The AI Rundown by Lightscape Partners – 04/22/24

Boston Dynamics releases a new humanoid, Meta debuts Llama 3, and the US confirms a human vs AI dog fight.

Ted Wagner
April 22, 2024

Boston Dynamics

Good morning and welcome back to this week’s AI Rundown.

Last week in AI:

Boston Dynamics released new footage of their all-electric humanoid robot, Atlas, after retiring their 10-year-old hydraulic bot.
Meta releases Llama 3 in 8 billion and 70 billion parameter versions. The new models are the most powerful open-source models to date. Try it with Groq’s LPU-powered GroqChat here. Make sure to select a Llama 3 model.
The US Air Force confirmed a human vs AI dog fight that took place in September 2023. The fight highlights the ongoing initiative to develop AI solutions in the military. It’s currently unknown which pilot “won” the battle.

If you’d like a quick refresher on industry terms and the current landscape of AI, skip to the bottom.

Otherwise, let’s get into it.

Check out the initial release video of Atlas here.
Earlier last week, BD announced the retirement of their HD Atlas bot after 10 years of research and development. They paid homage to the humanoid with this farewell video.
The newest robot stands on the shoulders of the original, designed for real-world applications.
Hyundai, an investor and partner in BD, will be the initial testing pilot for new Atlas applications.

Meta released two models in the Llama 3 family: 8B and 70B. The two are significantly more performant than Llama 2 and outperform current state-of-the-art comparable models.
Meta will incorporate longer context windows, additional model sizes, and more features in the next few months.
Llama 3 models will soon be available on AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, Hugging Face, Kaggle, IBM WatsonX, Microsoft Azure, NVIDIA NIM, and Snowflake, and with support from hardware platforms offered by AMD, AWS, Dell, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm.
Meta is currently training a 400B parameter model. The release timeline is unknown.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) confirmed Thursday that an AI-controlled fighter jet squared off against a human pilot in a dogfight toward the end of 2023.
DARPA installed the AI system in an X-62A aircraft, allowing the AI full autonomy of the jet.
The X-62A squared off against an F-16 controlled by a human.
The two jets got as close as 2,000 feet at 1,200 miles per hour.
DARPA has not released information on which aircraft won the fight.

The multimodal language model will challenge GPT-4, Claude 3 Opus, and other leading LLMs.
Researchers from DeepMind, Google, and Meta founded the startup.
The model was trained using “thousands of H100s,” according to the chief scientist and co-founder.
Reka raised $60M in Series A led by DST Global Partners at a $300 million valuation in June 2023.

The new model has been released under Apache 2.0, the “most permissive open-source license, allowing anyone to use the model anywhere without restrictions.”
The model offers “unmatched” cost efficiency respective to its size.

NVIDIA is expanding its RTX offerings with two new GPUs for desktops: the RTX A400 and RTX A1000.
The A1000 allows for 3x faster gen AI processing.
The release highlights the continued focus on edge inference solutions.

The Ryzen PRO 8040 is a mobile processor that runs AI inference on mobile devices.
The 8000 is an AI-enabled desktop processor for business users.

According to Microsoft, the “strategic investment will enhance the UAE’s position as a global AI hub and provide further opportunities for partners and customers to innovate and grow.”
Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President Brad Smith will get a seat on the G42 board.
The two companies will partner in establishing a $1 billion fund for developers.

Image credit: SONYA HUANG, PAT GRADY, Sequoia Capital

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