Our 189th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov) and Jeremie Harris).
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] )and/or [email protected])
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/).
In this episode:
- OpenAI's acquisition of chat.com and internal shifts, including hardware lead hire and hardware model leaks, signal significant strategy pivots and challenges with model scaling and security.
- Saudi Arabia plans a $100 billion AI initiative aiming to rival UAE's tech hub, highlighting the region's escalating AI investments.
- U.S. penalties on GlobalFoundries for violating sanctions against SMIC underline ongoing challenges in enforcing AI-chip export controls.
- Anthropic collaborates with Palantir and AWS to integrate CLAWD into defense environments, marking a significant policy shift for the company.
Sponsors:
The Generator -) An interdisciplinary AI lab empowering innovators from all fields to bring visionary ideas to life by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence.
The AI safety book “)Uncontrollable") which is not a doomer book, but instead lays out the reasonable case for AI safety and what we can do about it. Max TEGMARK said that “Uncontrollable” is a captivating, balanced, and remarkably up-to-date book on the most important issue of our time" - find it on Amazon today!)
If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form).
Timestamps + Links:
(00:00:00) Intro / Banter
(00:01:28) News Preview
(00:02:10) Response to listener comments
(00:05:02) Sponsor Break
Tools & Apps
(00:07:31) OpenAI Introduces ‘Predicted Outputs’ Feature: Speeding Up GPT-4o by ~5x for Tasks like Editing Docs or Refactoring Code)
(00:11:55) Anthropic’s Haiku 3.5 surprises experts with an “intelligence” price increase)
(00:17:10) Introducing FLUX1.1 [pro] Ultra and Raw Modes)
(00:19:11) X is testing a free version of Grok AI chatbot in select regions)
Applications & Business
(00:21:39) OpenAI acquired Chat.com)
(00:23:40) Saudis Plan $100 Billion AI Powerhouse to Rival UAE Tech Hub)
(00:28:28) Meta’s former hardware lead for Orion is joining OpenAI)
(00:31:38) OpenAI Accidentally Leaked Its Upcoming o1 Model to Anyone With a Certain Web Address)
(00:35:50) Nvidia Rides AI Wave to Pass Apple as World’s Largest Company)
Projects & Open Source
(00:37:53) ‘Unrestricted’ AI group Nous Research launches first chatbot — with guardrails)
(00:41:48) FrontierMath: The Benchmark that Highlights AI’s Limits in Mathematics)
(00:46:29) Hunyuan-Large: An Open-Source MoE Model with 52 Billion Activated Parameters by Tencent)
Research & Advancements
(00:49:55) Applying “Golden Gate Claude” mechanistic interpretability techniques to protein language models.)
(00:58:3) Relaxed Recursive Transformers: Effective Parameter Sharing with Layer-wise LoRA)
(01:05:55) From Naptime to Big Sleep: Using Large Language Models To Catch Vulnerabilities In Real-World Code)
(01:10:22) OpenAI reportedly developing new strategies to deal with AI improvement slowdown)
Policy & Safety
(01:19:52) What Donald Trump’s Win Means For AI)
(01:28:44) Fab Whack-A-Mole: Chinese Companies are Evading U.S. Sanctions)
(01:33:57) US fines GlobalFoundries for shipping chips to sanctioned Chinese firm)
(01:36:55) Anthropic teams up with Palantir and AWS to sell its AI to defense customers)
(01:39:23) Outro
