_{Welcome back for the Latest AI Drops!}

Today’s Drops:

• OpenAI Enhances AI Safety

• Big Techs Are Shaping the AI Startup Landscape in 2023

• Expedia's AI Move to Sidestep Google in Travel

• Trending AI Startup “CamelQA”

• Trending on X

• AI News

• Trending GitHub Projects

• AI Tools

Read Time: 4.5 minutes

OpenAI Enhances AI Safety

OpenAI has taken significant steps to enhance its internal safety measures against the potential dangers of AI. The company has established a new "safety advisory group" to oversee technical teams and guide leadership. Additionally, the board has been granted veto power over decisions, although its usage remains to be determined.The motivation behind these changes is the heightened awareness of AI risks and recent leadership changes within OpenAI.

Key Developments:

Revised Preparedness Framework:The company has revised its "Preparedness Framework". This framework is designed to identify, analyze, and mitigate catastrophic risks associated with AI development, which includes risks causing significant economic damage or harm to individuals.

Risk Categorization: OpenAI has categorized risks into four main areas: cybersecurity, persuasion (like disinformation), model autonomy, and CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats). They have established clear criteria for evaluating and mitigating these risks. For example, models with "high" risks cannot be deployed, and those with "critical" risks will not be developed further.

Board Veto Power:The newly formed Safety Advisory Group is intended to provide an additional layer of review and recommendation, complementing the technical teams. Recommendations from this group are sent to both the board and company leadership, including CEO Sam Altman and CTO Mira Murati. While leadership is responsible for making final decisions, the board has the authority to overturn these decisions.

The changes prevent high-risk products or processes from being approved without the board's knowledge or consent. However, questions still need to be answered about the board's effectiveness in this role, given the non-expertise of some of its new members and the level of transparency in these processes.

Source

Big Tech Shaping the AI Startup Landscape in 2023

In 2023, the AI startup landscape transformed significantly due to strategic partnerships and investments from major tech companies. This shift was sparked by Microsoft's $10 billion investment in OpenAI. Subsequently, tech giants like Salesforce, Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia forged financial and cloud computing alliances with AI startups such as Hugging Face and Anthropic, making these relationships essential for the startups' financial and infrastructural needs.

These dependencies, however, have attracted regulatory attention, particularly in the UK and US, where authorities are examining potential monopolistic impacts. Under the Biden administration, the US Federal Trade Commission is actively ensuring a competitive AI ecosystem and scrutinizing large cloud computing contracts for monopolistic practices.

These alliances are critical for AI companies to meet the high costs and computational demands of developing advanced technologies like large language models. For big tech firms, these partnerships are strategic for maintaining dominance in the rapidly evolving AI market and promoting their products, like Nvidia's chips or cloud services from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

In contrast to the active engagement of companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet with AI startups, Apple and Meta Platforms have adopted distinct approaches. Apple is developing its AI model, Ajax, and an internal chatbot, while Meta focuses on open-source models and partnerships within the big tech circle.

Overall, 2023 was a landmark year for AI, with Big Tech's involvement boosting innovation and raising concerns over potential monopolistic tendencies in the sector.

Source

Expedia's AI Move to Sidestep Google in Travel

Expedia is actively working to redefine the way people plan their travels by integrating advanced AI technology into its services. They aim to create a more direct and personalized trip-planning experience, encouraging travellers to begin their journey on Expedia's platform rather than turning to external search engines like Google.

The company has already incorporated AI in various aspects, such as enhancing customer service and aiding property owners in optimally presenting their offerings. The ambitious plan uses AI to tailor travel recommendations to individual preferences, drawing from a vast data repository on flights and hotels. This innovative approach, still in its developmental phase, aims to shift the current dynamics of web-based travel planning. By offering a seamless, AI-driven experience, Expedia aspires to become a one-stop solution for travellers, mirroring the convenience once provided by traditional travel agents.

This strategy enhances user experience and positions Expedia to capture a larger market share by minimizing its reliance on search engines for traffic, a move that could significantly impact its revenue and industry standing.

Source

Trending AI Startup

CamelQA tests your mobile apps without any human intervention.

• 🤖 camelQA leverages LLMs to run end-to-end testing on mobile applications with just the app binary and test cases in natural language

• 🪲 Upon finding a bug camelQA sends you a screen recording, logs, and repro scripts

Watch CamelQA in action

Trending on X

AI News

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan's party, PTI, used AI voice cloning technology to create a campaign video from prison, garnering over 500,000 views and leading to a temporary government shutdown of major social platforms in Pakistan.Link

Singapore's Atomionics is revolutionizing mineral exploration with its Gravio technology, a groundbreaking combination of gravity and AI that identifies ore bodies more accurately and swiftly, potentially reducing costs and accelerating key energy transition projects. The start-up has already partnered with major mining companies for early next year's deployment, marking a significant advancement in the industry by enhancing precision and efficiency in resource location.Link

IBM is set to purchase Software AG's AI and hybrid cloud assets for $2.3 billion, aiming to bolster its artificial intelligence and cloud computing capabilities. This acquisition includes Software AG's StreamSets and webMethods platforms, integral to its "Super Ipaas" business, and is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2024. Link

After the collapse of its $20 billion merger with Figma, Adobe Inc. is left with about $6 billion, which it plans to use for AI development and stock buybacks. Despite this, Adobe faces ongoing competitive threats from startups like Figma and Canva, and its future growth hinges on the successful integration of AI into its products.Link

Welcome to the innovative world of GitHub projects!

apple/ml-sigma-reparam: A software project accompanying the ICML 2023 research paper "Stabilizing Transformer Training by Preventing Attention Entropy Collapse"​​.

RVC-Project/Retrieval-based-Voice-Conversion-WebUI: A project that demonstrates how voice data of less than 10 minutes can be used to train an effective voice conversion model​​.

AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui: A web UI for Stable Diffusion, based on the Gradio library, providing a browser interface​​.

h2oai/h2ogpt: A private Q&A and summarization tool for documents and images, offering chat functionality with a local GPT, ensuring complete privacy​​.

WZMIAOMIAO/deep-learning-for-image-processing: A project focused on deep learning for image processing, covering topics like classification and object detection​​.

AI Tools

Taskade AI helps automate 700+ tasks, generate dynamic workflows, brainstorm in mind maps, and chat with AI in every project and workspace.

Freepik Pikaso is sketch-to-image AI image generator, in real time

IdeaFlow.io is a notebook that augments your intelligence as you type.

Snapby AI generates super-realistic images instantly

Agenda Hero Magic is an AI-generated calendar events