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The AI Rundown by Lightscape Partners – 05/20/24

OpenAI's debuts GPT-4o, Google I/O showcase, and much more.

Author

Ted Wagner
May 20, 2024

Image credit: OpenAI

Good morning, and welcome back to this week’s edition of The AI Rundown by Lightscape Partners.

Last week was a big one in AI.

  • OpenAI’s Spring Announcement was filled with sci-fi-esque demonstrations of a charming AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s newest model, GPT-4o. The new model was paired with a completely redone mobile app UI and a desktop app.

  • Google I/O didn’t let OpenAI stay in the spotlight for long as their spring showcase was filled with AI releases, including new models both productive and creative, hardware updates, and much more.

I’ve done my best to highlight the biggest announcements from both companies, but I strongly encourage you to watch the videos provided throughout the newsletter.

Now, let’s get into it.

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OpenAI debuts a new flagship model: GPT-4o

  • GPT-4o (“o” for “omni”) can reason across audio, vision, and text in real-time.

  • It matches GPT-4 Turbo performance on text in English and code and significantly improves text in non-English languages, all while being 50% cheaper in the API.

  • This new model is trained end-to-end across text, vision, and audio, meaning all inputs and outputs are processed by the same neural network, and context is never lost in a conversation.

OpenAI Demo Day

  • On Monday, the OpenAI team demoed the new GPT-4o model with new speech capabilities, highlighting the surreal, human-like conversation possible with OpenAI’s newest model.

  • The AI company showcased a new look to their iPhone app and a new app for Mac computers. These apps are not yet available to the public.

Watch a few of the release videos

Your homework for the week: watch Her (2013).

OpenAI co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, announces departure from the startup. Link.

  • Ilya co-founded the startup in 2015 with Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others. He said he is leaving to work on a project that is “personally meaningful.”

  • OpenAI’s research director, Jakub Pachocki, will replace Ilya as chief scientist.

  • Ilya was in the middle of the controversy surrounding Altman’s initial departure from OpenAI, releasing an apology for being complacent in his firing. Now, it is Ilya who is leaving the company. Beyond rumors, the two events are unrelated.

  • With Sutskever leaving to pursue his own project now, one question remains: how much capital will he raise, and at what valuation?

Get caught up on Google I/O in only 10 minutes here.

Project Astra showcases Google’s view for AI agents

  • In a demo released on YouTube, Astra leverages visual context within an app to answer prompts from a user.

  • The demo resembles the capabilities demonstrated in OpenAI’s demo day.

  • Watch the video here.

Gemini gets several updates

  • Gemini 1.5 Pro is finally available globally for developers and 1.5 Flash was announced, a lighter-weight model that’s designed to be fast and efficient to serve at scale.

The 6th generation of Google’s TPU released: Trillium. Link.

  • This is the most performant TPU to date.

  • Compared to TPU v5e, Trillium TPUs achieve a 4.7x increase in peak compute performance per chip.

  • This is the most sustainable generation: Trillium TPUs are over 67% more energy-efficient compared to TPU v5e.

New ways to be creative with AI

  • Google announces Imagen 3, their highest quality image generation model yet. It is currently selectively available.

  • Veo, Google’s video generation model, rivals OpenAI’s Sora in video quality.

  • Music AI Sandbox allows users to make beats and music from scratch.

Policy and Legislation

US senators prepare to release their ‘AI roadmap’. Link.

  • This plan aims to direct Congress to invest billions in AI research and development while addressing the technology's potential harms.

  • The roadmap, expected to call for around $32 billion based on a 2021 report, seeks to spur legislative activity by providing direction to Senate committees.

  • The plan emphasizes the need for individual sectors, such as healthcare, to develop specific AI regulations.

  • It also advocates for creating testing and transparency measures to elucidate AI's potential harms. Additionally, it includes provisions to ensure the U.S. military remains competitive in AI and monitors adversaries' progress.

The Biden administration hiked tariffs on semiconductors, EVs, and other tech goods. Link.

  • In response to China's unfair trade practices, President Biden is directing increased tariffs on $18 billion of imports from China under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to protect American workers and businesses.

  • The Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda, supported by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act, has catalyzed over $860 billion in business investments, creating jobs in key industries like EVs, clean energy, and semiconductors.

  • To counter China's market dominance and unfair practices, the administration is increasing tariffs on strategic sectors such as steel, aluminum, semiconductors, EVs, batteries, and medical products, while making significant investments in domestic manufacturing and infrastructure to ensure economic and national security.

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