Artificial Intelligence

In his latest book, Microsoft software developer turned literature professor Dennis Yi Tenen takes us all the way back to 17th-century apps for a deep dive into computer science and literature’s intertwined history — and, as Tenen says, why it’s important our understanding of AI “become more grounded in the history of the humanities.”

A recent study found that if a coding problem put before ChatGPT (using GPT-3.5) existed on coding practice site LeetCode before its 2021 training data cutoff, it did a very good job generating functional solutions, writes IEEE Spectrum.

But when the problem was added after 2021, it sometimes didn’t even understand the questions and its success rate seemed to fall off a cliff, underscoring AI’s limitations without enough data.

A new WhatsApp beta version for Android lets you send a photo to Meta AI, then ask it questions about it or edit the image using prompts, according to WABetaInfo.

Meta has worked more image-generation features into the app lately, including a beta feature letting Meta AI create an avatar for users based on photos of them.

Two former execs of a German AI data center company, Northern Data, say they were fired for raising concerns the company was “misrepresenting the strength of its financial condition,” in a wrongful termination lawsuit. Northern Data, which is backed by Tether, has been looking into an IPO in the US.

Just saying “AI” is good for business but it’s even better if you make chips, especially for Samsung after suffering a major slump in 2023. Here’s Reuters with the year-on-year comparison:

The world’s largest memory chip, smartphone and TV maker estimated its operating profit rose to 10.4 trillion won ($7.54 billion) in the quarter ended June 30, from 670 billion won a year earlier.

Hey, remember the guy who’s responsible for funding WeWork’s delusional business plan? Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son is really into AI and he’s aiming to flood the area with money. His clearest targets are Nvidia chips and energy startups.

Though Kurzweil still can’t explain precisely how he’s going to “merge” with a machine, he’s out here telling The New York Times he expects it to happen before he dies.

For the realists out there, I recommend Seneca.

Tech giants are rewriting the rules on web scraping, blaming unnamed third parties for disregarding robots.txt, and seemingly claiming the right to reuse anything posted anywhere for AI.

Now, Cloudflare is telling customers on its CDN that it can find and block AI bots that try to get around the rules.

The upshot of this globally aggregated data is that we can immediately detect new scraping tools and their behavior without needing to manually fingerprint the bot, ensuring that customers stay protected from the newest waves of bot activity.

Meta’s AI research team has a new system to create or retexture 3D objects based on a text prompt. It combines text-to-3D and text-to-texture generation models to go beyond AI-generated emoji or still images,

Their paper (pdf) claims 3D Gen’s output is “3× to 60× faster” and preferred by professional artists in comparison to alternatives.

Google spit out a surprise Pixel 9 hardware event announcement last week. It’s set for August 13th, two months earlier than the October phone events it’s held in the last few years.

But why? AI reasons? Yeah, probably, as David Pierce and Nilay Patel discussed on The Vergecast.

Bloomberg reports that Rain AI, which has OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as one of its backers, has hired Apple chip exec Jean-Didier Allegrucci to oversee the development of new AI processors that are supposed to reduce power consumption with “in-memory compute.”

Rain AI:

[Allegrucci] has worked and led silicon teams across a broad range of applications, including CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, ISPs, SoCs, and many others....At Apple, he oversaw the development of more than 30 SoCs used for flagship products, including iPhones, Macs, iPads, Apple Watch, and many more.

Apple cited “regulatory uncertainties” and “interoperability requirements” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) as reasons for delaying its AI features on EU iPhones, but Margrethe Vestager suggested something more sinister is at play at a Forum Europa event on Thursday:

“I find that very interesting, that they say ‘we will now deploy AI where we’re not obliged to enable competition.’ I think that is the most stunning, open declaration that they know 100 percent that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.”

It joins other media companies like News Corp, Axel Springer, The Financial Times, Vox Media, The Atlantic, and The Associated Press in licensing content for training AI models like ChatGPT.

Financial details for the deal have not been disclosed. Time COO Mark Howard says:

“This partnership with OpenAI advances our mission to expand access to trusted information globally as we continue to embrace innovative new ways of bringing Time’s journalism to audiences globally.”