🚕Robotaxi Powered by Google & Waymo

Hey TEDchats Fam!

Happy Friday! Imagine this: you’re in a self-driving car, and suddenly, it’s faced with a decision—a stray dog on one side, a cyclist on the other, and an impatient driver right behind. It’s a scene fit for an action thriller, but Waymo’s partnership with Google’s advanced Gemini AI might just make it a smooth cruise!

🧑‍💻 DAILY PROMPT

🍕 QUICK BITES

Waymo Taps Google’s AI to Supercharge Self-Driving Tech

Waymo has released a detailed research paper on its use of Google’s cutting-edge Gemini model to develop the 'End-to-End Multimodal Model for Autonomous Driving' (EMMA). This innovative approach leverages Gemini's vast knowledge to help Waymo’s robotaxis make smarter, faster decisions in complex driving scenarios. Though promising, the model still requires refinement, particularly in processing high volumes of image frames and 3D sensor data (see Waymo’s announcement).

From Multi-Camera Video to Fully Animated 3D Scenes

Wonder Dynamics, now part of Autodesk, just launched a groundbreaking tool that transforms simple video footage into editable 3D scenes. Creators can shoot multi-camera videos and quickly convert them into 3D animations, complete with custom characters and backgrounds. This tool, designed to streamline previsualization, lets filmmakers work out camera angles and scene compositions right from their living room—an ideal solution for animators looking to cut down on production time and cost (see demo video).

LinkedIn's AI Hiring Assistant Takes Over Recruiter Tasks

LinkedIn has introduced its first AI-driven "Hiring Assistant", a powerful tool that takes over tedious recruiting tasks like crafting job descriptions, sourcing candidates, and managing interactions. Currently live with select companies like Siemens and Canva, this agent is aimed at freeing up recruiters’ time for more strategic work. The assistant even integrates with third-party systems and promises upcoming features like interview scheduling, highlighting LinkedIn’s push to redefine recruiting with AI (see LinkedIn’s announcement).

🧰 AI TOOLBOX 

🤯 MIND SPARK

Investment Freeze: U.S. to Curb AI Funds Flowing to China: Starting January 2, U.S. investors will face new restrictions on funding Chinese tech sectors, including AI and quantum systems tied to military and surveillance advancements, as reported by Reuters. The Biden administration’s rules aim to limit capital and expertise from aiding China’s military and cybersecurity capabilities, with exceptions for publicly traded securities (read more).

ElevenLabs Welcomes Omnivore Team to Fuel Future of ‘Reading’: ElevenLabs has partnered with the creators of Omnivore to enhance the AI-driven experience in the ElevenReader app, adding advanced text-to-speech to its existing feature set, which includes listening to books, articles, and PDFs in diverse voices across 32 languages (see ElevenLabs’ announcement).

Google’s AI Agents Delayed Until 2025: Google’s ambitious AI project, Project Astra, promising real-time multimodal intelligence, is now delayed until at least 2025. Initially aimed for late 2024, this next-gen tech envisions “agents” that recognize, reason, and act—like virtual assistants identifying objects or booking flights (see Google’s announcement).

Amazon's AI Assistant Goes Global: Amazon is rolling out its AI shopping assistant, Rufus, to more countries across Europe and the Americas. After testing the waters in the U.S., India, and the U.K., Rufus is now bringing its recommendation powers to shoppers in Canada, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany (see Amazon’s announcements here and here).

Meta Unveils NotebookLlama: An ‘Open’ Spin on Google’s Podcast AI: Meta has launched NotebookLlama, an open-source alternative to Google’s NotebookLM, generating podcast-style dialogues from text with added dramatized interruptions. Early users report a robotic audio quality and overlapping voices, but Meta hints at future upgrades to enhance its polish (see more).

OpenAI Eyes In-House AI Chips by 2026: To tackle the skyrocketing demand for AI processing power, OpenAI is reportedly taking a bold step with plans to develop its own AI chips by 2026, working alongside Broadcom to design a custom solution. This shift marks OpenAI's strategic response to current chip shortages and the high costs associated with Nvidia GPUs, which it has heavily relied on for model training (read more).

Writer RAG tool: build production-ready RAG apps in minutes

RAG in just a few lines of code? We’ve launched a predefined RAG tool on our developer platform, making it easy to bring your data into a Knowledge Graph and interact with it with AI. With a single API call, writer LLMs will intelligently call the RAG tool to chat with your data.

Integrated into Writer’s full-stack platform, it eliminates the need for complex vendor RAG setups, making it quick to build scalable, highly accurate AI workflows just by passing a graph ID of your data as a parameter to your RAG tool.

Learn more about our production ready RAG tooling here.

🎨 AI ART

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