Did OpenAI just accidentally leak the next big ChatGPT upgrade? (2 minute read)
OpenAI appears to have accidentally published a blog post that was indexed by Bing and DuckDuckGo before it was quickly taken down. The post was an announcement for GPT-4.5 Turbo, a new model that surpasses GPT-4 Turbo in speed, accuracy, and scalability. The cached description mentions a knowledge cutoff date of June 2024 and a 256k context window. OpenAI has not commented on the leak.
Developers are on edge (4 minute read)
Layoffs are still dragging on and industry veterans are finding it hard to get a callback from recruiters. However, wage gains secured during the good days are still massive, despite what inflation has eroded over the last few years. Developers are still looking mighty privileged compared to premium programmers from a decade ago. AI will have a huge impact on the industry - no profession has ever successfully resisted automation or redundancy in the face of technological advancement over the long term.
Falsehoods programmers believe about time zones (10 minute read)
Building a time zone conversion layer on top of a datetime library sounds like an easy task, but it isn't. This article lists 21 misconceptions about time zones the author had before attempting to write a time zone conversion app as well as extra misconceptions from readers. These misconceptions include thinking that there are more countries in the world than time zones, that every time zone has exactly one agreed-upon name, or that time zones are always offset from UTC by an integer number of hours.
The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps (11 minute read)
AI-native products and companies are growing faster and engaging users more deeply than ever before. Over the coming decade, AI will likely underpin category-defining companies. This article examines data on the most popular generative AI products to uncover patterns on how consumers are using the technology. It looks at the rate of progress in the industry, emerging categories, hot niches, the mobile vs web split, and AI as a global pursuit.
Snapchat will allow users to save DMs (2 minute read)
Snapchat is experimenting with an 'Infinite Retention Mode' that will allow users to save their direct messages.
Open Release of Grok-1 (1 minute read)
xAI has released the weights and architecture for Grok-1. Grok-1 is a Mixture-of-Experts model with 314 billion parameters. The released model is a raw base model checkpoint from the Grok-1 pretraining phase, which means that it is not fine-tuned for any specific application. It was trained from scratch by xAI using a custom training stack.
Tech layoffs are at their highest since the 2001 dot-com crash and many job hunters are being forced to settle for pay cuts.
Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI (20 minute read)
It's possible that many of the jobs that humans do today will continue to be done by humans indefinitely, no matter how much better AIs are at those jobs, due to comparative advantage.
California Forever, a group comprised of VC giant Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Laurene Powell Jobs, and other tech giants, purchased over 60,000 acres of land about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco with the hope of creating a whole new city in the middle of the county.
Meta just showed off Threads’ fediverse integration for the very first time (4 minute read)
Meta showed off a brief demo of how users will eventually be able to connect their accounts to the fediverse during the FediForum conference on Tuesday. The company's integration will let users share their posts across different platforms through Threads. It currently allows users to post to other services that interoperate through ActivityPub, but they can't view replies and can only see the likes they get, a fact Meta is working hard to change. A video showing how the integration currently works is available in the article.
‘A landmark moment’: scientists use AI to design antibodies from scratch (3 minute read)
Researchers have used a generative AI tool called RFdiffusion to make completely new antibodies for the first time. The proof-of-principle work paves the way for the design of antibody drugs at the touch of a button. The technology is still a long way from reaching the clinic.
Is the “AI developer” a threat to jobs – or a marketing stunt? (12 minute read)
There have been a number of news stories about AI developers recently. While some developers are concerned that the technology may soon take over their jobs, these claims are likely just attempts at grabbing attention. AI may not remove the need for developers - it will likely just create the need for AI developers. The future of software development will likely still involve humans - the exaggerated claims made by startups today are just marketing.
Saudi Arabia Plans $40 Billion Push Into Artificial Intelligence (5 minute read)
The government of Saudi Arabia plans to invest around $40 billion into artificial intelligence. It is in talks to create a tech fund through a partnership with Andreessen Horowitz and other financiers. The fund would make Saudi Arabia the world's largest investor in artificial intelligence. It will back an array of tech startups tied to artificial intelligence, including chip makers, data centers, and AI companies.