AI: Weekly Summary

…week ending November 3, 2023

Welcome to the Saturday weekly AI summary here on ‘AI: Reset to Zero’. Here are this week’s AI highlights:

1. Week’s Regulatory Actions and Reactions: White House AI Executive Order (XO), the UK AI Safety Conference hosted by UK PM Rishi Sunak and. VP Kamala Harris' speech on AI safety were some of the regulatory actions of the week. Good summary on the high points of the UK AI summit here. Thoughtful reactions to the XO, and the general regulatory focus on AI safety amidst fears of AI existential risks, include these two long but worthwhile pieces by Ben Thompson at Stratechtery, and former Microsoft software luminary Steven Sinofsky, now on the board at a16z. I also did a deeper dive on this subject that may be of interest.

2. AI Copyright litigation victory for AI industry (for now): Early round goes against copyright holders on the ongoing legal models against Foundation LLM AI companies for now. A Federal judge dismissing a copyright infringement case against AI art generators like Stability AI. Lots of legal nuance here. The White House AI executive order discussed above also has a bearing on this front as that XO goes to federal agencies like the Department of Commerce amongst others. Much more to come here, especially as the mainstream Foundation LLM AI chatbots from OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, Inflection and others all go multimodal. 

3. Apple Silicon’s M3 iteration bolsters AI on devices: Apple’s new M3 silicon based Macbook Pros and iMac announcement are notable for their next step on AI-enabled GPUs and neural engines on local devices. Apple Hardware/Silicon head Johny Srouji had a starring role in the video presentation. This carries on the similar extension of their latest chips in the new series of iPhone 15s and 15 Pros. The industry is noticing the stage being set for the next generation of AI enabled applications running generative AI on devices. These two separate pieces are worth a read on the subject. I also do a deeper dive on ‘Small AI’ on devices, with Apple being discussed as being in a ‘pole position’. 

4. Google upping its investment in Anthropic: This follow-on investment by Google increases their initial investment and follow up investment. It also follows Anthropic’s multi-billion dollar partnership with Amazon AWS.  Both help build up Anthropic’s Claude 2 and follow-on ‘closed’ Foundation LLM AI models for commercial users at scale. For Google this diversifies their stable of LLM AI models beyond Palm2 and the upcoming Gemini, but most importantly gives Google Cloud, their cloud data center business number three behind Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, a separate LLM AI offering for businesses. My deeper dive on this move here.

5. OpenAI accelerates ChatGPT Plus enterprise features: Positive reaction thus far to this week’s rolling out of a PDF input function for ChatGPT Plus users. This supplements OpenAI’s ongoing feature stream for enterprises, and is also a precursor to more developer and enterprise oriented features at their first Developer conference next week on November 6. Also expect similar moves by Google as it prepares its imminent roll-out of their next generation Gemini LLM AI models soon. 

Other AI Readings for weekend:

1. Well-timed with Halloween was this clever implementation of ‘Angry Birds’, called ‘Angry Pumpkins’, using AI tools and services like Dall-E, Midjourney and others. A taste of what’s to come in the world of gaming and beyond using AI technologies.

   

2. YC AI startup Phind releases a coding LLM AI that competes with GPT-4 capabilities, leveraging open source AI technologies. 

Thanks for joining this Saturday with your beverage of choice. 

For your Sunday tomorrow, this week’s ‘The Bigger Picture’  is coming up. Stay tuned. 

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)