News
1. AI in Journalism
Axel Springer and OpenAI have announced a global partnership aimed at strengthening independent journalism in the age of AI. This collaboration will enhance ChatGPT users’ experience by providing summaries of selected global news content from Axel Springer’s media brands, including POLITICO and BUSINESS INSIDER, and will contribute to OpenAI’s training of sophisticated language models (OpenAI).
2. Open-source AI
Mistral AI has released Mixtral 8x7B, a high-quality sparse mixture of experts model that outperforms Llama 2 70B in most benchmarks and offers efficient, multilingual performance with a focus on code generation and instruction-following capabilities (Mistral). Google Cloud and Mistral AI have partnered to enable the startup to use Google’s infrastructure for distributing its language models. This collaboration will allow Mistral AI to leverage Google Cloud’s AI-optimized infrastructure, including TPU Accelerators, to enhance the development and scaling of its large language models, while adhering to Google’s security and privacy standards (Reuters).
3. Robot
Tesla Inc. has released a video showcasing advancements in its humanoid robot prototype, Optimus, including a weight reduction and enhanced capabilities like delicate object handling. The robot, which is still in development, aims to perform tasks that are unsafe or mundane for humans, demonstrating skills such as walking, squatting, and sorting objects by color (Bloomberg).
4. Meta and Microsoft
Audiobox, Meta’s latest research model, can generate voices and sound effects from voice inputs and text prompts, facilitating the creation of custom audio for various applications (Meta).
Meta introduces multimodal capabilities to its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses (Meta).
Microsoft Research is extending the capabilities of frontier foundation models like GPT-4 through advanced prompting strategies, as demonstrated in their Medprompt work, aiming to achieve state-of-the-art results in various knowledge domains and sharing these techniques on their promptbase GitHub repository (Microsoft).
Microsoft’s Phi-2, a small 2.7 billion parameter model, reportedly outperforms larger models in math and coding and can run on smartphones (Microsoft).
5. Discovery from LLM
FunSearch is an evolutionary procedure that pairs a pre-trained Large Language Model with a systematic evaluator, demonstrating its effectiveness in solving complex problems in extremal combinatorics and algorithmic challenges. This represents the first discoveries made for established open problems using LLMs (Nature).
6. Imagen 2
Google has launched Imagen 2, the second generation of its AI model capable of creating and editing images from text prompts, featuring improved image quality and new abilities like rendering text and logos in multiple languages (TechCrunch).
Articles
1. This new system can teach a robot a simple household task within 20 minutes (MIT Tech Review)
A new open-source system named Dobb-E can teach robots domestic tasks in about 20 minutes, overcoming the challenge of limited training data in robotics by using data from real homes for tasks like opening air fryers or straightening cushions.
2. Vertex developed a CRISPR cure. It’s already on the hunt for something better. (MIT Tech Review)
Vertex Pharmaceuticals, having recently gained approval for the first CRISPR-based gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell disease, is now developing a simpler alternative in the form of a pill.
3. Nature’s 10 (Nature)
Nature’s 10 list for this year features influential figures in science, including an AI pioneer, an architect of India’s Moon mission, and the world’s first global heat officer, recognizing their contributions to significant scientific advancements and raising awareness on critical issues. Additionally, for the first time, the list includes a non-human entity, acknowledging the impact of AI designed to emulate human language on scientific development and progress.
4. Breakthrough of the Year (Science)
A new class of GLP-1 receptor agonists, initially developed for diabetes, is showing promise in significantly reducing obesity and related chronic diseases, leading Science to name them the Breakthrough of the Year.
