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☆ Big Tech’s A.I. Takeover and the Slow Death of Silicon Valley Innovation - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-13 | by ( Mark Lemley | Matt Wansley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Silicon Valley prides itself on disruption: Start-ups develop new technologies, upend existing markets and overtake incumbents. OpenAI, founded as a nonprofit and counterweight to Google’s dominance, has raised $13 billion from Microsoft. Anthropic, a start-up founded by OpenAI engineers who grew wary of Microsoft’s influence, has raised $4 billion from Amazon and $2 billion from Google. Last week, the news broke that the Federal Trade Commission was investigating Microsoft’s dealings with Inflection AI, a start-up founded by DeepMind engineers who used to work for Google. start-ups and Big Tech give the start-ups the enormous sums of cash and hard-to-source chips they want.

Persons: OpenAI, DeepMind, — Organizations: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Federal Trade Commission, A.I, Big Tech

☆ Exclusive: Health AI startup Anterior raised $20 million from NEA and Sequoia. Here's the pitch deck it used.
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-10 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Many healthcare startups have targeted administrative tasks on the provider side, like SmarterDx, which just raised a $50 million Series B in June. Wu said NEA chose to invest in Anterior in part because of its focus on health plans. Anterior's $20 million Series A will help the startup accelerate hiring to take on more health plan customers, Mahmoud said. Wu said the firm sees a big opportunity for Anterior to package a range of tools for health plans as AI technologies become more widespread. See the 18-slide pitch deck Anterior used to grab a $20 million Series A.

Persons: —, It's, Mustafa Suleyman, Adrian Aoun, Blake Wu, Abdel Mahmoud, we'd, we've, Mahmoud, Wu, Anterior's Organizations: Service, NEA, Business, Sequoia, Lion, Microsoft, Cohere, Meta, Google, McKinsey & Company, Amazon Locations: Sequoia Arc

☆ Microsoft is outsourcing its best AI, tech CEO says — and that's good news for Google
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-10 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Lionel Bonaventure | Afp | Getty ImagesLONDON — Microsoft is handing over the development of all of its best artificial intelligence tools and software to OpenAI, according to one tech CEO — which could be a boon for arch-rival Google. He noted that the so-called transformers that power today's generative AI technologies "all came from Google." Microsoft as an AI 'consultancy'McKinnon added that there's a risk Microsoft's position in AI becomes reduced to that of a "consultancy." Still, Google has a mountain to climb if it's going to achieve commercial success with its own AI investments. Microsoft has effectively become the leader in the push toward foundation AI models given its investment in and partnership with OpenAI.

Persons: Lionel Bonaventure, Todd McKinnon, McKinnon, OpenAI, Bard Organizations: Bard, Google, Getty, Microsoft, CNBC, OpenAI

☆ Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleyman's ghostwriter for its new AI org, internal chart shows
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-06 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's ghostwriter joined the company's new AI organization. Microsoft hired Suleyman in March to lead the consumer artificial intelligence group. AdvertisementMicrosoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's ghostwriter landed a job on staff in the company's new consumer artificial intelligence organization, according to an internal organizational chart. Microsoft in March hired Suleyman, head of startup Inflection AI and cofounder of AI pioneer DeepMind, to be CEO of a newly formed "Microsoft AI" group. The organization is responsible for consumer AI products such as Microsoft's Copilot AI chatbot and the Bing search engine.

Persons: Mustafa Suleyman's, Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar, —, Mustafa Organizations: Microsoft, Service, Business

☆ Leaked Microsoft org chart reveals the top people running Mustafa Suleyman's new AI organization
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-06 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Microsoft in March hired Suleyman, head of startup Inflection AI and cofounder of AI pioneer Deepmind, to be CEO of a newly formed "Microsoft AI" group. Here are top players at Microsoft AI:AdvertisementKarén Simonyan, CVP and chief scientistKarén Simonyan Inflection AI Inflection AISimonyan is one of three Inflection co-founders. Kya Sainsbury-Carter, CVP Microsoft AdvertisingSainsbury-Carter is an 18-year veteran of Microsoft. Qi Zhang, CVP Microsoft AI APRDZhang is based in Beijing and has been at Microsoft for 22 years. Chris Daly, VP strategy and business operationsDaly joined Microsoft AI in May after spending about nine years in investment banking at Robey Warshaw.

Persons: —, Mustafa Suleyman, Suleyman, Karén Simonyan, Karén, Simonyan, Satya Nadella, Rob Cromwell, Cromwell, Gabor Hirschler, Hirschler, Mikhail Parakhin, Jordi Ribas, Bing, Rukmini Iyer, Iyer, Rajesh Sundaram, Sundaram, Ali Akgun, Panos Panay, Sainsbury, Carter, Qi Zhang, Zhang, Mike Davidson, Davidson, Michael Bhaskar, Bhaskar, DeepMind, Chris Daly, Daly, Robey Warshaw Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Business, Bing, Enterprise, Microsoft Edge, Carter, Microsoft Advertising, Pacific Research, Development, Twitter, NBCNews.com, Walt Disney Internet, Microsoft AI Locations: Copilot, Beijing, Asia, Pacific, London

☆ Silicon Valley's battle over AI risks is escalating fast
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-05 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Read previewThere's a battle in Silicon Valley over AI risks and safety — and it's escalating fast. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Right to WarnWhile the concerns around AI safety are nothing new, they're increasingly being amplified by those within AI companies. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours. A spokesperson previously reiterated the company's commitment to safety, highlighting an "anonymous integrity hotline" for employees to voice their concerns and the company's safety and security committee.

Persons: —, OpenAI, Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Stuart Russell, Jacob Hilton, Hilton, Sam Altman, Helen Toner, Altman, Russell, Daniel Kokotajlo, Kokotajlo Organizations: Service, Google, Business Locations: Silicon Valley, OpenAI

☆ OpenAI is facing controversy. Again.
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-05 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

In today's big story, we're looking at the latest controversy to embroil OpenAI amid a difficult few months for the startup . Their takeaway was simple: OpenAI wants to have it both ways regarding how it's perceived about safety and commercialization. It's structured as a "capped-profit" company governed by a nonprofit, and Altman doesn't hold equity directly in OpenAI. The result, the VC told me, is people feel OpenAI is talking out of both sides of its mouth. It doesn't help that some OpenAI employees joined when that split was closer to 80/20 and favored safety over business, they added.

Persons: —, we've, OpenAI Justin Sullivan, Chelsea Jia Feng, Anthropic signees, Scarlett Johansson, Elon, Madeline Berg, Sam Altman, Altman, Justin Sullivan, OpenAI, It's, Patrick McMullan, Jenny Chang, Rodriguez, Izzy Englander's, Griffin's, Marko Kolanovic, ANDREW CABALLERO, REYNOLDS, youngs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Keith Enright, Alyssa Powell, They've, Shopify, Dan DeFrancesco, Jordan Parker Erb, Jack Sommers, George Glover, Annie Smith Organizations: Service, Business, Google, Millennium Management, Getty Images, Facebook, CNBC, BI, SpaceX Locations: OpenAI, Patrick, It's, Tesla, New York, London

☆ Current and former OpenAI employees warn of AI's 'serious risks' and lack of oversight
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-04 | by ( Hayden Field | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

A group of current and former OpenAI employees published an open letter Tuesday describing concerns about the artificial intelligence industry's rapid advancement despite a lack of oversight and an absence of whistleblower protections for those who wish to speak up. "AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not believe bespoke structures of corporate governance are sufficient to change this," the employees wrote. The letter also details the current and former employees' concerns about insufficient whistleblower protections for the AI industry, saying that without effective government oversight, employees are in a relatively unique position to hold companies accountable. "Ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned about are not yet regulated." Four anonymous OpenAI employees and seven former ones, including Daniel Kokotajlo, Jacob Hilton, William Saunders, Carroll Wainwright and Daniel Ziegler, signed the letter.

Persons: OpenAI, they've, Daniel Kokotajlo, Jacob Hilton, William Saunders, Carroll Wainwright, Daniel Ziegler, Ramana Kumar, Neel Nanda, Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell Organizations: Google, Microsoft, Meta, CNBC, Security Locations: Anthropic

☆ Khosla Ventures backs weather balloon startup that uses AI to upend forecasts
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-03 | by ( Diana Olick | In Dianaolick | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Windborne uses a new type of weather balloon, for example. Windborne's balloons can fly for weeks, as opposed to today's government-launched weather balloons which stay aloft for just a few hours and can't reach remote locations. The world currently lacks weather data for 85% of the atmosphere, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Windborne just closed a $15 million round with lead investor Khosla Ventures. In addition to Khosla Ventures, Windborne is backed by Footwork VC, Pear VC, Convective Capital, Ubiquity Ventures and Susa Ventures.

Persons: John Dean, Dean, Sven Strohband, Windborne Organizations: National Oceanic, Atmospheric Administration, Investors, Google, World Meteorological Organization, Khosla Ventures, Weather Company, Economic, Windborne, Susa Ventures Locations: California, Susa

☆ A top secret meeting is kicking off in Madrid with the CEOs of Google DeepMind, Anthropic and Microsoft AI in attendance
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-30 | by ( Karen Gilchrist | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Google DeepMind co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Demis Hassabis gives a conference during the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 26, 2024. The CEOs of artificial intelligence heavyweights Google DeepMind, Microsoft AI, Anthropic and Mistral AI are among the elite list of business and political leaders attending a secretive meeting kicking off in Madrid, Spain, on Thursday. AI will once again dominate discussions at the annual Bilderberg Meeting after catapulting onto the agenda last year following the meteoric rise of the burgeoning technology. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg are also among the political figures who will attend for geopolitical discussions including on China and Russia. According to its organizers, the closed nature of the event aims to foster "informal discussions about major issues."

Persons: Demis Hassabis, Jane Fraser, Eric Schmidt, Albert Bourla, Wael Sawan, Peter Thiel, Wally Adeyemo, Dmytro Kuleba, Jens Stoltenberg Organizations: Google, Mobile World Congress, MWC, Microsoft, Mistral, Citigroup, Pfizer, NATO, Chatham House, Economic Locations: Barcelona, Madrid, Spain, Ukrainian, China, Russia, Spanish, Chatham, Davos, Switzerland

☆ A wave of AI 'acquihires' is coming. Here's who could be looking for deals.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-30 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But the tech giant's play underscores the market's demand for tech talent — and venture capitalists expect a wave of "acquihires" to hit the AI ecosystem later this year. M&A dealmaking among AI startups is already off to a strong start this year, with 55 exits recorded in Q1 of 2024, per Crunchbase data. AdvertisementThe majority of AI startups are overpriced, said Konstantin Vinogradov, general partner at Runa Capital. AI startups with revenue in the single-digit millions that raised money at unicorn valuations, Dash said, might not even have that option. Those deals don't make sense for buyers, he said, which could lead Big Tech companies or other AI startups to poach their talent instead.

Persons: —, Inflection's, Ayangar, Konstantin Vinogradov, Somesh Dash, overshadowing, Shmuel Chafets, Sivesh Sivakumar, Shaun Johnson, Naveen Rao, Sivakumar, Johnson, PhotoRoom, Aravind Srinivas, Mike Smeed, Chafets, Dash, they'll Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Business, Investors, Runa, Big Tech, Apple, Target, Ventures, Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Intuit, Nike, American Express, Safeway, InMotion Ventures, Disney, Netflix Locations: OpenOcean, Snowflake, Databricks

☆ LLMs, GPUs, and hallucinations — what you need to know about AI
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-29 | by ( Aaron Mok | Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Here's a list of the people, companies, and terms you need to know to talk about AI, in alphabetical order. GPU: A computer chip, short for graphic processing unit, that companies use to train and deploy their AI models. Nvidia's GPUs are used by Microsoft and Meta to run their AI models. Multimodal: The ability for AI models to process text, images, and audio to generate an output. As a profession, prompt engineers are experts in fine tuning AI models on the backend to improve outputs.

Persons: —, Sam Altman, Altman, OpenAI's, Dario Amodei, Claude, Demis, Hassabis, Jensen Huang, Satya, Mustafa Suleyman, OpenAI, Elon Musk, Sam Bankman, Peter Thiel, Bard, James Webb, empiricists Organizations: Service, Business, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Bing, Meta, James Webb Space Telescope Locations: OpenAI, Anthropic

☆ Silicon Valley doesn't seem to be buying Sam Altman's NDA pleas
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-27 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read previewSilicon Valley types are skeptical about whether Sam Altman knew OpenAI had non-disparagement clauses in its exit agreements. The claims against OpenAI didn't go down well in the tech community, and some were unconvinced that Altman was being entirely honest. AdvertisementVox published a document showing the OpenAI chief signed incorporation documents for the holding company that handles OpenAI's equity. Meta researcher Soumith Chintala praised the follow-up Vox report, saying it brought "receipts that it wasn't just some standard exit paperwork from OpenAI."

Persons: —, Sam Altman, OpenAI, Vox, X, i've, OpenAI didn't, Altman, Naveen Rao, didn't, Neel Nanda, Nils Reimers, Soumith Chintala, Jacob Hilton, wouldn't, Hilton Organizations: Service, Tech, Business, Google, OpenAI Locations: OpenAI, Cohere

☆ Google criticized as AI Overview makes obvious errors, saying President Obama is Muslim and that it's safe to leave dogs in hot cars
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-24 | by ( Hayden Field | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

But on social media, users have shared a wide range of screenshots showing the AI tool sharing controversial responses. Here are some examples of what went wrong with AI Overviews, according to screenshots shared by users. When asked how many Muslim presidents the U.S. has had, AI Overviews responded, "The United States has had one Muslim president, Barack Hussein Obama." Attribution can also be a problem for AI Overviews, especially when it comes to attributing inaccurate information to medical professionals or scientists. The news follows Google's high-profile rollout of Gemini's image-generation tool in February, and a pause that same month after comparable issues.

Persons: It's, Barack Hussein Obama, it's, WebMD, they'd, Gemini, Demis Hassabis, Pichai Organizations: Google, Microsoft, UC Berkeley, U.S . Justice Department Locations: United States, German, British, France, ChatGPT

☆ Big Tech goes on AI charm offensive in Europe as regulators circle
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-23 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

It's worth noting that their comments come as the world's first major law governing AI, the EU's AI Act, was given the final greenlight. Meanwhile, European Commissioner Thierry Breton, a major architect of rules around Big Tech, is set to speak later in the week. Vogels, who is tasked with driving technology innovation within Amazon , said that AI can be used to "solve some of the world's hardest problems." Manyika said Google open-sourced its watermarking tech so that any developer can "build on it, improve on it." "I am concerned that there is potential for monopolies to emerge around Big Tech and AI," he said.

Persons: Rafael Henrique, Lightrocket, Werner Vogels, Society James Manyika, Thierry Breton, Vogels, Manyika, it's, Google's, Gemma AI, Emmanuel Macron, Eric Schmidt, Yann LeCun, Macron, Matt Calkins, Appian, Calkins Organizations: Getty, France —, Viva Tech, Amazon Chief, Google, Technology, Society, Regulators, Big Tech, European Union, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Elysee, CNBC Locations: PARIS, France, Paris, Jakarta, Indonesia, View , California, U.S

☆ More OpenAI chaos puts Sam Altman on the back foot
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-20 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

AdvertisementIt's a rare admission from Altman, who has worked hard to cultivate an image of being relatively calm amid OpenAI's ongoing chaos. Safety team implosionOpenAI has been in full damage control mode following the exit of key employees working on AI safety. He said the safety team was left "struggling for compute, and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done." Silenced employeesThe implosion of the safety team is a blow for Altman, who has been keen to show he's safety-conscious when it comes to developing super-intelligent AI. The usually reserved Altman even appeared to shade Google, which demoed new AI products the following day.

Persons: —, Jan Leike, Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman, Altman, Leike, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pavel Izmailov, Daniel Kokotajlo, William Saunders, Cullen O'Keefe, Kokotajlo, Vox, OpenAI, Joe Rogan's, Neel Nanda, i've, Scarlett Johansson, OpenAI didn't Organizations: Service, Business, AGI

☆ Britain expands AI safety institute to San Francisco amid scrutiny over regulatory shortcomings
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-20 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

The government on Monday announced it would open a U.S. counterpart to its AI safety summit, a state-backed body focused on testing advanced AI systems to ensure they're safe, in San Francisco this summer. The U.S. iteration of the AI Safety Institute will aim to recruit a team of technical staff headed up by a research director. In a statement, U.K. Technology Minister Michelle Donelan said the AI Safety Summit's U.S. rollout "represents British leadership in AI in action." The AI Safety Institute was established in November 2023 during the AI Safety Summit, a global event held in England's Bletchley Park, the home of World War II code breakers, that sought to boost cross-border cooperation on AI safety. The government said that, since the AI Safety Institute was established in November, it's made progress in evaluating frontier AI models from some of the industry's leading players.

Persons: Ian Hogarth, Michelle Donelan, it's, Anthropic Organizations: LONDON, Monday, AI, Technology, Safety, U.S, Microsoft, AI Safety, Institute, Seoul, European Union Locations: San Francisco, California, United States, U.S, London, British, Bay, OpenAI, England's Bletchley, South Korea, Bletchley Park, Seoul, Britain, European

☆ How Google CEO Sundar Pichai shook up his leadership team for the AI era
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-16 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

It came almost 12 months after Google combined two key AI groups, DeepMind and Google Brain. Google's AI MVPGoogle DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis GoogleDemis Hassabis might be the most important person at Google right now. Then, in April last year, Pichai announced he would merge DeepMind with Google's in-house AI unit, known as Brain, into a supergroup named Google DeepMind. Reid reports directly to Raghavan, the ads and search senior vice president, and is shepherding a dramatic transition of Google Search. Fears of chatbots eating into Google's search dominance have yet to be realized, giving Google time to reinvent its most hallowed product.

Persons: —, Sundar Pichai, Pichai, Susan Wojcicki, Demis, Hassabis, Larry Page, DeepMind, OpenAI, it's, accrues, ED JONES, Rick Osterloh, Sameer Samat, he'll, Hiroshi Lockheimer, Osterloh, Prabhakar Raghavan, Siri, Tim Cook, Hiroshi, SAJJAD HUSSAIN, Liz Reid, Reid, Raghavan, Pandu Nayak, Venkatachary, It's, chatbots, Bernstein, Mark Shmulik Organizations: Service, Google, Business, Google's, BI, Research, Hassabis, Android, Apple, Apple's Vision, CNBC, Google Local Locations: Raxium

☆ An AI agent may soon be at your beck and call, but it might cost you a bit of your privacy
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-15 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

In today's big story, we're looking at Google's big event that's pitching all the ways AI agents can make our lives easier . Google I/O, the tech giant's biggest developer conference, was heavy on the rise of so-called AI agents , writes Business Insider's Hugh Langley, who was there in person. AdvertisementGoogle's faithful, old search engine got a noticeable facelift with the help of AI , writes BI's Geoff Weiss. Steven Puetzer/Getty, Tyler Le/BIThe stakes for Google are high, as nailing AI agents opens up a massive business opportunity. For AI agents to be so intuitive, they'll need access to seemingly every aspect of our lives.

Persons: —, Tyler Le, you've, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Hugh Langley, Sundar Pichai, Geoff Weiss, Hugh, Alistair Barr, Gregory Wayne, Steven Puetzer, hasn't, Alistair, Demis Hassabis, Minchillo, Keith Gill, Naz Vahid, Andy Sieg's, Noah Berger, Jia Feng, Tingting Ji, Jenny Chang, Rodriguez, BI's Peter Kafka, Dan DeFrancesco, Jordan Parker Erb, Hallam Bullock, George Glover Organizations: Service, Business, Google, Astra, GameStop, AMC Entertainment, JPMorgan, Citi, Amazon Web Services, Walmart, UPS, Nielsen, Cisco Systems, Warner Bros, Discovery Locations: New York, Dublin, London

☆ It was their job to make sure humans are safe from OpenAI's superintelligence. They just quit.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-15 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

And the fact that there aren't such controls in place yet is a problem OpenAI recognized, per its July 2023 post. Our current techniques for aligning AI, such as reinforcement learning from human feedback , rely on humans' ability to supervise AI," read OpenAI's post. "But humans won't be able to reliably supervise AI systems much smarter than us, and so our current alignment techniques will not scale to superintelligence. AdvertisementLeike — who worked at Google's DeepMind before his gig at OpenAI — had big aspirations for keeping humans safe from the superintelligence we've created. "Maybe a once-and-for-all solution to the alignment problem is located in the space of problems humans can solve.

Persons: —, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Altman, Sutskever, he's, Jan Leike, Leike, OpenAI, superalignment, we're, Google's DeepMind, OpenAI — Organizations: Service, Business, OpenAI Locations: OpenAI

☆ What's the killer AI app for consumers? Google finally has a contender.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-14 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Read previewSince ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, there's been no real "killer app" to get consumers embracing AI in massive numbers. The internet, possibly the biggest killer app of all, made us all buy smartphones, tablets, and a host of other connected devices. AI killer app contendersAt its IO developer conference on Tuesday, Google showed off some pretty amazing AI killer app contenders. A Google AI model lurking on the phone (and in the cloud) answered correctly. The Google AI agent captured all the dates, times, and other details and automatically loaded them into the user's Google Calendar.

Persons: —, there's, she'd, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Sundar Pichai, Sissie Hsiao, DeepMind's Hassabis, Pichai Organizations: Service, Business, Google, Astra, Microsoft Locations: London

☆ I danced with Project Astra, Google's experimental new AI agent. Here's what happened.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-14 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

After the keynote, journalists were herded over to a demo area for Project Astra. Before we went in, while waiting in line, two members of the Project Astra team from DeepMind walked us through how to use the technology. Google's Gemini model reviewed the phone's live video and said I was wearing casual clothes. He's been at DeepMind for about a decade and we discussed the origins on Project Astra. Beyond chatbotsThis is part of what inspired Project Astra, Wayne said.

Persons: —, We've, Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, Max Cherney, Max, Google's, Gemini, I'd, Gregory Wayne, Captain Cook, He's, he's, Cook, Wayne, SuperEvilMegaCorp Organizations: Service, Google, Project Astra, Business, Reuters, Astra, Tierra del Fuego Locations: Tierra del, Silicon

Meanwhile, OpenAI on Monday launched a new AI model and desktop version of ChatGPT, along with a new user interface. Gemini AI updatesGoogle introduced updates to Gemini 1.5 Pro, its AI model that will soon be able to handle even more data — for example, the tool can summarize 1,500 pages of text uploaded by a user. Generative AI tools such as chatbots and image creators continue to have issues with accuracy, however. New search featuresThe tech giant is launching "AI Overviews" in Google Search on Monday in the U.S. AI Overviews show a quick summary of answers to the most complex search questions, according to Liz Reid, head of Google Search. Google Search found the model of the record player and suggested that it could be malfunctioning because it wasn't properly balanced.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Andrej Sokolow, Anthropic, OpenAI, There's, Pichai, Gemini, Apple's Siri, Prabhakar Raghavan, Liz Reid, you'll, that's, Google's, Tony Stark's, —, ChatGPT, Demis Hassabis Organizations: Google, Getty, Gemini, Monday, Gmail, Astra Project Astra, Marvel, Astra Locations: U.S

☆ Google rolls out its most powerful AI models as competition from OpenAI heats up
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-14 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

At Google I/O on Tuesday, the company announced Gemini 1.5 Flash, the newest addition to the Gemini model series. OpenAI on Monday launched a new AI model and desktop version of ChatGPT, along with a new user interface. Gemini 1.5 Pro will soon be able to handle an hour of video content, or codebases with more than 30,000 lines, Hsiao said. Gemini 1.5 Pro will initially be available for testing in Workspace Labs. Gemini 1.5 Flash will be available for testing and in Vertex AI, which is Google's machine learning platform that lets developers train and deploy AI applications.

Persons: Demis Hassabis, Hsiao, Sundar Pichai, Gemini Organizations: Google, Gemini, Monday

☆ Google just gave us a tantalizing glimpse into the future of AI agents
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-14 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Read previewWhat if the Google Assistant was actually… an assistant? In short: AI agents are what have the best shot at taking this technology from "nice to have" to "need to have." But there are other ways these AI agents will emerge in the nearer term. Google teased a combination of updates that will soon make its Gemini AI chatbot more capable and proactive. Tentacles and tailoringBut it's in its legacy products that Google really has an edge when it comes to enabling agent-like qualities.

Persons: —, It's, Sundar Pichai, Pichai, Astra Pichai, We've, Demis Hassabis, OpenAI, Sissie Hsiao, Hsiao, Chatbots, Liz Reid, Google's, Reid Organizations: Service, Google, Business, Astra, Gemini Locations: London

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