Robot companions in your home

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Welcome back, Superhuman

If you’ve ever daydreamed about living in a fully functional Smart Home, you may be in luck. Tech companies are starting to invest in home robotics research — a sign that multi-functional robots could be coming soon.

TODAY’S MENU

• Apple’s pivot to home robotics

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• The struggle to keep AI talent

• Prompt of the day

• Chart: Should AI programs cite their sources?

• AI Generated Images: Memories of the ‘80s

NEWS

Today in AI & Tech

• Crisis Averted: A Microsoft software engineer is being hailed as a hero for stumbling upon a backdoor that criminals may have been using to coordinate an international network attack.

• Knowledge is Power: A group of major tech companies say they’re teaming up to study how AI could impact tech positions — and to train workers on how to implement AI in their day-to-day jobs.

• Half Convinced: Meta said it managed to persuade about half of respondents at a recent forum that AI will have a positive impact on society.

• One-Upped: Cohere unveiled the latest version of its business-oriented AI platform, Command R+, which beats GPT-4 Turbo across several major benchmarks.

NEXT IN AI

Robots at home

Autonomous vacuum cleaners came out more than two decades ago. But since then, we’ve struggled to come up with robots that can do lots of things on command — like the space-age robot butlers that people predicted would one day take care of all of our chores for us.

Apple allegedly wants to take a crack at it. Sources told Bloomberg this week that the tech giant is taking some of the money and talent from its ill-fated electric car plans and putting them into home robotics instead.

There are a couple of products that Apple is trying to develop:

• A mobile robot assistant that could follow you from room to room

• A tabletop device that would be able to simulate head movements — like nodding or keeping eye contact with someone in a crowded room

• Both would likely be infused with AI: Apple’s SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy is reportedly one of the projects’ leaders

Why are home robots so difficult to design? Robots have never been great at spatial awareness. They’re usually built to do the same task over and over again — in a predictable environment, like a warehouse. People’s homes are a different story. They can change from one day to the next.

Maybe don’t start saving just yet: Apple’s still in the early planning stages, and there’s no guarantee its home robotics products will ever be released.

Where’s the research taking place? According to Bloomberg, Apple built a top-secret facility that looks like the inside of a home to test its new devices. It’s somewhere near Apple’s Cupertino HQ, but the exact location remains a mystery.

PRODUCTIVITY

5 AI Tools to Supercharge Your Productivity

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AI & TALENT WARS

The battle for AI talent continues

Elon Musk just called out OpenAI for allegedly doing something sneaky: poaching top AI experts at Tesla by offering them hiring packages that are too hard to resist. That tactic has become pretty commonplace across the industry as the major tech companies race to build the most advanced AI models.

What’s Musk’s response? Well, it’s fairly straightforward. He’s got a few tricks up his sleeve to keep employees happy.

What does Tesla need AI engineers for? It’s been trying to perfect its autonomous driving systems for years. A lot of the work involves fine-tuning a car’s vision capabilities so that it can spot potential dangers and respond to unexpected events on the fly.

Major Beef: The tension between Musk and OpenAI runs much deeper than the latest employee dispute. Musk helped found OpenAI in 2015, but he left a few years later after allegedly failing to bring the company under the wing of Tesla. The mutual resentments finally boiled over when Musk sued OpenAI earlier this year, claiming that it had failed to stick to its founding principles.

PROMPT OF THE DAY

Friday Funday

Prompt: Write a sequel for [insert movie here]

You can adapt the prompt to your needs and desires. For example, you can introduce new characters or settings. You can also ask the model to try out a TV show instead of a movie…maybe it will come up with a better Game of Thrones finale.

CHART

Should generative AI programs credit the source material they reviewed?

More than half of Americans say generative AI programs should credit the sources they reviewed to come up with their responses. Just 14% say AI models don’t need to credit their sources, since the information they drew from is already widely available online. Nearly a third of respondents say they’re not sure one way or the other.

AI GENERATED IMAGES

Memories of the ‘80s

Prompt: A cinematic scene of a boy with brown hair and brown eyes [looking into his closet as a green slimer like ghost looks back at him // enter scene idea here] wide shot. 1984, shot on a Polaroid. --style raw --v 6.0

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🧞 Your wish is my command

Thanks for reading.

Until next time!

Zain

p.s. For questions and feedback, email us at [email protected]. We always listen and respond.