Virtual character in a video game
Highlights
1. Researchers are leveraging AI in video games to create immersive, unscripted interactions with virtual characters.
2. AI success depends on removing outdated inefficient work processes.
3. Multi-modal AI Business Companions can enhance the application of business strategies by providing personalized, real-time guidance and insights.
4. Researchers have developed a model that helps computers to understand and predict human emotions.
5. DeepSeek Coder V2 is claimed to outperform GPT-4 Turbo for coding assistance.
Innovation Insights
1. AI success depends on tackling “process debt” (Harvard Business Review)
Organizations often focus on managing “technical debt,” but neglecting “process debt” – outdated, isolated, and inefficient ways of working – hinders the full potential of AI and other technologies. Addressing process debt involves redefining and digitizing work processes, ensuring alignment with business goals, and leveraging external expertise where beneficial. A “digital factory” approach, reskilling employees, and iterative process redesign can significantly enhance efficiency and value delivery. Focusing on process improvement rather than just technological upgrades can lead to dramatic improvements and better alignment with customer needs.
2. How managers can benefit from multi-modal AI business companions (California Management Review)
Multi-modal AI Business Companions (AIBCs) can significantly enhance the application of business strategies by providing personalized, real-time guidance and insights, thereby bridging the gap between theoretical concepts and practical implementation. These AI-powered conversational agents can help managers and business leaders by breaking down complex concepts, offering tailored advice, and ensuring continuous updates to reflect evolving business realities.
AI Innovations
1. AI tools
Researchers at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have developed a model that enables computers to understand and predict human emotions, potentially allowing computers to adapt their behavior to improve user interactions by using principles of mathematical psychology (ACM).
Figma has announced a major UI redesign and introduced new AI-driven generative tools to simplify and accelerate content creation, along with a new presentation feature called Figma Slides, during its Config conference (The Verge).
ChatGPT is available to all macOS users (TechCrunch).
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has released DeepSeek Coder V2, an open-source mixture of experts (MoE) code language model that supports over 300 programming languages, excels in both coding and math tasks, and outperforms state-of-the-art closed-source models such as GPT-4 Turbo and Claude 3 Opus (VentureBeat).
Goodreads co-founder Otis Chandler has launched Smashing, an AI and community-powered content recommendation app currently in invite-only beta, designed to help users discover and connect with high-quality online content such as news articles, blog posts, podcasts, and social media (TechCrunch).
Google is rolling out new Gemini AI features for Gmail, including an AI sidebar for summarizing email threads and drafting new emails, but these features are only available to paying Google Workspace and Google One AI Premium subscribers (The Verge).
Synthesia 2.0 has launched with major upgrades including new expressive and custom full-body avatars for more engaging and human-like corporate communication, alongside powerful new tools for video creation and editing, and interactive video player features (Maginative).
Researchers at EvolutionaryScale developed ESM3, a frontier language model for biology that simulates 500 million years of evolution, enabling the generation of new proteins and making biology programmable by reasoning over protein sequences, structures, and functions (Evolutionary Scale).
2. Unscripted interactions in video games
Researchers are leveraging AI in video games to create immersive, unscripted interactions with virtual characters, providing a novel means to study human cognition and behavior in complex social settings, thus revealing deeper insights into the human mind and offering new avenues for understanding relationships and cooperation (MIT Technology Review).
3. New method in LLM
Researchers have developed a new method for running AI language models efficiently by eliminating matrix multiplication, which could significantly reduce power consumption and operational costs (Ars Technica).
4. Advertisement
Toys “R” Us released a partially AI-generated commercial using OpenAI’s Sora, drawing criticism for its reliance on AI over human creativity (Ars Technica).
Other Innovations
1. Epilepsy device
A UK boy with severe epilepsy, Oran Knowlson, has become the first patient to trial a new skull-fitted device, reducing his daytime seizures by 80% and significantly improving his quality of life (BBC).
2. Biodegradable plastic
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have developed a 100% biodegradable plastic made from barley starch and sugarbeet waste that decomposes into compost within two months (Phys Org).
3. Solar fuel plant
German firm Synhelion has opened the world’s first industrial-scale plant, DAWN, to produce synthetic fuels using solar heat, demonstrating the technology’s potential to reduce dependency on fossil fuels, particularly in aviation (Interesting Engineering).
