AI News & Launches

Lois Beckett reports on a visit to CaliExpress, a 'fully autonomous' restaurant in Los Angeles that uses AI-powered robots, such as Flippy, to cook fast-food like burgers and fries. Amidst labor cost debates and wage increases, CaliExpress demonstrates a potential future where humans collaborate more with technology than execute menial tasks, yet the experience leaves Beckett pondering the quality and implications of such automation.

Discord's recent blog post outlines their rigorous process of building features with Generative AI, dividing the journey into stages such as use case identification, product requirements definition, prototyping, and full-scale deployment. The post emphasizes the potential of AI in enhancing user experiences and solving large-scale problems and discusses the complex trade-offs involved in integrating LLMs into applications.

This post discusses the current state of AI in assisting with hand-drawn animation inbetweening, evaluating two academic papers and a commercial tool. Traditional inbetweening, cleanup, and coloring are considered, with focus on productivity enhancements via AI. Limitations are acknowledged, particularly with handling occlusion and rotation, but advancements in 3D motion reconstruction and feature matching techniques show promise for future improvements.

AIFlash.Cards is a cutting-edge tool that allows users to create personalized flashcards from text or files, aiding in faster learning and better retention. It offers features such as generating flashcards from topics, contexts, links, and PDFs, and supports 100 languages. The service boasts spaced repetition, cross-platform access, history tracking, and community engagement. It has free and premium plans.

Pietra Studio provides a platform for dreamers and entrepreneurs to design and manufacture products using AI. Over 250,000 brands use Pietra to save time and money, creating designs and variations in seconds. The service offers collaboration tools, thousands of templates, and a design studio to streamline the creative process.

HuggingChat is a platform that provides access to the community's leading AI chat models, making them available for general usage while also raising awareness about potential issues like biased data generation and misinformation.

The US Air Force and DARPA have showcased AI software's ability to fly a modified F-16 fighter jet, achieving a milestone in machine learning and autonomous combat aviation by dogfighting against human pilots. The breakthrough, considered a transformative moment for combat aviation, may impact both military and commercial aviation.

Tiger is an open-source, community-driven project that serves as an integrated tool ecosystem for LLM Agent Revolution. It provides a platform, modeled after Neuralink, enabling AI agents to interact with computer interfaces through function calls. Tiger supports a plethora of functionalities, including code execution, search, system info, knowledge management, and communication, mainly through Telegram integration. It is MIT licensed, aiming to build a robust community around AI tool support.

The paper titled 'Formal Mechanised Semantics of CHERI C: Capabilities, Undefined Behaviour, and Provenance' presents a comprehensive definition of CHERI C semantics and discusses key design questions related to capabilities, provenance, and undefined behaviour. This work is foundational for CHERI C, aiding those porting code, compiler implementers, and future verification.

Vapi is a platform designed to enable developers to create voice AI applications that are as easy to integrate as any other API. It is aimed at simulating natural, human-like conversations with optimizations for low latency and real-time interactions. Vapi provides an orchestration layer over various technologies, including Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech, to make voice AIs talk like a person.

Gentoo Linux project has unanimously decided to ban AI-generated contributions due to concerns over copyrights, quality, and ethics. Górny's proposal prohibits use of AI tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot for creating content within the Gentoo project.

Google announces a significant internal reorganization, merging its Android and hardware teams into a new 'Platforms and Devices' team. Led by Rick Osterloh, the team aims to accelerate AI integration across Google's product line, including Pixel devices, Android, Chrome and more. The shift, emphasizing the importance of AI, is anticipated to rapidly advance Google's offerings through closer collaboration between hardware and software initiatives.

Tabnine is an AI-powered coding assistant that offers code completion and boosts productivity for developers. With features like personalization, security, and support for popular IDEs, it is trusted by millions worldwide. It promises to keep your code private and respects coding standards while delivering enterprise-grade security.

Elisa Shupe won a pivotal copyright case regarding her book written with the help of AI, setting a legal precedent. The US Copyright Office granted her a unique type of copyright for the 'selection, coordination, and arrangement' of AI-generated text, rather than for the text's actual content.

Cascadeur is a standalone 3D animation software designed for both professionals and beginners, focusing on physics-based keyframe animation. It features AI-assisted tools for quick posing, AutoPhysics for natural motion, and is compatible with .FBX, .DAE, and .USD files for smooth workflow integration.

FacelessVideos.ai is a service that allows users to create viral, faceless videos for platforms such as YouTube and TikTok in seconds. The service offers an easy 3-step process: writing a video prompt, generating the video using AI, and publishing it. They provide the first 100 videos for free and have different pricing tiers starting at $19.99/month.

EU science advisers recommend establishing a 'CERN for AI' named EDIRAS to boost academic AI research. The proposal aims to provide extensive computational power, cloud infrastructure, quality data, talent, and training. However, there are concerns regarding its narrow focus, distributed nature, and lack of a definitive budget.

Logitech is offering a free AI upgrade to users of its mice and keyboards by integrating a new feature that allows quick access to ChatGPT. The new Logi AI Prompt Builder software window helps users utilize the chatbot without disrupting their workflow. Logitech has also launched the Signature AI Edition of the M750 mouse, designed for this feature, available for $49.99 in the US and UK.

OpenAI's latest AI model has demonstrated capabilities nearly on par with human doctors when it comes to diagnosing eye conditions, raising potential for future applications in the healthcare industry. This article delves into the advancements and possible impacts of AI in medical diagnostics.

AlphaCorp AI provides access to a variety of AI models through a group chat platform, offering features like multiple responses from different AIs and AI-to-AI chat simulations. The service is subscription-based, with automatic model updates, and a range of pricing plans that cater to casual or intensive users.

Wayfair reportedly fired numerous employees after having them train an AI that would replace their jobs. Employees were led into a 'mandatory meeting' which turned out to be their dismissal. Wayfair is said to be offshoring management of the AI to regions with cheaper labor, and employees were cautioned against social media posts regarding the layoffs.

Optimate is your complete sales operations system that encompasses all aspects of sales from payments collection, invoicing, KPI tracking, to commission payouts. It aims to automate processes, optimize business performance, and scale ventures efficiently.

ShiftX offers innovative process improvement solutions by converting text and images into comprehensive workflows with the aid of AI. Empower teams to enhance efficiency by generating and editing intuitive process flows while collaborating in real-time.

Math Solver GPT by scriptbyai.com is an instant math solution service that can solve math expressions from an uploaded image, exclusive for ChatGPT Plus members.

Tabula is an AI-powered data analytics tool offering easy-to-use visual analytics without code, allowing access, unification, standardization, and analysis of data. It integrates with existing data stacks and supports local files and cloud warehouses.

Brave Search offers a privacy-focused search engine with an independent index, AI-driven answers, and community-driven ranking options, without bias, censorship, or tracking. It is part of the Brave ecosystem, complementing the Brave browser's mission for a user-first online experience.

ExplainIt is an AI-Powered chatbot creation tool designed to improve customer experience by generating instant, interactive chats for your documentation. It offers easy integration, crawler feature, customization, and a user-friendly interface.

FitMachine is an AI-powered fitness app offering personalized and character-driven workouts anytime and anywhere. It provides unique sessions tailored to preferences and available time, offering a dynamic fitness experience.

NVIDIA's AI models have set new records in speech recognition and translation for speed and accuracy. The NVIDIA Parakeet is a family of models providing robust English speech transcription, while the NVIDIA Canary model is a multilingual multitask model excelling in transcription and translation. In addition, NVIDIA's P-Flow model won the LIMMITS '24 challenge by synthesizing a speaker's voice into seven languages using a short audio clip.

A discussion about the 'closed core' software model, where the main system is proprietary and additional modules are open-source, is taking place on Hacker News. Users are debating the benefits and pitfalls of this approach, with examples from various companies and opinions on its impact on community engagement and adoption.

Cyc, an AI project since 1984, aims to codify human-like common-sense knowledge. After 40 years, the project developed a vast knowledge base of 1.5 million concepts, yet it's overshadowed by the rise of machine learning. Despite its significance, Cyc is seen as an anachronism in an era of neural networks.

The Financial Times published an article discussing the burgeoning demand for artificial intelligence and the potential risk this poses to the global electricity supply. As AI technology becomes increasingly ingrained in various sectors, energy consumption is spiraling, prompting concerns over the sustainability of this trajectory and the need for efficient and green energy solutions.

The website showcases a recording from asciinema, a service for recording terminal sessions and sharing them on the web. The recording, titled 'Effort Engine demo' by user kolinko, provides a preview of the Effort algorithm. It has accumulated over 3700 views. Additional features include the ability to share, embed, and download the recording in various formats.

The article discusses the effectiveness of vector embeddings for search and recommendations in app development, highlighting tools like Pgvector, tips for implementation, and the benefits of vector embeddings in simplifying code.

Growing artificial intelligence (AI) technology is causing a significant increase in global electricity demand due to power-intensive data centers, creating a new bottleneck. Industry leaders like Elon Musk and Andy Jassy have expressed concerns over the energy constraints to AI's growth. Investments in AI infrastructure by tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet are massive, yet capacity issues in places like northern Virginia are prompting a global search for data center locations.

Stability AI announces the availability of Stable Diffusion 3 and its Turbo version on the Stability AI Developer Platform API, expanding the text-to-image AI model's capabilities, and partnering with Fireworks AI for reliable API performance. An open-source release for self-hosting is anticipated.

Mistral AI's Mixtral 8x22B, a sparse Mixture-of-Experts model, surpasses industry benchmarks with 39B active parameters for advanced performance and efficiency. It's licensed under Apache 2.0 for unrestricted use, excelling in multilingual, mathematical, and coding tasks.

SpeedLegal streamlines contract review using AI technology, enabling users to analyze risks, understand legal terms, and get personalized suggestions. It offers a contract manager, automatic summaries and reminders, catering to various industries and contracts in multiple languages.

Karl Guttag criticizes Humane AI's pico laser projection technology as a hyped scam. Discussing its issues, he questions the utility over smartphones, citing major industry figures fooled into a $230M investment.

Ollama v0.1.32 introduces new models including WizardLM 2, Snowflake Arctic Embed, Command R+, DBRX, and Mixtral 8x22B. The update enhances VRAM utilization and splits larger models between GPU and CPU on macOS for improved performance. Various fixes and new contributors are noted.