A week in Generative AI: Truth, Gemini & Chrome
News for the week ending 28th January 2024
No š¤ robots this week, theyāre taking a break, but lots of interesting news to cover and share.
AI is destabilizing āthe concept of truth itselfā in 2024 election
This is THE challenge of 2024 for genAI, but more broadly society and especially politics. Iām not 100% convinced there are any good answers, and many AI researchers think fakes will become undetectable. āIf everything could be fake, and if everyoneās claiming everything is fake or manipulated in some way, thereās really no sense of ground truth.ā
Googleās new Gemini-powered conversational tool helps advertisers quickly build Search campaigns
Good to see this released in beta in the US and UK as itās going to lead to a huge shift in how search campaigns are set up and created. This is the first big genAI feature to hit the media side of the advertising industry and Iām sure it will have a big impact.
OpenAI released new models and updates APIs
Nice little set up updates here from OpenAI and the cost reductions for the API are a big win for developers. Weāre going to see the costs for using the bleeding edge models of 2023 drop rapidly. Longer term, as the models become more sophisticated this will lead to the ācost of intelligenceā trending to zero.
Chrome is getting 3 new generative AI features
These are pretty basic and gimmicky for now, but another small step to us seeing genAI everywhere in all software we use throughout 2024. Iām more interested in the next generation and seeing what native genAI software looks like though. First glimpses can be seen in the beautifully designed rabbit r1.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is fundraising for a network of AI chips factories
This is a big deal - the vast majority of specialised AI chips are designed by Nvidia and manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan. For such a cornerstone technology this is far from sustainable and we need to quickly find ways to both scale and diversify if weāre to continue the current pace of development.
Long Reads
Bloomberg - AI Companies Are Obsessed with AGI. No One Can Agree What Exactly It Is
Quanta Magazine - New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand Text
Traction Design - AI Answer Engines Are Eating The Search Engine World
āThe future is already here, itās just not evenly distributed.ā
William Gibson