Two tech geeks.

  • Amazon One Palm Payment rolling out to more Whole Foods Market stores

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    By the end of this year, all 500+ Whole Foods Market locations in the U.S. will offer Amazon One for payment and Prime membership benefits. This means Whole Foods Market customers who choose to use Amazon One will no longer need their wallet or even a phone to pay—they can simply hover their palm over an Amazon One device. For Prime members who link their Amazon One profile with their Amazon account, savings will automatically be applied.

    Source – Amazon
  • Christopher Nolan compares the AI race to the Manhattan Project

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    Nolan compared the Manhattan Project, the World War II-era effort to develop the world’s first nuclear weapons, to the current race to develop intelligent algorithms and artificial intelligence. Oppenheimer is “coming at a time when there are a lot of new technologies that people start to worry about the unintended consequences,” Nolan said.

    Source – Vanity Fair

  • Meta thinks its CM3leon AI generation model is the best

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    Today, we’re showcasing CM3leon (pronounced like “chameleon”), a single foundation model that does both text-to-image and image-to-text generation.

    CM3leon is the first multimodal model trained with a recipe adapted from text-only language models, including a large-scale retrieval-augmented pre-training stage and a second multitask supervised fine-tuning (SFT) stage.

    Source – Meta

    Techcrunch added some further insights into this here. It’ll be interesting to see how Meta continues to compete in the AI space.

  • OpenAI makes GPT-4 available for everyone

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    Starting today, all paying API customers have access to GPT-4. In March, we introduced the ChatGPT API, and earlier this month we released our first updates to the chat-based models. We envision a future where chat-based models can support any use case.

    Source – OpenAI

    For those who have been waiting for it, OpenAI has finally made GPT-4 available to all paying API customers. If you’ve been looking to harness the power of GPT-4 into your business, this is welcome news.

  • Interview with Google DeepMind CEO

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    TheVerge has posted a good interview with the CEO of Google DeepMind – Demis Hassabis. The interview is also available on the podcast.

    He also addresses the issue of the recently leaked memo about Google lacking a competitive moat in the AI space.

  • China Moots National Standard for Large Language Models to Regulate AI and Drive Industry Transformation

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    China has set up a new government body that will be responsible for implementing a national standard for large language models (LLMs) – representing the technology used to train artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT – as Beijing seeks to minimise potential disruption from this field, while harnessing its power to help transform traditional industries.

    The China Electronic Standardisation Institute, which is under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), is currently in the process of enacting a local standard for LLMs to support the growing number of fresh AI development initiatives now under way across the mainland, the agency announced on Friday at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai.

    Still, internet regulator the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has yet to issue a licence for any generative AI product in the country, even as Big Tech firms like Baidu, Alibaba and iFlytek have rolled out ChatGPT-like services on a trial basis.

    Source – SCMP

    It’s still the wild west (or wild east?) out there, but it’s only a matter of time before regulation is finalised and implemented in all countries.

  • ChatGPT loses its Browse with Bing feature

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    As of July 3, 2023, we’ve disabled the Browse with Bing beta feature out of an abundance of caution while we fix this in order to do right by content owners. We are working to bring the beta back as quickly as possible, and appreciate your understanding!

    Source: OpenAI

    Seems like OpenAI has disabled the beta feature that was available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers which allowed ChatGPT to browse the web via URLs given to it. This could sometimes allow it bypass paywalls and privacy settings. It’s definitely still a continuous process of improvement and refinement.

  • Meta’s Twitter clone to launch on July 6th

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    While Twitter continues to be a set on fire, Meta is launching it’s Twitter competitor in a few days.

    Let’s see how this goes.

  • TweetDeck will become a Twitter Blue exclusive

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    “We have just launched a new, improved version of TweetDeck,” the official Twitter Support account announced on Monday. “In 30 days, users must be Verified to access TweetDeck.” 

    Source: Twitter

    Unsurprising, but trying to build an audience or business that depends on Twitter is really frustrating at the moment.

  • a16z: Why AI will save the world

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    Historically, every new technology that matters, from electric lighting to automobiles to radio to the Internet, has sparked a moral panic – a social contagion that convinces people the new technology is going to destroy the world, or society, or both. The fine folks at Pessimists Archive have documented these technology-driven moral panics over the decades; their history makes the pattern vividly clear. It turns out this present panic is not even the first for AI.

    Now, it is certainly the case that many new technologies have led to bad outcomes – often the same technologies that have been otherwise enormously beneficial to our welfare. So it’s not that the mere existence of a moral panic means there is nothing to be concerned about.

    But a moral panic is by its very nature irrational – it takes what may be a legitimate concern and inflates it into a level of hysteria that ironically makes it harder to confront actually serious concerns.

    Source: a16z

    Marc Andreessen with a great take on the concerns of AI. Great read.