A New Fear Unlocked with Copilot+PCs

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently unveiled Windows' latest feature, Recall for easy data retrieval, at the Copilot+PCs launch event. This new feature from Microsoft is now facing a lot of flak for becoming ‘an employee’s worst nightmare’.

One of the concerns was that the latest Windows PCs captured screenshots of users' activities, feeding this data into a sophisticated AI model embedded directly within the devices. Through neural processing, every image and interaction would become searchable.

“Definitely turning this ‘feature’ off,” said Tesla chief Elon Musk, calling it an episode from Black Mirror. 

Similarly, at Google I/O, the tech giant introduced AI Teammates and NotebookLM, which help people in their work and teach them things quickly and meaningfully, invoking similar emotions. The same goes for the GPT-4o desktop. 

AI models have emotions, too 

OpenAI’s GPT-4o voice feature blew the minds of many users. It responded almost instantly, expressed a wide range of emotions, altered the volume and pacing of its speech, and even sang!

Perhaps even more remarkable was that it could hear, distinguish different breathing patterns, identify speakers by voice in a group conversation, harmonise with itself, and even respond to interruptions.

Slowly but surely, the boundaries between people and AI are getting fuzzier. 

“There's no reason why these things can't have feelings,” said one of the godfathers of AI, Geoffry Hinton, recalling an ‘emotional’ robot in 1973. 

He said, with its grippers in place, the robot could assemble a toy automobile if the parts were correctly arranged. But when the parts were dispersed, the robot behaved differently; it seemed “crossed” or irritated, much like a human would when faced with a challenging or unclear task.

This observation, dating back over four decades, underscores the potential for AI and robotics in exhibiting behaviours we typically associate with human emotions. Hinton’s insights continue to push the boundaries of what we understand about consciousness and emotion in machines.

Lucy in the Sky 

In another update, Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson expressed shock and initiated legal action against OpenAI for using a voice “eerily similar” to hers in their chatbot without her permission. 

“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine,” she said, pointing at ‘Sky’, which is one of the five AI voices used in OpenAI’s updated chatbot model. Also, she felt that it particularly resembled her voice in the movie Her. 

Contrary to the claim, Altman is said to have reached out to Johansson twice regarding using her voice for the ChatGPT tool. Sources revealed that he initially contacted her in September to discuss the possibility and approached her agent again in the days leading up to OpenAI's event, asking her to reconsider her previous decision to decline the offer.

For now, OpenAI has temporarily paused the use of ‘Sky’ to address concerns around its similarity to her voice. 

“We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice — Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice,” clarified OpenAI. 

Meet the Duo from Hyderabad who Made it Big at Google I/O 

Google I/O 2024 wrapped up last week, featuring a range of exciting announcements. During the latter part of the keynote, Google showcased a short video highlighting the power of Gemma in building Indic LLMs, introducing Navarasa, a Gemma 7B/2B instruction-tuned model supporting 15 Indian languages and English, developed by Telugu LLM Labs, founded by Ravi Theja Desetty and Ramsri Goutham Golla.

Read the full story here. 

Are these Indian Developers Building AGI?

In the latest episode of Tech Talks, Mufeed VH, the founder of Stition.ai and creator of Devika, India's AI software engineer; Adarsh Shirawalmath, founder of Tensoic and creator of Kannada Llama; and Adithya S Kolavi, founder of CognitiveLab and creator of the Indic LLM Leaderboard, held an in-depth discussion on leading India’s AI revolution.