The Best AI Week Ever
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OpenAI Spring Update and Google I/O – two mega events, one on the back of another – stole the show this week. Undeniably, there were major developments and announcements that took the whole world by surprise.?
At the same time, both these events turned into an AI war of sorts, with AI company leaders bickering about presentation aesthetics and subtly marketing their products to fit the prevailing narrative.
“I try not to think about competitors too much, but I cannot stop thinking about the aesthetic difference between OpenAI and Google,” said OpenAI chief Sam Altman.??
On the other hand, Google was seen subtly promoting its products, mocking the OpenAI Spring Update, and saying out loud that its products are all about ‘Making AI helpful for Everyone’ and not for him or her.?
Quantity vs Quality?
While the AI advancements unleashed at both these events were impeccable, they all boiled down to two aspects: quantity and quality. The latter resonated well with OpenAI Spring Update.?
Below is a glimpse of everything that was announced at Google I/O and OpenAI Spring Update.?
Except for Google Search—which OpenAI kept on hold (for now)—each product announcement from Google seemed to present an alternative to OpenAI's offerings. This included their latest text-to-video model, Veo (Sora), Gemini 1.5 Flash (GPT-4o), and AI Teammates (GPT-4o desktop app), among others.
However, out of everything announced at Google I/O, Project Astra stood out. Google’s first-of-its-kind initiative to develop universal AI agents capable of perceiving, reasoning, and conversing in real time was something else.
OpenAI’s GPT-4o agentic capabilities, in particular, also caught everyone’s attention, with some even calling it ‘the biggest part of the update’ and ‘a step closer to autonomous agents’.?
GPT-4o demos blew everyone’s mind: GPT-4o won hearts with its ‘omni’ capabilities across text, vision, and audio. OpenAI’s demos, which included a real-time translator, a coding assistant, an AI tutor, a friendly companion, a poet, and a singer, soon became the talk of the town.?
OpenAI also introduced major updates to ChatGPT, enhancing data analysis capabilities for Plus, Team, and Enterprise users, offering interactive data visualisation and customisable charts, alongside enabling seamless file integration directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.?
What’s next??
“We've had the idea of voice control computers for a long time. We had Siri, and we had things before that; they've never felt natural to me to use,” said Altman in a recent podcast, introducing the term 'model fluidity' to describe GPT-4o's capabilities, which lets users ask it to sing, talk faster, use different voices, and speak various languages.??
This feature will be available for users in the coming months. “The new voice mode hasn't shipped yet (though the text mode of GPT-4o has). What you can currently use in the app is the old version,” said Altman, adding that the new one is worth the wait!
On the other hand, Hume AI, which first introduced the empathetic voice interface (EVI), also offers similar features. Meanwhile, as shown on Project Astra, Google's voice feature currently sounds robotic and emotionless.?
Top Stories of the Week >>?
Bad Times Begin for Perplexity AI?
Perplexity AI co-founder Aravind Srinivas is busy with media engagements as the company onboards new gentlemen to the board. All this, while OpenAI experiments with a generative AI search experience, and Google announces several upgrades to Google Search.
“Startups have to be aggressive in terms of competing against incumbents who already have, like, a billion users (Google Search). OpenAI has 100 million users. We don’t have that today, so it’s on us to achieve that,” said Srinivas, in a recent interview with Bloomberg.?
Will Perplexity be able to turn its fortune around? Read the full story here.
Indian Companies are Good at Copying Ideas Generated Elsewhere
Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, who has been quite vocal about the need for the youth of the country to work 70-hours a week, recently said that Indians are good at applying ideas generated elsewhere for the betterment of the nation. He added that it would take the country some time to invent new things. Check out the full story here.
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Little did the world know that Prafulla Dhariwal, an Indian who was a child prodigy, was behind GPT-4o, until Altman posted about it on X.
A wonder child, Dhariwal hails from Pune and has won many tech competitions in his early years. His parents recognised his natural talent at a very young age. “When he was only one-and-a-half years old, we bought a computer,” his mother recalled in an old interview.
What’s Stopping India’s Semiconductor Mission
Setting up a single semiconductor manufacturing foundry requires massive investments, usually running up to $3 to $4 billion. To compare it with current investments, Micron is pumping in $825 million to set up its packaging facility.
“Given our infrastructure and the lack of ecosystem for semiconductor supplies, companies hesitate to venture into this field in India. A semiconductor foundry also requires many auxiliary industries such as semiconductor grade gases and chemical supplies, which are not present in India,” said BITS Pilani Campuses group vice-chancellor Professor V Ramgopal Rao, in an interview with AIM.
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Rakuten Product Conference 2024?
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