WAID #15: A roundup of Top News & Developments in AI

This week in AI, we saw advancements on multiple fronts. OpenAI introduced a new system to track progress towards artificial general intelligence, while companies like Samsung and Nvidia unveiled new AI-powered products. Investment in AI continues to soar, with Andreessen Horowitz amassing a large stock of GPUs to support AI startups. Researchers published interesting findings on training AI models more efficiently and using AI to combat online voice abuse.

Industry Pulse

OpenAI reportedly internally introduced a new five-tier system to track its progress toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), offering a new glimpse into how the company envisions the path toward human-level AI.

The OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global just announced Thrive AI Health, a new venture developing a hyper-personalized, multimodal AI-powered health coach to help users drive personal behavior change.

Oura just unveiled a new AI-powered health coach called ‘Oura Advisor’, aiming to help users make sense and take action on the data from the company’s wearable rings.

Apple’s Siri upgrades are now expected to come in Spring 2025, with the voice assistant not likely to be part of the Apple Intelligence rollout this Fall.

Nvidia launched a new competition to create an open-source code dataset for training LLMs on hardware design, aiming to eventually automate the development of future GPUs.

Andreesen Horowitz (a16z) is reportedly amassing a substantial arsenal of GPUs, including coveted Nvidia H100s, as part of the company’s strategy to attract and support AI startups.

The Republican National Committee released the GOP platform for the 2024 election, saying if elected the party will repeal President Biden’s AI Executive Order and support AI ‘rooted in free speech and human flourishing’.

Samsung just unveiled its latest AI-infused foldable smartphones at the company’s Galaxy Unpacked event, also revealing the hotly-anticipated Galaxy Ring and an upgraded line of Galaxy Watches.

Neuralink hosted a livestream with new updates on its BCI, including potential telepathic and limb-controlling integrations with Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, new patient testing, and more.

The Washington Post introduced ‘Climate Answers’, a new AI climate chatbot that answers user questions from the outlet’s own reporting.

Anthropic introduced fine-tuning for Claude 3 Haiku available in Amazon Bedrock, enabling businesses to customize the AI model for specialized tasks with improved accuracy and cost-effectiveness.

Tesla postponed its highly-anticipated robotaxi reveal to October, with the two-month delay causing a dip in the company’s share price.

Fanvue’s inaugural Miss AI crowned Kenza Layli, an AI-created Moroccan lifestyle influencer, as its first winner — beating out 1,500 contestants in categories like looks, use of AI tools, and social media presence.

Neurotech startup Synchron announced that it has integrated OpenAI’s generative AI into its brain-computer interface, enabling hands-free chatting for severely paralyzed users.

Avail introduced Corpus, a new platform enabling smaller media companies and creators to license content for AI training.

Chinese startup BXI Robotics’ Elf is now available for purchase for $25,000, with the 4’3, 57-pound bipedal robot capable of carrying up to 44 pounds.

Deals & Finance

— Index Ventures raises $2.3B to chase AI breakthroughs.

— Hebbia raises $130M Series B led by a16z.

— AI game maker Volley raises $55M in Series C co-led by Microsoft and Lightspeed.

— Skild AI is building a general-purpose brain for robots with a $300M series A.

— Captions raises $60M series C by Index Ventures.

— Command Zero raises $21M seed led by a16z for last-mile cybersecurity assistance.

— Fireworks AI has raised $52M in Series B funding led by Sequoia.

— Regard raises $61M to find missed illness, boost hospital revenue.

— Groq nears a $2.2B valuation in a deal with BlackRock.

— SoftBank acquires UK AI chipmaker Graphcore.

— Nvidia to make $12B from AI chips in China this year despite US controls.

— OpenAI could rech $3.4B ARR according to Revenue Report by FutureSearch.

— AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M.

— Scale is partnering with AWS to boost enterprise and government adoption of genAI.

Researches

• Google DeepMind researchers published new research introducing JEST (Joint Example Selection Technique), a method that accelerates AI model training while significantly reducing computing requirements. Also they published new research on robot navigation, leveraging the large context window of Gemini 1.5 Pro to enable robots to understand and navigate complex environments from human instructions.

• Roblox published new research on the company’s use of machine learning to combat voice abuse on the platform, utilizing a model for real-time safety that led to significant decreases severe reports and violations.

• Microsoft published new research unveiling ‘Arena Learning’, a new AI-powered method for post-training LLMs using simulated chatbot battles that significantly increases performance and efficiency.

• A new study testing ChatGPT’s coding abilities found major limitations in the model’s abilities, though the research has been criticized for its use of GPT-3.5 instead of newer, more capable models.

Public Speaking

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati revealed in an interview that the company’s Sora video generation model still has no public release date, with the tool still undergoing safety red teaming and testing for usefulness.

Luma Labs chief scientist Jiaming Song said in an interview that real-time AI video generation is less than a year away, also showing evidence that its Dream Machine model can reason and predict world models in some capacity.

EU chief Margrethe Vesteger warned that Nvidia’s dominance in AI chip supply is a ‘huge bottleneck’ as the company continues to face scrutiny from regulators.

Elon Musk revealed that Grok 2 will likely be ready for release next month, with xAI also beginning training on a 100k H100 system that will be the ‘most powerful training cluster in the world by a large margin.’

Regulation & Legal

► Japan's Defense Ministry just released its inaugural basic policy on the use of artificial intelligence in military applications, aiming to tackle recruitment challenges and keep pace with global powers in defense technology.

► Microsoft just withdrew from its observer role on OpenAI's Board of Directors, while Apple has reportedly scrapped plans to take up a similar position — with the moves coming as regulatory scrutiny continues in the AI sector.

► Vimeo also introduces AI labels to content on its platform.

► YouTube introduced a new AI-powered eraser tool that allows creators to quickly remove copyrighted music from videos while preserving other audio elements.

Must-Try Tools

Telegram AI Bots - Supercharge Telegram with powerful AI bots

Bizplanr - Create a business plan, secure funding, and impress investors with AI

Suno AI Prompt Generator - Generate music styles and lyrics with optimized prompts

Google I/O Crossword - Smart crossword puzzle solving with Gemini

Live Portrait - Realistic portrait animation from driving video sources

Websim - Explore AI simulations and bring your creative projects to life

Mindpal - Build an internal AI tool for your teams

Dreamflare - Discover the best interactive AI-generated videos

LetzAI - AI art tool that adds your personal touch

Pillsr Ask - Supplement insights for personal health

Julius AI Workflow - Run repeatable, multi-step analysis on your data

Proofs - AI agents that build proof-of-concept apps for you

Crew - Easy hire and onboard your global team with AI

AnyoneCanAI - A comprehensive toolkit for applying AI in product and UX design

AiEditor - Open-sourced AI-powered rich text editor

Doti - AI copilot for health & habit tracking

Enso - AI marketplace for small businesses to automate tasks

Good Weekend Reading

— How I use AI as a solopreneur.

— Why talk to customers when you can simulate them?

— How to build AI voice apps in 2024.

— Venture’s big bet on open-source LLMs.

— Extrinsic hallucination in LLMs.

— How to interview and hire ML/AI engineers.

Stay Curious, Stay Informed!

The world of AI is constantly buzzing with innovation. This newsletter is your key to staying ahead of the curve. Let me know in the comments what AI topics pique your interest, and I'll be sure to cover them in future issues!

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