AI debate regarding smartness, safety and consciousness is heating up. An AI called Claude 3 Opus intrigued many with its interactive capability rekindling discussions on AI sentience. Critics question whether phrases such as “I think, therefore I am,” can be applicable to AI. On the business side, staff from Inflection AI has joined Microsoft Copilot, raising questions on the future of Inflection AI and other smaller tech companies.
DeepMind has introduced an AI agent, SIMA, trained through computer games. This product is deemed as impressive and is set to indicate that 2024 is the year of AI agents. DeepMind has also collaborated with Liverpool FC to enhance the technique of the players.
The safety implications of AI are divisive among experts. While some see AI as a boon, others fear the risks it poses. Leading AI scientists from Western countries and China have discussed the safe development of AI and have established several ‘red lines’ they deem as posing existential threats to humanity.
The EU AI Act, imposed with several restrictions, was passed in the European Parliament recently. Meanwhile, Reddit is being questioned by the FTC for its deal to license user-generated data to Google, soliciting negative reactions from regulators and Reddit users.
Apple has been notably quiet on its AI developments. However, recent acquisitions of numerous AI startups may indicate their aim at generative AI. Their engineers have developed MM1, an AI model praised for its proficiency in visual question answering.
Elon Musk has made headlines with Grok-1, an AI model whose code and weights were released and are free for commercial use.
New NVIDIA technology capable of big advancements in AI training and inference speed was announced this week. Also, researchers from the University of Geneva have demonstrated how to connect two AI models to communicate with each other.
Other notable news includes Sakana AI’s method of merging the components of different AI models to create an advanced version, Google’s use of AI in flood prediction, and Apple’s partnership with Google Gemini to power iPhone AI features.
