📆 May 17th 2024 📆 

A flurry of announcements and progress in the world of AI this week. But who went furthest and who faces uncertainty with key staff departures?

• Google I/O 2024 announces over 100 new product integrations, but where’s the needle moving innovation?

• Chatbots are gaining emotional expressions making them more immersive, good or bad for their future?

• Key departures from OpenAI’s Superalignment team raise concerns for the future of responsible, safe AGI.

• Microsoft continue to partner and enhance their AI capabilities with the announcement of new AI focused hardware. Are they winning developers hearts?

• As always, too much to put in headlines. Check out the Other News Rollup section for a quickfire review of the top stories in AI.

Dive in for all the details!

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📰 News 📰 

AI Announcements at Google I/O 2024

Another Google I/O conference and of course, AI was the top of the bill. The question I find myself asking is if they went far enough? Plenty of products and announcements that build upon the advances we’ve seen in recent years but nothing seriously moving the needle. Are they just leaving the door open for Apple & others to steal the next AI prize?

There was also a drastic difference between the glitzy and glamourous corporate show put on by Google vs the more down to earth scrappy startup vibe that OpenAI presented earlier in the week. This is nothing new of course, this is how technology and innovation move forward. Google was once that same scrappy startup and have every right to leverage the fruits of their success, I had just hoped they would leverage those resources to bring us something radical & different. The race is far from over though, so let’s keep watching.

There’s a great summary of 100 of the announcements at The Official Google Blog. Here’s my take on a couple of the one’s which caught my eye.

Media Creation with Veo & Imagen 3 - Veo and Imagen 3 introduce high-quality media creation tools with artist collaborations and safety measures.

Smart Gemini AI Update - Gemini 1.5 Pro offers longer context window, data analysis, new chat features, personalized Gems, and app integrations.

Gemini Powered Photo Search - Google Photos' Ask Photos feature uses AI to search photos with natural language, enhancing user experience.

AI Enhancements for Android - Google integrates AI into Android for improved interactions, homework help, context understanding, and scam alerts, enhancing user experiences.

Generative AI in Education - Google is collaborating with educators to infuse learning science principles into products like Search, YouTube, and Gemini, offering features such as customized learning coaches and interactive educational tools.

Revolutionizing Search - Google introduces generative AI technology in Search, offering AI Overviews for quick answers, multi-step reasoning for complex questions, planning capabilities, and AI-organized search results.

The Rise of Emotionally Expressive Chatbots

OpenAI's new ChatGPT version showcases emotional mimicry and a human-like 'personality,' raising concerns about AI manipulation. Google's Project Astra offers a more restrained alternative. The future implications of AI assistants becoming more engaging and persuasive are discussed, highlighting potential risks of privacy invasion, addiction, misinformation, and manipulation. As technology advances, the line between human and AI interactions blurs, posing challenges in distinguishing real from artificial conversations.

Read More At: Wired

Key Departures Shake OpenAI's Superalignment Team

The recent exits of Ilya Sutskever, Chief Scientist and co-founder, and Jan Leike, co-lead of OpenAI's superalignment team, have raised concerns about the future of OpenAI’s initiative to align powerful AI systems with human intent. The superalignment team, formed in July 2023, aims to manage the risks of superintelligent AI. With Sutskever and Leike gone, questions arise about whether the team will continue to receive the promised resources and support.

Read More At: VentureBeat

Microsoft's Azure to Introduce Custom Cobalt Chips

Microsoft will unveil its custom Cobalt 100 chips at the Build conference, offering 40% better performance than other ARM chips. Adobe and Snowflake are already using them. Azure will also offer AMD's MI300X accelerators. Microsoft plans to lower pricing for large language models and introduce a real-time intelligence system. Additionally, a partnership with Snowflake and a new feature for managing Azure resources via Copilot will be announced.

Read More At: TechCrunch

🔨 AI Powered Tools 🔨 

A run down of the latest SaaS products and services which leverage AI to help you take back some time.

• Fireflies- AI-powered meeting assistant designed for various industries to transcribe, summarize, and analyse conversations. It uses advanced speech recognition and natural language processing to capture meeting details, generate actionable insights, and streamline workflows, enhancing productivity and collaboration across teams.

• AgentCrew- Platform offering a curated list of free AI tools tailored for various business needs, especially in sales and customer service. It helps users discover and implement AI solutions that can automate tasks, improve customer interactions, and boost overall efficiency, making AI accessible and beneficial for diverse business applications.

• Relume- Website builder designed for faster web development. It leverages AI to generate sitemaps, wireframes, and UI components, enabling designers and developers to quickly create and refine marketing websites. The platform integrates with popular tools like Figma and Webflow, enhancing productivity and reducing project timelines.

🗞️ Other News Rollup 🗞️ 

Enhanced ChatGPT Features - Document Editing - ChatGPT now supports importing files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, improving document editing functionality. Available in the US but rolling out to other regions soon.

Reddit Data Training Partnership - OpenAI collaborates with Reddit to enhance AI models and user experience, leveraging real-time content for training.

DIY Offline AI with Raspberry Pi AI - Pi-CARD is an offline AI assistant on Raspberry Pi, prioritizing privacy and local file access and using Whisper and Meta's LLaMA for speech and image recognition

ChatGPT Plus Still Worth It? - GPT-4o free vs. ChatGPT Plus subscription: more prompts and features for paying users, but non-subscribers get upgrades too.

IMF Warn of AI Labour Market Impact - IMF chief warns of AI's impact on labour market, predicting 40% job loss and productivity increase. He calls for preparation from business.

X User Engagement Boost - X revamps Communities feature for better user networking and engagement with improved tools and functionalities.

Instagram Co-Founder Joins Anthropic - Instagram co-founder, Mike Krieger, joins Anthropic to enhance product development and compete with OpenAI in the AI model provider market.

Strava's AI Upgrade - Strava uses AI to combat cheating and offers new features like dark mode and family plan.

AI Datacenter Power - Datacenters adapt to AI energy demands by exploring renewable sources like solar, wind, nuclear, and natural gas.

AI Open Source Definition Workshops - Open Source Initiative holds global workshops to define Open Source AI, addressing concerns of AI’s uniqueness and gathering feedback worldwide.

Recall Funded for Conversational Data Extraction - Recall raises $10M for unified conversational data API, simplifying access to valuable meeting data for AI applications from Zoom and Google Meet.

🎶 Prompts 🎶 

Prompts used to generate some of this issues images. Unless otherwise stated all images are using Dall-E and ChatGPT Plus.

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