Last Week in AI Skynet Today

Our 145th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news, this time around with guest co-hosts Kevin and Gavin from AI For Humans podcast
Check out the AI For Humans episode on which Andrey and Jeremie guest co-host here.
Also check out our sponsor, the SuperDataScience podcast. You can listen to SDS across all major podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts) plus there’s a video version on YouTube.
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/
Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekin.ai
Timestamps + links:
Tools & Apps
(06:00) OpenAI rival Anthropic makes its Claude chatbot even more useful
(12:33) Stability AI debuts Stable Video Diffusion models in research preview
(16:33) Generative Video Startup Pika Labs Launches Version 1.0, Raises $55 Million in Funding
(25:25) Screenshots show xAI’s chatbot Grok on X’s web app
(30:37) Amazon Introduces Q, an A.I. Chatbot for Companies

Applications & Business
(34:28) Unpacking the hype around OpenAI’s rumored new Q* model
(47:37) NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for Third Quarter Fiscal 2024
(52:40) Nvidia Delays Rollout Of China-Focused AI Chip: Report
(56:31) Share sale set to test financial impact of OpenAI’s leadership turmoil
(58:55) Amazon and Salesforce Expand Partnership to Add New AI Capabilities
(59:55) AI21 takes Series C to $208 million with additional $53 million in funding

Projects & Open Source
(01:03:15) Starling-7B: Increasing LLM Helpfulness & Harmlessness with RLAIF
(01:12:10) Defending your voice against deepfakes

Research & Advancements
(01:16:07) Orca 2: Teaching Small Language Models How to Reason
(01:22:16) New technique can accelerate language models by 300x
(01:23:35) DeepMind Says New Multi-Game AI Is a Step Toward More General Intelligence
(01:27:00) GAIA: A Benchmark for General AI Assistants
(01:30:45) Language Models are Super Mario: Absorbing Abilities from Homologous Models as a Free Lunch

Policy & Safety
(01:33:42) US, Britain, other countries ink agreement to make AI 'secure by design'
(01:36:07) Chinese GPU recycling factories have a workaround for the US government's newly imposed export rules — modified NVIDIA RTX 4090 cards serve as great AI accelerators
(01:39:00) The EU AI Act needs Foundation Model Regulation
Putin to boost AI work in Russia to fight a Western monopoly he says is ‘unacceptable and dangerous’
Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China
(01:41:55) More than half of Americans are worried about AI than excited
(01:46:10) State Dept prioritizes ‘AI-ready workforce’ in its first AI strategy
US chip export ban is hurting China’s AI startups, not so much the giants yet

Synthetic Media & Art
(01:48:18) Sarah Silverman Hits Stumbling Block In AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against Meta

(01:52:23) Outro

Our 144th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news, now back with the usual hosts!
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/
Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekin.ai
Timestamps + links:
(00:00) Intro/Banter
Applications & Business
(01:30)  Sam Altman Is Reinstated as OpenAI’s Chief Executive
Before Altman’s Ouster, OpenAI’s Board Was Divided and Feuding

(20:05) Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigns
GM Cruise cofounder, senior exec Dan Kan quits day after CEO exit

(22:30) GM’s Self-Driving Car Unit Skids Off Course
(24:00) Leaked email shows Amazon is cutting 'several hundred' jobs across Alexa business, including the newly launched Artificial General Intelligence team
(25:35) US Chip Ban Fallout Spreads as Alibaba Scraps Cloud Spinoff
(27:48) Tencent Stockpiled Enough NVIDIA AI GPUs To Last Them A Couple More Generations
(29:44) Nvidia teases its most powerful GPU ever — no, it's not the newly-announced H200, but the 2024-bound B100 Blackwell AI powerhouse
(31:37) US Launches $3 Billion Effort to Boost Advanced Chip Packaging
(34:50) Meta disbanded its Responsible AI team

Tools & Apps
(38:15) Meta launches AI-based video editing tools
(39:48) Discord is already killing Clyde, its experimental OpenAI chatbot
(40:50) Be My Eyes AI offers GPT-4-powered support for blind Microsoft customers

Projects & Open Source
(42:25) Kyutai is a French AI research lab with a $330 million budget that will make everything open source

Research & Advancements
(45:43) Technical Report: Large Language Models can Strategically Deceive their Users when Put Under Pressure
(53:35) Meet JARVIS-1: Open-World Multi-Task Agents with Memory-Augmented Multimodal Language Models
(58:10) NVIDIA’s “NeMo” Model Now Tuned For Chip Development, Showing Exceptional Results
(01:00:33) UFOGen: You Forward Once Large Scale Text-to-Image Generation via Diffusion GANs

Policy & Safety
(01:02:35) President Biden Issues Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence
(01:12:44) Tech firms to allow vetting of AI tools, as Musk warns all human jobs threatened
As A.I.-Controlled Killer Drones Become Reality, Nations Debate Limits
(01:16:41) France, Germany and Italy join forces to propose unified AI regulation in the EU
(01:22:02) UK will refrain from regulating AI ‘in the short term’
(01:24:31) If you get sued for an AI-generated creative work, OpenAI says it will protect you while Anthropic says you're on your own
(01:29:41) China tightens rare-earth export curbs amid tension with U.S.

Synthetic Media & Art
(01:32:45) Microsoft AI Image Generator Blocks ‘Disney’ After Viral Movie Poster Trend

Our 143rd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news, now back with the usual hosts!
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/
Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekin.ai
Check out our sponsor, the SuperDataScience podcast. You can listen to SDS across all major podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts) plus there’s a video version on YouTube.
Timestamps + links:
Applications & Business(02:53) Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI
(12:00) Everything announced at OpenAI’s first developer event
(16:05) GM's Cruise suspends supervised and manual car trips, expands probes
(18:30) Under Fire Over Robotaxi Safety, GM Halts Production Of Cruise Driverless Van
(20:55) Microsoft unveils first AI chip, Maia 100, and Cobalt CPU
(21:35) AV Startup May Mobility Locks Up Another $105M From NTT, Toyota
(22:38) Aleph Alpha raises $500m Series B in Europe’s third-largest AI round ever
(23:22) AI startup Twelve Labs attracts US$10 mln from Nvidia, Intel, others
(24:16) Defense Tech Startup Shield AI Raises $200M At $2.7B Valuation

Tools & Apps(25:00) Elon Musk debuts 'Grok' AI bot to rival ChatGPT, others
(27:38) Brave responds to Bing and ChatGPT with a new ‘anonymous and secure’ AI chatbot
(30:03) ChatGPT is combining its different abilities into a single ‘Voltron-style’ chat
(31:01) LinkedIn's new AI chatbot wants to help you get a job
(32:07) Meet Samsung's Answer to ChatGPT: A New AI Model Called Gauss
(33:33) Humane’s AI Pin: all the news about the new AI-powered wearable

Projects & Open Source(36:06) Valued at $1B, Kai-Fu Lee’s LLM startup unveils open source model

Research & Advancements(40:03) Google DeepMind wants to define what counts as artificial general intelligence
(42:35) Google DeepMind breaks new ground with ‘Mirasol3B’ for advanced video analysis
(45:15) MetNet-3: A state-of-the-art neural weather model available in Google products
(46:06) Instant3D: Instant Text-to-3D Generation
(47:54) Title:One-2-3-45++: Fast Single Image to 3D Objects with Consistent Multi-View Generation and 3D Diffusion
(49:12) Holistic Evaluation of Text-To-Image Models

Policy & Safety(51:37) Biden Issues Executive Order to Create A.I. Safeguards
(56:10) Amy Klobuchar and John Thune introduce legislation for creating generative AI framework
(57:55) Midjourney, Stability AI and DeviantArt win a victory in copyright case by artists — but the fight continues
(01:00:19) At UK's AI Summit developers and govts agree on testing to help manage risks
(01:02:15) White faces generated by AI are more convincing than photos, finds survey

Synthetic Media & Art(01:04:12) Striking Actors and Hollywood Studios Agree to a Deal
(01:07:46) Google is embedding inaudible watermarks right into its AI generated music
(01:10:10) YouTube previews AI tool that clones famous singers — with their permission
(01:11:08) Microsoft is bringing AI characters to Xbox
(01:11:49) CBS News Launches New Venture To Identify AI Deepfakes And Misinformation

Our 142nd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI new.
Apologies for this one coming out after a pause, episodes will resume being released regularly as of this week.
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/
Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekin.ai
Timestamps + Links:
(00:00) Intro / Banter
Tools & Apps(03:00) Introducing PlayHT 2.0 Turbo ⚡️ - The Fastest Generative AI Text-to-Speech API
(07:15) YouTube Music now lets you make your own playlist art with AI
(09:23) Sick of meetings? Microsoft’s new AI assistant will go in your place
(11:54) Anthropic brings Claude AI to more countries, but still no Canada (for now)

 Applications & Business(14:55) Humanoid robots face a major test with Amazon’s Digit pilots
(18:40) Figure 01 humanoid takes first public steps
(22:31) AI-generating music app Riffusion turns viral success into $4M in funding
(23:35) ChatGPT Creator Partners With Abu Dhabi’s G42 in Middle East AI Push
(25:00) AMD Scores Two Big Wins: Oracle Opts for MI300X, IBM Asks for FPGAs
(26:38) Alibaba, Tencent among investors in China’s rival to OpenAI with $341 million funding
(30:35) AI companies drive demand for office space in tech hubs, new study finds
(32:13) OpenAI is in talks to sell shares at an $86 billion valuation

Projects & Open Source(35:00) Introducing Video-To-Text and Pegasus-1 (80B)
(39:35) Adept Releases Fuyu-8B for Multimodal AI Agents
(42:03) MiniGPT-v2: large language model as a unified interface for vision-language multi-task learning
(44:53) Meta’s Habitat 3.0 simulates real-world environments for intelligent AI robot training
(48:22) DeepMind UniSim simulates reality to train robots, game characters 
(49:13) Jina AI Launches World's First Open-Source 8K Text Embedding, Rivaling OpenAI
(51:13) Llemma: An Open Language Model For Mathematics

Research & Advancements(53:22) Eliciting Human Preferences with Language Models
(57:23) New Nvidia AI agent, powered by GPT-4, can train robots
(01:01:38) Unveiling the General Intelligence Factor in Language Models: A Psychometric Approach
(01:04:48) AgentTuning: Enabling Generalized Agent Abilities for LLMs
(01:09:51) Contrastive Prefence Learning: Learning from Human Feedback without RL
(01:11:25) ‘Mind-blowing’ IBM chip speeds up AI 

Policy & Safety(01:14:57)  GM Cruise unit suspends all driverless operations after California ban
(01:18:52) AI researchers uncover ethical, legal risks to using popular data sets
(01:22:22) AI Safety Summit: day 1 and 2 programme
(01:25:23) Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude is posting lyrics to popular songs, lawsuit claims
(01:26:38) Mike Huckabee says Microsoft and Meta stole his books to train AI
(01:27:10) Clearview AI Successfully Appeals $9 Million Fine in the U.K.
(01:28:11) North Korea experiments with AI in cyber warfare: US official
(01:30:17) OpenAI forms new team to assess ‘catastrophic risks’ of AI
UK poised to establish global advisory group on AI

Synthetic Media & Art(01:32:22) This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI
(01:34:32) Amazon now lets advertisers use generative AI to pretty up their product shots
(01:36:36) The Beatles: ‘final’ song Now and Then to be released thanks to AI technology

Our 141st episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news, now back with the usual hosts!
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/
Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekin.ai
Check out our sponsor, the SuperDataScience podcast. You can listen to SDS across all major podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts) plus there’s a video version on YouTube.
Timestamps + Links:
(00:00) Intro / Banter
(01:00) SuperDataScience podcast ad
Tools & Apps(02:55) Adobe is upgrading Photoshop’s generative AI model — and releasing more for Illustrator and Express
(07:52) Character.AI introduces group chats where people and multiple AIs can talk to each other
(14:15) Kendall Jenner becomes "Billie": Meta's AI celebrities face more resistance than enthusiasm
(18:22) Dropbox redesigns its web interface and releases AI-powered Dash in open beta

Applications & Business(20:22) Google Cloud pledges a ‘shared fate,’ offering legal indemnification for customers
(25:00) Chinese search engine company Baidu unveils Ernie 4.0 AI model, claims that it rivals GPT-4
(31:05) Key Arm China Staff Quit to Create Government-Backed Startup
(33:30) AMD to acquire AI software startup in effort to catch Nvidia
(34:47) Microsoft Will Pay You $15,000 If You Get Bing AI to Go Off the Rails
(37:20) ChatGPT’s mobile app hit record $4.58M in revenue last month, but growth is slowing
(38:46) TSMC: ecosystem for 2nm chip development is nearing completion
(41:50) OpenAI has quietly changed its core values, and being 'thoughtful' and 'audacious' no longer makes the cut

Research & Advancements(46:35) LLark: A Multimodal Foundation Model for Music
(50:20) TimeGPT-1
(55:25) How FaR Are Large Language Models From Agents with Theory-of-Mind?
(01:00:17) HyperAttention: Long-context Attention in Near-Linear Time
(01:04:33) PaLI-3 Vision Language Models: Smaller, Faster, Stronger
(01:05:42) A Long Way to Go: Investigating Length Correlations in RLHF
(01:08:20) Understanding the Effects of RLHF on LLM Generalisation and Diversity

Policy & Safety(01:12:05) No Fakes Act wants to protect actors and singers from unauthorized AI replicas
(01:15:03) Ukrainian AI attack drones may be killing without human oversight
(01:19:59) How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington
(01:28:38) China targets 50% boost in computing power as AI race with U.S. ramps up
(01:31:03) China proposes blacklist of sources used to train generative AI models
(01:34:44) Biden to cut China off from more Nvidia chips, expand curbs to more countries
(01:37:51) TSMC expects permanent U.S. approval to supply chip tools to its China factory
(01:40:34) Southeast Asia eyes hands-off AI rules, defying EU ambitions

Synthetic Media & Art(01:44:05) AI Images Detectors Are Being Used to Discredit the Real Horrors of War

(01:47:03) Outro

Our 140th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/
Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekin.ai
Note: the CEO of GitHub disputes "Report: GitHub Copilot Loses an Average of $20 Per User Per Month"
Timestamps + Links:
(00:00)  Intro / Banter
Tools & Apps
(03:00) Reka launches Yasa-1, a multimodal AI assistant to take on ChatGPT
(06:48) Arc browser’s new AI-powered features combine OpenAI and Anthropic’s models
(11:00) ElevenLabs Launches Voice Translation Tool to Break Down Language Barriers for Content
(13:11) Canva’s new AI tools automate boring, labor-intensive design tasks
(16:32) Adobe previews AI upscaling to make old, fuzzy videos and GIFs look fresh
(20:45) Google Bard is gaining a new 'Memory' toggle to remember key details
(22:22) Assistant with Bard: A step toward a more personal assistant
(24:14) Android 14’s AI-generated wallpapers might be its coolest new feature

Applications & Business
(24:50) Waymo’s robotaxi service is now available to tens of thousands of people in San Francisco
(28:54) Report: GitHub Copilot Loses an Average of $20 Per User Per Month
(32:34) TSMC Sales Fell Less Than Feared as AI Demand Offsets Slump
(34:54) Microsoft could debut its AI chip next month: Report
(37:06) Exclusive: ChatGPT-owner OpenAI is exploring making its own AI chips
(39:08) Google announces new generative AI search capabilities for doctors

Projects & Open Source
(40:05) Replit’s new AI Model now available on Hugging Face
(43:46) Introducing Stable LM 3B: Bringing Sustainable, High-Performance Language Models to Smart Devices
(46:30)  Protesters Decry Meta’s “Irreversible Proliferation” of AI

Research & Advancements
(52:10) Scaling up learning across many different robot types
(59:35) Decomposing Language Models Into Understandable Components
(01:06:54) Promptbreeder: Self-Referential Self-Improvement Via Prompt Evolution
(01:11:45) China's First 28nm Lithography Tool to Be Delivered This Year
(01:15:03) LLMs can’t self-correct in reasoning tasks, DeepMind study finds
(01:18:07) Fine-tuning Aligned Language Models Compromises Safety, Even When Users Do Not Intend To!

Policy & Safety
(01:22:08) RISC-V technology emerges as battleground in US-China tech war
(01:26:48) Meta and X questioned by lawmakers over lack of rules against AI-generated political deepfakes
(01:33:44) Five Takeaways From Bellwether AI Copyright Case
(01:36:19) A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country
(01:38:12) Governments race to regulate AI tools
(01:40:09) US curbs on chip tools to China nearly finalized, government posting shows

Synthetic Media & Art
(01:45:35) WGA Ratifies Three-Year Deal With Studios, Officially Ending Hollywood Strike
(01:47:50)  AI Watermarks Are No Match for Attackers
(01:50:00) Stable Signature: A new method for watermarking images created by open source generative AI
(01:51:36) How an AI deepfake ad of MrBeast ended up on TikTok
(01:53:53) Disney’s Loki faces backlash over reported use of generative AI