It could also level the playing field for smaller developers who can now build with premium training data.

Hugging Face launches lightweight agent framework

The News: Hugging Face just released Smolagents, a minimalist open-source framework that allows developers to create powerful AI agents with just a few lines of Python code.

The details:

• The streamlined library contains only about 1,000 lines of code while handling core agent functionality.
• A unique CodeAgent feature lets AI write Python code directly rather than using traditional tool-calling methods, reducing steps by 30%.
• The framework works with multiple AI models, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Llama, and Qwen.
• The platform also enables sharing and loading tools through the Hugging Face Hub, with expanded functionality planned.

Why it matters: 2025 will be the year of AI agents, and hyper-simple frameworks like this will continue to lower the barriers to agent development and allow more builders to harness capabilities without getting bogged down in complex implementations. Get ready to have an internet of agents readily available for any use case.

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QUICK HITS

ZoomInfo reported AI job listings hit record highs in 2024, with C-suite positions up 428% since 2022 and over 10,875 new AI leadership roles created in Q2 2024 alone, signaling a major organizational shift toward AI-focused strategies.

OpenAI introduced deliberative alignment, a new safety approach that teaches AI models to actively reason through safety guidelines before responding — with its o1 model showing improved performance at rejecting harmful requests.

Alibaba Cloud announced major price cuts of up to 85% on its Qwen-VL visual language model, aiming to incentivize enterprise adoption of the Chinese tech giant’s models.

Leeds researchers are trialing a new AI tool that scans GP records for risk factors to identify patients with undiagnosed atrial fibrillation before symptoms appear, aiming to prevent strokes through early detection and treatment.

Scientists are embracing AI hallucinations as powerful tools for breakthrough discoveries, with the New York Times detailing cases from Nobel Prize-winning protein design to medical devices and weather prediction.

University of Toronto researchers developed an AI app that can detect high blood pressure by analyzing voice recordings, achieving up to 84% accuracy without requiring traditional blood pressure measurements.

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