LWiAI Podcast #182 - Alexa 2.0, MiniMax, Surskever raises $1B, SB 1047 approved

Our 182nd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! With hosts Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.

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In this episode:

- OpenAI's move into hardware production and Amazon's strategic acquisition in AI robotics.
- Advances in training language models with long-context capabilities and California's pending AI regulation bill.
- Strategies for safeguarding open weight LLMs against adversarial attacks and China's rise in chip manufacturing.
- Sam Altman's infrastructure investment plan and debates on AI-generated art by Ted Chiang.

Timestamps + Links:

• (00:00:00) Intro / Banter

• (00:05:15) Response to listener comments / corrections

• Tools & Apps

  • (00:07:32) Amazon Picks Anthropic to Power Alexa 2.0

  • (00:12:12) Forget Sora — MiniMax is a new realistic AI video generator and it’s seriously impressive

• Applications & Business

  • (00:14:56) Ilya Sutskever’s startup, Safe Superintelligence, raises $1B

  • (00:22:20) TSMC’s A16 Process Creates a Buzz Before Mass Production, as OpenAI Reportedly Secures Capacity

  • (00:29:13) Amazon hires the founders of AI robotics startup Covariant

  • (00:33:33) OpenAI weighs changes to corporate structure amid latest funding talks

  • (00:37:43) Chinese GPU-maker XCT, once valued at $2.1B, is on the verge of collapse — shareholders now suing founder

  • (00:40:34) TSMC aims to ready next-gen silicon photonics for AI in 5 years

• Projects & Open Source

  • (00:44:10) Alibaba releases new AI model Qwen2-VL that can analyze videos more than 20 minutes long

• Research & Advancements

  • (00:48:32) Fire-Flyer AI-HPC: A Cost-Effective Software-Hardware Co-Design for Deep Learning

  • (00:55:52) 100M Token Context Windows

  • (01:03:50) Smaller, Weaker, Yet Better: Training LLM Reasoners via Compute-Optimal Sampling

  • (01:06:16) AnyGraph : An Effective and Efficient Graph Foundation Model Designed to Address the Multifaceted Challenges of Structure and Feature Heterogeneity Across Diverse Graph Datasets

• Policy & Safety

  • (01:08:16) California Legislature Approves Bill Proposing Sweeping A.I. Restrictions

  • (01:11:14) Tamper-Resistant Safeguards for Open-Weight LLMs

  • (01:17:12) China's chip capabilities just 3 years behind TSMC, teardown shows

  • (01:20:50) China Threatens to Cut Off ASML Over New US Chip Curbs

  • (01:23:22) Altman Infrastructure Plan Aims to Spend Tens of Billions in US

• Synthetic Media & Art

  • (01:26:23) NaNoWriMo is in disarray after organizers defend AI writing tools

  • (01:28:54) Tom Hanks warns followers to be wary of 'fraudulent' ads using his likeness through AI

  • (01:30:48) Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art

• (01:34:28) Outro