Byte-Sized AI News

From the field that moves faster than humanly possible, here is some of the latest AI news.

Google’s Bard AI Boosts Functionality with Multilingual Support, Google Lens Integration, and More

  Google has significantly updated its Bard AI, expanding its reach by adding support for over 40 languages and introducing availability in all 27 countries of the European Union and Brazil. This update incorporates Google Lens, enabling users to upload images in conversations for added creativity and context. It introduces text-to-speech functionality for aural interaction, improved thread management for organized conversations, and an easier sharing mechanism for collaborative creativity. Users can also modify Bard's responses for a tailored experience, and developers benefit from extended Python code export capabilities to platforms such Replit. These updates aim to make Bard more interactive, versatile, and globally accessible.

Read more on Google Bard’s update page.

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Elon Musk Unveils New Company, xAI, with High-Profile Team and Ambitious Objectives

  Not one to watch the AI explosion happening from outside, Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla CEO, has rushed in with the formation of a new AI company, xAI, with an ambitious goal to “understand reality” and explore the true nature of the universe.
 
The company’s website, launched recently, provides an overview of its mission and team. The team comprises luminaries who have formerly worked with major AI players such as ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, and Google DeepMind. The company, although separate from Musk’s overarching X Corp, plans to closely collaborate with it, Tesla, and other companies. This announcement comes as Musk’s latest foray into the AI arena since his co-founding of OpenAI in 2015 and subsequent departure in 2018 due to conflicts of interest with Tesla.

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Japanese Education Ministry Unveils Guidelines for Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Schools Amid Rising Concerns

From Japan Times comes news that Japan’s Education Ministry, under Minister Keiko Nagaoka, has issued new guidelines emphasizing the necessity for students to understand AI, its benefits, drawbacks, and associated risks, such as data leaks and copyright infringements. The guidelines also discourage misrepresentation of AI-generated works as personal creations. Advocating for AI incorporation in English learning and group discussions, the guidelines aim to enhance the depth and diversity of discourse. Minister Nagaoka committed to boosting teachers’ understanding of AI and creating a safe and conducive environment for its educational usage.

The guidelines, to be distributed to educational boards and institutions, also underline the importance of AI literacy among teachers, encouraging the use of AI to streamline administrative tasks and boost teaching efficiency. Despite apprehensions surrounding personal data misuse, the ministry plans to request that AI companies enhance their products for educational use, such as by enhancing content filtering and personal data protection measures.

These guidelines, which are to be updated flexibly based on feedback and developments in technology, arrive amidst concerns of parents regarding the use of AI.

For more, read the full Japan Times article.

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Recursion Secures $50 Million Investment from NVIDIA to Propel AI-Driven Drug Discovery

  Clinical-stage techbio company Recursion has announced a $50 million investment from NVIDIA, carried out as a private investment in public equity (PIPE). The collaboration aims to accelerate the development of Recursion’s AI foundation models for biology and chemistry. The models will be optimized and distributed to biotech companies through NVIDIA’s cloud services. The partnership will leverage Recursion’s extensive proprietary biological and chemical dataset and NVIDIA’s advanced computing capabilities to create unparalleled models in biology and chemistry.

The models will be trained on the NVIDIA DGX™ Cloud and possibly commercially licensed/released on BioNeMo, NVIDIA’s cloud service for generative AI in drug discovery.

NVIDIA’s CEO, Jensen Huang, sees generative AI as a revolutionary tool in the discovery of new medicines and treatments. Recursion, through its recent acquisition of drug designer Valence Discovery, aims to democratize access to large-scale models, thereby maximizing their impact in drug discovery.

Read Recursion’s press release here.

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Huawei Cloud’s Pangu Weather Model Showcased in Nature

  Huawei Cloud’s groundbreaking Pangu Weather AI model has been featured in a paper published by science journal Nature. This marks the first time that a paper solely authored by employees of a Chinese tech firm has been published in the journal. Pangu Weather demonstrates a significant leap in prediction speed and accuracy over traditional numerical weather forecasting methods, achieving a 10,000× improvement in prediction speed, bringing global weather prediction time down to mere seconds. The model is capable of accurately predicting a variety of meteorological parameters, including humidity, wind speed, temperature, and sea level pressure. Notably, it predicted the trajectory of Typhoon Mawar, the year’s most potent tropical cyclone (so far), five days before it shifted course in the eastern waters of the islands of Taiwan. The research’s quality and significance have been lauded by academic reviewers from Nature, who believe this work could alter the future of forecasting models.

See the paper at Nature here.

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Anthropic Unveils Claude 2: A More Advanced AI with Enhanced Capabilities

  Anthropic has announced the launch of Claude 2, an upgraded AI model demonstrating improved performance, increased input and output lengths, better reasoning abilities, and advanced safety measures. Available via an API and the new beta website, claude.ai, Claude 2 can handle larger tasks, from processing hundreds of pages of technical documentation to generating extended documents, and shows improvements in coding and mathematical skills. The model, while being more resistant to harmful outputs, is accessible for users in the US and UK, with plans for global availability in the future.

Check out the announcement here.

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Sapphire Ventures plans to invest over $1B in enterprise AI startups

  Sapphire Ventures has announced plans to invest over $1 billion in AI enterprise startups, using funds from its existing pool of $10 billion under management. The investment plan, aimed at fueling the growing adoption of AI technologies by companies worldwide, will predominantly be channeled towards direct investments in AI startups. Some funds will also be allocated to early-stage AI-focused venture funds via its limited partner fund. The move underscores Sapphire Ventures’ commitment to supporting the growth of AI companies and facilitating the construction of necessary infrastructure for their success.

The announcement was made at the Reuters MOMENTUM conference. Read the full Reuters story here.