Sponsored by

Hey TEDchats Fam!

Happy Monday! Welcome to another riveting edition of TEDchats AI recaps. This week in the ever-evolving realm of artificial intelligence has been nothing short of extraordinary, with headlines that touch on groundbreaking innovations, ethical debates, and even a touch of suspense. Let's get straight into the captivating narratives that have unfolded in the past seven days.

🐇 QUICK BITES — THE PAST WEEK

The Elon Musk vs. OpenAI Showdown

OpenAI, a former non-profit champion for democratizing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), stands at a critical juncture. Co-founders, including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever, are entangled in a dispute with Elon Musk. As an initial supporter, Musk accuses OpenAI of deviating from its principles, resulting in a lawsuit (details here). Musk contends that the company has dismissed his concerns about AGI's existential threat to humanity, choosing profits over non-profit development. In a notable turn of events, OpenAI has publicly refuted these allegations by presenting email evidence, uncovering Musk's advocacy for a for-profit structure and control over the company (see OpenAI's public statement here).

Anthropic's New Masterpiece — Claude 3

Developed by Anthropic, Claude 3, an advanced AI by former OpenAI employees, surpasses its predecessors. Integrating text and photo inputs, it becomes multimodal with versions like Claude 3 Haiku, Sonnet, and the advanced Opus. Accessible on AWS's Bedrock and Google's Vertex AI, Claude 3 addresses various tasks. Overcoming previous limitations, it offers fewer refusals and improved contextual grasp. Claude 3 revolutionizes the AI landscape, excelling in processing dense material and outperforming GPT-4 in graduate-level reasoning, according to the company’s reports. Nevertheless, mixed reviews have surfaced since its release (read more about Claude 3 here).

Inflection-2.5: The Revolution of Personal Chatbots Continues

Inflection advances its mission with the launch of Inflection-2.5, a competitive in-house model rivaling top language models like GPT-4 and Gemini. Focused on efficiency, it achieves GPT-4-level performance with just 40% of the training compute, as reported by the company. This upgrade enhances Pi, Inflection's personal chatbot, and is available at pi.ai, on iOS, on Android, or their new desktop app. Notable IQ improvements, especially in coding and mathematics, enhance Pi's capabilities, setting new industry benchmarks. Furthermore, Inflection-2.5 introduces real-time web search features, ensuring better quality news and updated information for Pi users (more on Inflection-2.5 here).

Google Engineer Arrested for Theft of AI Secrets

Linwei Ding has been indicted by a federal grand jury on four counts of stealing trade secrets related to artificial intelligence from Google. The indictment alleges that Ding, a 38-year-old Chinese national and resident of Newark, California, transferred sensitive Google trade secrets to his personal account while secretly affiliating himself with Chinese companies in the AI industry (refer to the U.S. Department of Justice's press release).

OpenAI Welcomes Three New Board Members and Welcomes Back Sam Altman

OpenAI's Board of Directors has welcomed three notable additions: Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, ex-president of Sony Entertainment; and Fidji Simo, CEO of Instacart. The current board, established after Sam Altman's departure, remains unchanged, featuring Bret Taylor (Salesforce co-CEO) as chair, along with Adam D'Angelo (Quora CEO), Larry Summers (economist and former Harvard president), and Dee Templeton (Microsoft-appointed board observer). Notably, Sam Altman, the CEO, is set to rejoin the OpenAI Board of Directors (read OpenAI’s announcement).

New Functionalities in Google Pixel Devices

Google's latest Feature Drop brings significant enhancements across the Pixel lineup. For health and fitness, the first-gen Pixel Watch introduces Pace Training for setting exercise goals and Heart Zone Training for monitoring different heart rate zones. Pixel phone users will see improvements in Call Screen, enabling easier management of silent callers and direct uploading of 10-bit HDR videos and Ultra HDR photos to Instagram. The Circle to Search feature, enhancing in-app searches, now extends from the Pixel 8 to the Pixel 7 series. These updates are designed to enhance user experience in productivity, fitness tracking, and social media engagement for all Pixel device owners (read Google’s announcement here).

Apple M3 MacBook Air: Touted as Top AI Consumer Laptop

Apple has recently announced its M3 MacBook Air as the "World's Best Consumer Laptop for AI". This statement is based on the inclusion of the 16-core Neural Engine in the MacBook's silicon, a component designed to enhance AI processing capabilities. The M3 model, equipped with accelerators in both the CPU and GPU, elevates on-device machine learning and grants access to “powerful” camera features, text predictions, real-time speech-to-text, translations, and more. The system supports a variety of AI applications, from math assistance in Goodnotes 6 to background noise removal in CapCut. The unified memory architecture allows efficient local processing of optimized AI models, including large language and diffusion models (read Apple’s announcement).

Former Twitter Executives Sue Elon Musk for $128 Million

Following his acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk is embroiled in a significant legal challenge, as he faces a lawsuit from the company's former executives. The group, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal, asserts that Musk's firings were intentionally timed. They claim this action was a deliberate strategy to avoid paying over $128 million in severance, linked to their stock options vesting. This lawsuit highlights the tumultuous aftermath of Musk's restructuring efforts at Twitter, underscoring the ongoing complexities in the transition of the social media giant's leadership (read lawsuit here).

Microsoft Engineer Reports Copilot AI’s Safety Flaws to the FTC

Shane Jones, a Microsoft engineer, has expressed serious safety concerns to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and to the Microsoft Board of Directors about Copilot Designer, Microsoft's AI image generator. According to his findings, the tool is capable of generating inappropriate and harmful images, including disturbing scenes and explicit content. Jones emphasized the pressing need for enhanced oversight and ethical considerations in AI development (see Shane Jones’ full letter to the FTC and Microsoft Board of Directors).

Multiverse Computing's Quantum Leap in AI

Securing $27M in equity funding, Multiverse Computing, a startup from San Sebastian, Spain, is set to innovate in the AI sector. The company's focus is on developing quantum-inspired software, specifically targeting the optimization of Large Language Models (LLMs). Their new product, CompactifAI, aims to significantly reduce the size of LLMs by more than 70%, while preserving their accuracy (see technical paper). This breakthrough has the potential to revolutionize how AI computations are conducted, particularly in fields requiring complex modeling and predictive applications (read more about CompactifAI here).

Kayak Enhances Travel Experience with AI

Kayak has launched two innovative AI features to improve travel planning. The 'PriceCheck' function enables travelers to upload a screenshot of flight details from any source, and the AI compares prices across various websites to find better deals. Meanwhile, the 'Ask Kayak' chatbot provides personalized travel advice, answering questions about destinations, accommodations, and activities. These features are available on the Kayak mobile app for iOS and Android devices (see Kayak’s announcement here).

AI2 Incubator Secures $200M Boost for Startups

AI2 Incubator, stemming from the Allen Institute for AI in 2022, has secured a substantial $200 million in compute for startups in its program to accelerate early development. Companies within the AI2 Incubator portfolio or program can access up to $1 million worth of dedicated AI-style compute, a significant resource for pre-seed startups. This includes dedicated machines and custom silicon, marking the most substantial computer allocation known for startups, according to the managing director Jacob Colker. The AI2 Incubator has played a role in building over 30 startups, collectively valued at over $1 billion (read more).

🧰 AI TOOLBOX — RECAP

Artificial Intelligence online short course from MIT

Study artificial intelligence and gain the knowledge to support its integration into your organization. If you're looking to gain a competitive edge in today's business world, then this artificial intelligence online course may be the perfect option for you.

On completion of the MIT Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy online short course, you’ll gain:

• Key AI management and leadership insights to support informed, strategic decision making.

• A practical grounding in AI and its business applications, helping you to transform your organization into a future-forward business.

• A road map for the strategic implementation of AI technologies in a business context.

Get More Information

👋 UNTIL NEXT TIME

Our newsletter is your portal to the latest in AI, and we invite you to immerse yourself in the stories that are shaping the future. As always, your thoughts and insights are valued, so feel free to share your perspectives with us. Happy reading!