OpenAI wants to make a walking, talking humanoid robot smarter (9 minute read)
Humanoid robots could be working alongside human manufacturing workers in only a few short years. Figure, a prominent company in the humanoid robot space, recently raised $675 million and struck a new agreement with OpenAI to develop next-generation AI models for its robots. The funding, which was reportedly over $150 million more than the amount Figure had initially sought, will help scale up the company's AI training, robotic manufacturing, and add on new engineers, speeding up the company's timeline for making its product available commercially. OpenAI's technology will help improve Figure's robots' semantic understanding, making them more useful in work scenarios.
High-speed humanoid feels like a step change in robotics (6 minute read)
Sanctuary AI's Phoenix humanoid robot has robot hands that work totally autonomously at near-human speeds. The robot's hands are hydraulically actuated - while hydraulics technology is expensive to develop, it enables the robotic hands to gain a combination of precision, speed, and strength. Sanctuary AI trained Phoenix by using teleoperation to show it how to do things and then letting it figure out more in simulations. A video showing Phoenix manipulating objects is available in the article.
Elon Musk sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over contract breach (3 minute read)
Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, among others, claiming that they abandoned the company's founding mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Musk, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, stepped down from the firm's board in 2018. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI's focus on maximizing profits for Microsoft breaks its agreement to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity. Its aim is to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity.
A Few Social Media Influencers Are Shaping AI (4 minute read)
An analysis of more than 8,000 AI and ML papers found that papers shared by two specific influencers had a median citation count two to three times higher than those from a control group. Academic citations affect decisions like research funding and tenure at academic institutions. The correlation between influencer tweets and citation count points to a shift in how the community finds and reads papers. The overwhelming volume of papers published daily makes it impractical for individuals to sift through feeds, so the community is relying on curators to highlight noteworthy papers.
What we learned in 6 months of working on a CodeGen dev tool GPT Pilot (15 minute read)
GPT Pilot is an AI developer that creates plans for how apps and features should be built before coding. It can do most of its work autonomously, asking for clarification or help when required. The project aimed to create a framework of thinking that gets AI to continuously work by revising its previous actions using a feedback loop that determines what it should do next in order to finish the end goal. This article contains lessons learned by its creators during development.
The AI wars heat up with Claude 3, claimed to have “near-human” abilities (4 minute read)
Anthropic's Claude 3 apparently sets new industry benchmarks across a range of cognitive tasks. The company claims that it approaches 'near-human' capability in some cases. Claude 3 has three models: Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet (which powers the Claude.ai chatbot), and Claude 3 Opus (available through a subscription service). All three models feature a 200,000-token context window and are available through an API. Claude 3 beats GPT-4 on a range of widely used benchmarks.
OpenAI and Elon Musk (10 minute read)
OpenAI has released a statement detailing its mission and facts about the company's relationship with Elon Musk. The company plans to dismiss all of the claims from Musk's recent lawsuit. OpenAI partnered with Microsoft as it realized that it needed a lot more capital to succeed at its mission of achieving Artificial General Intelligence. It continues to advance its mission by building widely-available beneficial tools. OpenAI's statement includes an email exchange between Musk and OpenAI regarding funding.
Dell exec reveals Nvidia has a 1,000-watt GPU in the works (3 minute read)
Nvidia's B200 AI accelerator will consume 1,000 watts without requiring liquid cooling. The chip isn't expected to launch until late 2024. Nvidia plans to launch its H200 GPUs in the next few months. The company claims the H200 can double the performance of large language models thanks to its HBM3e memory stacks, which provide 4.8TB/second of bandwidth.
Bitcoin rockets to an all-time high above $69,000, surpassing 2021 record (5 minute read)
Bitcoin has reached a new all-time high for the first time in more than two years. It surpassed $69,000 before retreating - the previous record was $68,982.20 on November 10, 2021. The current rally is fueled by excitement over bitcoin ETFs and the upcoming halving event. While investors are cautious about a possible correction, there are still longer-term catalysts supporting the positive price action.
Apple has terminated Epic Games' developer account, a move Epic is calling a serious violation of the EU's Digital Markets Act. Epic claims that Apple is retaliating against it for speaking out. Apple says that Epic's past actions suggest that it doesn't intend to follow the rules, threatening the integrity of the iOS platform and the security and privacy of its users. It has the contractual right to terminate its agreement with Epic at any time.
Bill that could ban TikTok in the U.S. gains momentum in Congress (5 minute read)
A new bi-partisan legislation may force ByteDance to divest TikTok or risk having it banned in US app stores. The bill, dubbed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, creates a process for identifying certain social media applications under the control of foreign adversaries as national security threats. Apps deemed a risk would be banned from online app stores and web hosting services unless they sever ties with entities under the control of foreign adversaries within 180 days of the designation. There are concerns that TikTok could be used by the Chinese government to access personal data from its users and show them videos that could influence their views on particular issues.
Bill that could ban TikTok in the U.S. gains momentum in Congress (5 minute read)
A new bi-partisan legislation may force ByteDance to divest TikTok or risk having it banned in US app stores. The bill, dubbed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, creates a process for identifying certain social media applications under the control of foreign adversaries as national security threats. Apps deemed a risk would be banned from online app stores and web hosting services unless they sever ties with entities under the control of foreign adversaries within 180 days of the designation. There are concerns that TikTok could be used by the Chinese government to access personal data from its users and show them videos that could influence their views on particular issues.
Open-sourcing our progress on Tailwind CSS v4.0 (11 minute read)
The first public alpha of Tailwind CSS is now available, with a stable release planned for later this year. This blog details some of the updates in the release, which include a new engine built for speed, composable variants, zero-configuration content detection, and more. v4 removes deprecated utilities and makes a handful of other low-level implementation changes.
A Universal Antivenom For Snake Bites Is Closer Than Ever to Reality (5 minute read)
A lab-made humanized antibody has been shown to neutralize key venom neurotoxins from a range of snakes from diverse regions.