LWiAI Podcast #178 - More Not-Acquihires, More OpenAI drama, More LLM Scaling Talk

Our 178th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!

With hosts Andrey Kurenkov (https://twitter.com/andrey_kurenkov) and Jeremie Harris (https://twitter.com/jeremiecharris)

In this episode:
- Notable personnel movements and product updates, such as Character.ai leaders joining Google and new AI features in Reddit and Audible.
- OpenAI's dramatic changes with co-founder exits, extended leaves, and new lawsuits from Elon Musk.
- Rapid advancements in humanoid robotics exemplified by new models from companies like Figure in partnership with OpenAI, achieving amateur-level human performance in tasks like table tennis.
- Research advancements such as Google's compute-efficient inference models and self-compressing neural networks, showcasing significant reductions in compute requirements while maintaining performance.

If you would like to get a sneak peek and help test Andrey's generative AI application, go to Astrocade.com to join the waitlist and the discord.

Subscribe here:

• RSS: http://bit.ly/AItalkRSS

• iTunes: http://bit.ly/AItalkiTunes

• Spotify: http://bit.ly/AItalkSpotify

If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form.

Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai

Timestamps + Links:

• (00:00:00) Intro / Banter

• (00:03:14) Response to listener comments / corrections

• Applications & Business

  • (00:06:56) Google’s hiring of Character.AI’s founders is the latest sign that part of the AI startup world is starting to implode

  • (00:15:12) Investors in Adept AI will be paid back after Amazon hires startup’s top talent

  • (00:22:36) AI chip start-up Groq’s value rises to $2.8bn as it takes on Nvidia

  • (00:29:22) OpenAI co-founder Schulman leaves for Anthropic, Brockman takes extended leave

  • (00:36:18) Elon Musk files new lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman

  • (00:41:40) Figure’s new humanoid robot leverages OpenAI for natural speech conversations

  • (00:47:01) ASML, Tokyo Electron dodge new US chip export rules, for now

  • (00:53:10) OpenAI reportedly leads $60M round for webcam startup Opal

• Tools & Apps

  • (00:55:40) OpenAI cuts GPT-4o prices, launches Structured Outputs amidst price war with Google

  • (01:02:08) Apple Intelligence could get a $20 Plus version

  • (01:04:05) Audible is testing an AI-powered search feature 

  • (01:05:53) Reddit to test AI-powered search result pages

• Research & Advancements

  • (01:06:35) Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters

  • (01:16:27) Achieving Human Level Competitive Robot Table Tennis

  • (01:20:19) Self-Compressing Neural Networks

  • (01:28:30) Let Me Speak Freely? A Study on the Impact of Format Restrictions on Performance of Large Language Models

  • (01:32:43) Berkeley Humanoid: A Research Platform for Learning-based Control

• Policy & Safety

  • (01:33:35) METR announces results of study on comparative capabilities of humans and agents

  • (01:39:35) ‘The Godmother of AI’ says California’s well-intended AI bill will harm the U.S. ecosystem

  • (01:49:13) Google Monopolized Search Through Illegal Deals, Judge Rules

  • (01:54:56) Amazon faces UK merger probe over $4B Anthropic AI investment

  • (01:55:44) GPT-4o System Card

• (02:03:09) Outro