Exploring SMIC and the Rise of Character.ai in the AI Landscape

Our 138th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news, with guest host Jon Krohn of the the SuperDataScience podcast!!

Note: this one is coming out a week late, but we'll be back on schedule going forward!

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/

Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekin.ai

Timestamps + Links:

• (00:00) Intro / Banter
• (04:30) Preview of news
• Tools & Apps
  • (05:40) DALLE-3
  • (12:47) YouAgent (Richard Socher thread)
• Applications & Business
  • (20:03) Google's Gemini AI surpasses Chat GPT-4 fivefold: Report
  • (25:16) Google begins external testing of its GPT-4 competitor "Gemini"
  • (26:30) From sanctions to silicon: China’s semiconductor breakthrough
  • (35:41) AI app Character.ai is catching up to ChatGPT in the U.S.
  • (41:19) SoftBank planning OpenAI investment: Financial Times
  • (44:30) OpenAI Hustles to Beat Google to Launch ‘Multimodal’ LLM
  • (46:40) The AI Detection Arms Race Is On
  • (51:30) Nvidia's dominance in AI chips deters funding for startups
  • (55:15) AI chip startup Enfabrica raises $125 mln, with backing from Nvidia
  • (56:41) Databricks raises over $500 mln at $43 bln valuation
• Projects & Open Source
  • (01:01:15) Meta Is Developing a New, More Powerful AI System as Technology Race Escalates
• Research & Advancements
  • (01:10:19) NExT-GPT: Any-to-Any Multimodal LLM
  • (01:15:35) On measuring situational awareness in LLMs
  • (01:22:50) Language Modeling Is Compression
  • (01:26:22) How AI can Revolutionize Science  (Jeremie’s gift link)

• Policy & Safety
  • (01:33:33) Inside the Senate’s Private AI Meeting With Tech’s Billionaire Elites
  • (01:36:08) Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy
  • (01:41:45) Rishi Sunak considers banning Chinese officials from half of AI summit
  • (01:43:48) EU to let ‘responsible’ AI startups train models on its supercomputers
  • (01:44:26) Biden-⁠Harris Administration Secures Voluntary Commitments from Eight Additional Artificial Intelligence Companies to Manage the Risks Posed by AI    
  • (01:45:23) Microsoft president and Nvidia chief scientist to testify in Senate AI hearings 
  • (01:46:40) AI Chatbots Are Invading Your Local Government—and Making Everyone Nervous
  • (01:47:27) Inside Elon Musk's Struggle for the Future of AI
  • (01:50:18) Gary Gensler confirms SEC’s use of AI for financial surveillance
• Synthetic Media & Art
  • (01:50:55) Self-publishers must declare if content sold on Amazon’s site is AI-generated