The AI Generated Garbage Apocalypse
Issue 036 · January 22, 2024
Happy Monday and welcome to another edition of Artificial Insights – brought to you mostly by the talking heads of Davos.
This week’s edition offers the usual array of high-level insight of where the large players in AI talk about moving. To me, the AI industry appears fairly transparent and, dare I say, well intentioned. Having followed most leaders’ public disclosures and interviews in the past few years, it seems to me their actual business moves rarely deviate from stated goals. I am sure there is misdirection and and PR spin, as in all highly competitive industries, but have noticed that simply listening to how these individuals describe their work is incredibly instructive when it comes to ascertaining likely future directions.
On a different note: how do you learn best practices for ChatGPT?
I am considering creating a shared Team account for a small number of high-impact explorers in this space. I am using ChatGPT at least a dozen times every day and am using the experience primarily as a means of discovering how limited my knowledge of everything I thought was unimportant actually is. In other words, no question is too simple for ChatGPT, and the level of depth you can actually achieve if you know which questions to ask has been absolutely remarkable for me. I am thinking of creating a paid Team account with a handful of readers willing to pay a premium for a shared workspace plus a secure chat environment. Message me if this is something you are interested in exploring and when you would like to get started?
Thanks to everyone who sends me links between issues. I sometimes manage to keep track and credit you, but often lapse. Know that every issue is supported by readers like you.
MZ
Check out these videos by ALOHA (A Low-cost Open-source Hardware System for Bimanual Teleoperation) from Stanford University. Researchers are exploring different approaches for having mobile robots perform complex tasks in different environments – both by full automation as well as teleoperated with careful guidance from human operators. The future of AGI is probably 90% robotics and 10% disembodied intelligence (like this guy).
“I was the first AI minister in history”
Insightful interview with Omar AlOlama, the Minister of Artificial Intelligence of the UAE. I’ve had the privilege of working and hanging out with Omar a couple of times in Dubai through our work together with the World Government Summit and have to say I was positively shocked when they announced the ministry back in 2017. In hindsight, it is nothing short of remarkable how prescient the UAE were and how every other nation is now having to catch up.
Suppose an AI is faced with two critically ill patients, but resources only permit one to be treated. Who should the AI prioritize? Gone are the days of labyrinthine thousand-page policy documents that set an unattainable standard of compliance.
Zuck goes all in on AGI
Meta’s very own MZ announces their long term AI vision which essentially resolves into open-source general intelligence. I look forward to the rebrand!
We're bringing our two major AI research efforts (FAIR and GenAI) closer together to support this. We're currently training our next-gen model Llama 3, and we're building massive compute infrastructure to support our future roadmap.
SPECIAL EDITION FROM THE COLD WHITE NORTH:
The Expanding Universe of Generative Models
Amazing panel with Yann LeCun, Nicholas Thompson, Kai-Fu Lee, Daphne Koller, Andrew Ng and Aidan Gomez about generative models and the frontiers of research. Worth every second. (Thanks Iolanda!)
Interview with Sam Altman
Bloomberg House at Davos offered a pretty inquisitive conversation with Sama:
Panel with every other AI lead
From the archives
As important as looking at the cutting edge of technology, is looking back at how we used to characterize and define AI in the recent past, as this helps us better determine the vector of change. Here is an old video from LEMMiNO in 2016 which still resonates with me.
Until next week!
- Forwarding this issue to colleagues and friends.
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