Nobel Prizes
Highlights
1. Several AI scientists were honored as Nobel Prize Laureates in 2024.
2. Amazon introduced AI Shopping Guides while Walmart announced its strategy to integrate AI and AR to enhance shopping experience.
3. Anthropic has introduced the Message Batches API, allowing developers to process up to 10,000 queries asynchronously.
4. Hugging Face has launched Gradio 5, an updated version of its open-source tool that simplifies building AI-powered web apps.
5. Altera uses GPT-4 to create “digital humans” capable of interacting with and collaborating alongside people in real-time.
Innovation Insights
1. Innovating with agility, deep tech, and AI (Ideas Made to Matter)
MIT Sloan Management Review highlights three key approaches to drive innovation: fostering organizational agility, investing in deep tech ventures, and utilizing responsible AI. Agility can be achieved by setting four guardrails—clear purpose, democratized data, flexible policies, and quick resource allocation—enabling teams to innovate efficiently. Deep tech offers long-term solutions to complex challenges like sustainability, but requires managing commercialization risks, high costs, and long timelines. Scotiabank’s success with generative AI in its contact center, recognized for innovation and ethics, showcases the power of collaboration and responsible AI development, improving chatbot accuracy and customer service efficiency.
2. Five Must-Haves for Effective AI Upskilling (BCG)
To effectively upskill employees on AI, companies must take five key actions. First, they need to assess specific needs and implement systems to measure the outcomes of their upskilling efforts. Second, employees must be prepared for change individually, at the team level, and across the organization, with clear communication about AI’s impact. Third, organizations should introduce incentives to motivate learning and alleviate concerns about AI replacing jobs. Fourth, the C-suite must lead the AI transformation, ensuring top-down support and advocacy. Finally, using AI tools for training can make the upskilling process scalable, fast, and more practical, creating a network effect where AI knowledge spreads across the organization.
AI Innovations
1. Shopping
Amazon has introduced AI Shopping Guides to help customers quickly research and find the right products by consolidating key information and recommendations for over 100 product types (Amazon).
Walmart has unveiled its strategy to enhance shopping experiences by integrating AI, Generative AI, Augmented Reality, and Immersive Commerce, including retail-specific AI models called Wallaby, personalized shopping tools, and AR platforms to create hyper-personalized, engaging experiences across both physical and virtual environments (Walmart).
2. Apple
Apple has released Depth Pro, an AI model that advances monocular depth estimation by creating detailed 3D maps from single 2D images quickly and accurately (VentureBeat).
3. Alphabet
iOS users of Gmail can now use Gemini to ask questions about their emails (TechCrunch).
Google’s latest AI enhancement to its search engine allows users to voice questions about images and videos, providing conversational answers through AI Overviews, while also expanding the use of AI-organized search results (AP).
Google is testing a “Quick View” feature that displays complete recipes directly in search results (The Verge).
4. Anthropic
Anthropic has introduced the Message Batches API, allowing developers to process up to 10,000 queries asynchronously with a 50% cost reduction (Anthropic).
5. Hugging Face
Hugging Face has launched Gradio 5, an updated version of its open-source tool that simplifies building AI-powered web apps by allowing developers to create secure, scalable applications using just a few lines of Python (VentureBeat).
6. Enterprise AI
Writer has launched Palmyra X 004, a new AI model that excels in function calling and workflow automation (Writer).
Inflection AI has launched “Inflection for Enterprise,” an enterprise-grade AI system powered by Inflection 3.0, aimed at providing secure, customizable AI solutions for large businesses, while also announcing a new commercial API for developers (Inflection).
7. Databricks
Databricks has launched Databricks Apps, now in Public Preview on AWS and Azure, enabling fast, secure development and deployment of internal data and AI applications using popular frameworks like Dash and Streamlit, with built-in governance, serverless compute, and seamless dRata integration (Databricks).
8. Zoom
At Zoomtopia 2024, Zoom unveiled AI-first innovations including AI Companion 2.0 for enhanced personalization, Zoom Tasks for automated task management, and expanded AI tools across Zoom Workplace to boost productivity, collaboration, and efficiency for users across various industries (Zoom).
9. Uber
Uber will launch an AI assistant powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o to help drivers transition to electric vehicles, as part of its broader efforts to support sustainability and lower emissions (Reuters).
10. Image
Black Forest Labs, the company responsible for Grok’s image generator, has launched an API (TechCrunch).
11. Video
Hailuo steps up its features by introducing an image-to-video AI generation capability (Hailuo AI).
Ring’s new AI-powered Smart Video Search tool allows users to search surveillance footage for specific objects and actions, providing mixed results, as it can sometimes misidentify subjects and does not work with end-to-end encrypted videos (Wired).
12. Open-source
Rhymes AI has introduced Aria, the world’s first open-source multimodal native Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model, designed for efficient processing across text, image, video, and code inputs, offering high performance and long-context understanding with an open, collaborative development platform (Rhymes AI).
Pyramid Flow, a video generator, has launched, offering high-quality, 10-second video clips efficiently through a novel pyramidal flow technique, aiming to compete with proprietary models like Runway and Luma (VentureBeat).
13. Wingman
Grindr is developing an AI “wingman” that will assist users by scouting relationship prospects, setting up dates, and even engaging in conversations on their behalf (WSJ).
14. Digital human
Altera uses GPT-4 to create “digital humans” capable of interacting with and collaborating alongside people in real-time, addressing challenges like data degradation for long-term autonomy. These AI agents, designed to simulate cognitive and emotional functions, enhance human-like experiences and can engage in complex, prolonged tasks, such as playing Minecraft like a friend (OpenAI).
15. Mental health
Neuromnia is transforming ABA therapy for autism by using Llama 3.1 to develop “Nia,” an AI co-pilot that enhances clinician productivity, reduces administrative burdens, and increases access to quality care through advanced automation and personalized treatment planning (Meta).
Other Innovations
1. Nobel Prizes
The 2024 Nobel Prizes were awarded to: John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton (Physics) for neural networks, David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper (Chemistry) for advances in protein design and structure prediction, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun (Physiology or Medicine) for discovering microRNA, Han Kang (Literature) for her poetic prose, and Nihon Hidankyo (Peace) for advocating against nuclear weapons (Nobel Prize).
2. Wearable
Two Harvard students have developed smart glasses technology that can reveal personal information like name, address, and phone number by scanning someone’s face using public data, raising significant privacy concerns (CBS News).
ByteDance has launched the Ola Friend earbuds in China, priced at $170, which connect to their AI chatbot Doubao to offer audio assistant capabilities without needing a smartphone (SCMP).
3. Tesla
At Tesla’s “We, Robot” event, Elon Musk unveiled the Cybercab, a two-seater autonomous vehicle priced under $30,000, and surprised attendees with the reveal of the Robovan, a larger vehicle capable of transporting up to 20 people, both aimed at advancing Tesla’s vision for autonomous transport (TechCrunch). Tesla’s unveiling of its two-seater Cybercab robotaxi, designed as a sporty coupe, puzzled experts and investors who questioned its practicality for typical taxi use (Reuters).
4. Electronic tongue
Ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs), enhanced with machine learning for predictive modeling, are revolutionizing chemosensing by improving detection accuracy in applications like environmental monitoring, healthcare, and food safety, particularly using graphene-based ISFETs for identifying food fraud and spoilage (Nature).
