AI Advances, Stumbles as Tech Titans Grapple with Identity Crisis
From AI’s triumphs and trials to tech titans’ existential woes, your mind-bending weekend escape awaits. Dive in, unwind, and ponder the future’s throes.
The Thin Wisps of Tomorrow
The Achilles’ Heel of Large Language Models. LLMs are a modern marvel, but still stumble on simple tasks like Wordle or predicting cellular automata. The culprit? Goal drift. LLMs excel at intuitive, one-pass tasks but struggle with problems that require multi-step reasoning, memory, and dynamic attention. This might be a major hurdle for multistep/multi-agent AI. We may very well need better attention mechanisms to achieve true generalization—as we keep reminding folks: We aren’t even in the first inning of this game.
The Voice Cloning AI Arms Race. AI Voice Cloning is getting better and more accessible by the day. OpenVoice is an open source project, which in its newest release, provides accurate tone coloring, style control, and works cross-lingual. You better stop trusting your ears.
AI Safety Summit Faces Sobering Reality Check. The second Global AI Safety Summit, co-hosted by Britain and South Korea, is grappling with tough questions and dwindling attendance compared to the star-studded inaugural event at Bletchley Park. As the hype around AI’s potential cools, leaders are confronting thorny issues like data scarcity, energy consumption, and the technology’s limitations. The irony is rich: for a topic as critical as AI Safety, interest seems to be waning just as the hard work begins.
What We Are Reading
🏠 The World’s Largest 3D Printer Is At A University In Maine. It Just Unveiled An Even Bigger One This week, the University of Maine unveiled the world’s largest 3D printer. It can print objects up to 96 feet long by 32 feet wide, and one of its first projects includes houses for the state’s homeless population. @Jane
🤔 The Art Of Asking Smarter Questions Asking the right questions is essential for effective leadership. How to do this? Vary your question types. These can include speculative, productive, investigative, among others. @Mafe
🤖 Every Tech Company Wants To Be Like Boston Dynamics The specifically calibrated and carefully staged, awesome-but-alarming viral videos from the robotics company Boston Dynamics pioneered a PR strategy that AI companies have since embraced. @Jeffrey
🚗 Tesla Faces An Identity Crisis: Carmaker Or Tech Firm? Tech company vs automotive manufacturer is a question that Tesla itself might want to answer in the direction of tech company. On the other hand, shareholders see any tech ambition as being built on success as a manufacturer. It’s an interesting and complex relationship between the two that Tesla is exploring. @Julian
✈️ How United Airlines Uses Ai To Make Flying The Friendly Skies A Bit EasierUnited Airlines is setting the bar for utilizing AI to optimize airline operations and enhance the flyer’s experience. @Pedro
🪦 How To Die In Good Health Peter Attia’s quest for longevity is admirable, but is it misguided? Extreme diets, questionable drugs, and a relentless focus on optimization might add years, but at what cost? Living longer matters, but so does living well. @Pascal
Random Bits & Pixels
Emperor penguin chicks jump off a 50-foot cliff in Antarctica
Over four out of ten unicorn founders in the US are first generation immigrants.
Google Quantum AI (yes, you read that right)
The Wallstreet Journal’s tips on “Working Smarter, Not Harder with AI”
The high price of our fast fashion obsession: Burn After Wearing
Facebook’s AI Told Parents Group It Has a Gifted, Disabled Child
The Fun Stuff
Spacewar! is considered the first computer game—long before Lara Croft explored tropical caves, Master Chief embarked on his quest for the Halo, or even Mario embarked on his never-ending quest to free Princess Peach, Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, and Steve Piner built a space-themed shooter on their state-of-the-art DEC PDP-1 minicomputer. Thanks to modern browser technology, you can now play an authentic round of Spacewar! right from your web browser.
One of my favorite weekend reads and particularly liked Mafe’s find on questions (it’s all about the questions for me!) and also Pascal’s quote “Living longer matters, but so does living well.” It’s all about finding the balance IMHO