Applied AI Weekly News

Justin Grammens

Welcome Applied AI Weekly Readers! I'm thrilled to once again share with you some of the most interesting articles I've found this past week on Artificial Intelligence! Before we go there, here are a few things to note:

The Spring 2024 Applied AI Conference has been announced on May 10th! Use THIS LINK to register today and receive a 20% discount code from Applied AI Weekly.
I will be doing a very large IN-PERSON event with Club-E on Everything AI: Q&A on February 8th. Please register and join us! The events by Club-E are fabulous. I look forward to seeing you there and answering all of your questions on Artificial Intelligence.
We have a TON of events scheduled at the Applied AI Meetup. They are all free and open to the public. Register today!
The latest episode of the Conversations on Applied AI has hit. Jenny Zhang and I discuss how AI can help creators and influencers succeed. Take a listen!

Now that we have that covered, I hope you find value in the articles that I have spent time finding and curating for you. Enjoy!

News

Can AR and VR Finally Disrupt the Exhausting Culture of Video Meetings?

Jussi Havu, CEO of Helsinki-based Glue Collaborations, starts every Monday morning mingling with 30 of his colleagues in a virtual-reality meeting room. Glue's mission is to bring VR to the typical knowledge-work office. Havu is unsurprisingly optimistic about the business case for it. "There is business to be chased on this," he says.

Taylor Swift, AI Pictures and the Trauma of Deepfake Porn

Women have been sounding the alarm on deepfake porn for years. But now that the biggest pop star in the world has been targeted, is this a turning point in how seriously our society takes this issue? It's possible, experts say.

The Top 15 AI Products From 2023

It’s officially the new year. 2023 has come and gone, but what a year it was for AI. It felt like every day, some new groundbreaking model dropped to revolutionize the world. For some, it felt hard to keep up with, but if you read our AI newsletter, "Deeper Learning", you were among the first to discover and make sense of it all. Either way, now that we are in a new year, it seems right that we look back with all of you on the most upvoted AI launches of 2023.

New AI-Powered Google Chrome Browser: End of Human Internet?

“Writing on the web can be daunting, especially if you want to articulate your thoughts on public spaces or forums,” the company says. Chrome’s new tool will help users “write with more confidence,” whether they want to “leave a well-written review for a restaurant, craft a friendly RSVP for a party, or make a formal inquiry about an apartment rental.”

When Do We Get to Stop Calling Everything AI?

One of the best examples of that right now is the Galaxy S24 series, where Samsung is effectively selling its new phones on “Galaxy AI” and the new features backed up by Google’s Gemini models. Some of these new features are really impressive, but at the same time, it really feels like we’re calling everything AI when it doesn’t need to be.

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Business

The New York Times Is Building a Team to Explore AI in the Newsroom

The publication is hiring engineers and editors for a new team that will experiment with uses for generative AI but says journalists will still write, edit, and report the news.

Walmart Unveils New Generative AI-Powered Capabilities for Shoppers and Associates

Time and money are two of the most valuable resources people have. And one of the most popular ways for Americans to save on both, is shopping online. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American families spend six hours per week on household planning and shopping. Many of those families do so digitally...

The AI-Fueled Future of Work Needs Humans More Than Ever

Much like the internet did in the 1990s, AI is going to change the very definition of work. While change can be scary, if the last three years taught us anything, it can also be an opportunity to reinvent how we do things. I believe the best way to manage the changes ahead for employees and employers alike is to adopt a skills-first mindset.

Consumer

Deal Dive: Can AI Fix Lost and Found?

Boomerang thinks so. It uses machine learning to match photos and descriptions of lost items to streamline the lost and found process.

Development

It Turns out Nasa’s Mars Helicopter Was Much More Revolutionary Than We Knew

Much has been written about the plucky exploits of NASA's small Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. And all of the accolades are deserved. "The little mission that could" did, flying 72 sorties across the red planet and pushing out the frontier of exploration into the unknown.

Yet as impressive as Ingenuity's exploits were over the last three years, and though its carbon fiber blades will spin no more, its work has only just begun.

OpenAI Launches New Generation of Embedding Models and Other API Updates

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company, announced on Thursday a new generation of embedding models, which can convert text into a numerical form that can be used for various machine learning tasks. The company also introduced new versions of its GPT-4 Turbo and moderation models, new API usage management tools, and lower pricing on its GPT-3.5 Turbo model.

Yes, ChatGPT got lazier. But OpenAI finally has a fix.

In December, OpenAI acknowledged complaints that ChatGPT gave less thorough and helpful answers, sometimes even giving up before completing a task. The issue was attributed to the fact that the model may slowly share degraded responses over time, which could account for why users noticed the issue as far as six months ago.

ChatGPT's New "@GPT" Feature Paves the Way for OpenAI's Vision of a Universal Assistant

OpenAI Is Currently Testing a New Beta Feature for ChatGPT: Multi-GPT Conversations. Users Will Be Able to Talk to Multiple GPTs in the Same Chat Window. This Simple Feature Is an Important Step in OpenAI's Master Plan to Become a Universal Assistant for Everyday Life.