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Welcome back, Superhuman
Apple waited quietly on the sidelines this year as OpenAI, Meta, and other companies announced envelope-pushing AI products. Now, it’s Apple’s time to shine: At its first event of the year, it showed off a brand new chip built specifically for AI.
Today’s Insights
Apple unveils a new chip made for AI
Why teens are turning to AI for friendship
Prompt: How to say Thank You
Chart: AI is invading academic writing
5 new AI tools to boost your productivity
AI-Generated Images: Retro theme parks
AI & TECH NEWS
Everything you need to know today
Highly Classified: Microsoft reportedly built the first AI model that’s completely disconnected from the internet. It lets US spy agencies analyze top-secret documents without risking data breaches.
Funding Fast Lane: UK-based startup Wayve, which develops AI systems for autonomous cars, raised $1 billion from SoftBank, Nvidia, and Microsoft, among other backers.
Teaming Up: OpenAI has signed a licensing deal with Dotdash Meredith, the publisher of People and Travel + Leisure, that will see the companies collaborating on new AI products.
David and Goliath: AI startup Tenyx claims it has fine-tuned Meta’s open-source Llama-3 model so that it beats GPT-4 in several key metrics.
Met Gala Mixup: A fake, AI-generated image of Katy Perry at the Met Gala was so convincing that it reportedly fooled Perry’s mom.
NEXT IN AI
Apple’s M4 chip is here — and it’s made for AI
Source: Apple
With every blockbuster AI release this year, Apple shareholders have been left wondering: “Hey, what about us?” As OpenAI, Meta, and others celebrated new cutting-edge models, Apple had to bide its time, asking supporters to hold on just a little while longer.
Investors can finally breathe a sigh of relief. While Apple is saving its biggest announcements for the June Worldwide Developers Conference, it just showed off a couple of AI-related tidbits at Let Loose — its first major event of the year — to help hold us over.
The biggest news: The new iPad Pro is getting an M4 chip that’s been designed from the ground up to work with AI. According to The Verge, there’s at least one PC chip that’s more powerful than the M4, but Apple says its new chip performs about the same — and works with just a quarter of the power.
A good time to upgrade: It’s the first time Apple has made a big change to its iPad lineup since October 2022. You can preorder one of the new iPads today, and orders will begin shipping out around May 15.
That’s not all: The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is working on a custom chip that would be able to run AI software in data centers. The company already builds chips for its phones and computers, but this would be the first capable of analyzing data on servers.
Watch out, Apple: The iPhone maker is getting all the glory for now, but Microsoft has an event planned for May 20 where it’s expected to announce a new slate of state-of-the-art AI PCs.
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AI & GEN-Z
Teens are turning to AI for friendship
Source: Character AI/Screenshot
Just as we’re starting to understand how social media affects teen mental health, AI is here to scramble the equation. Chatbots are getting good at replicating how humans communicate — so good, in fact, that some teens have started using them for advice and companionship.
Which apps are most popular with teens? One platform, Character AI, lets users interact with personas that have unique personalities, including movie characters like Harry Potter and real-life figures like Elon Musk. From an engagement perspective, Character AI has been a huge success: Users spend on average two hours per day with the platform — far more than with other chatbots — and a big part of that seems to be the personal connection people feel when using it.
AI Therapists: Other chatbots can reassure kids and give them support when they’re going through a tough time. But psychologists warn we still don’t know what kind of effect these interactions might have on teens’ mental health. Chatbots can give kids incorrect diagnoses based on incomplete information. And they can become addictive, giving teens less time to form real-life relationships with peers.
GenZ tends to be more open to AI than other generations: In one recent study, 46% of GenZ respondents said they’d become more interested in a brand that uses an AI influencer to market its products. That openness means younger people are probably better prepared for whatever changes AI might soon bring to our society. But they might also be more susceptible to AI’s potential dangers — meaning we’ll need to tread carefully to protect them.
PROMPT OF THE DAY
Thank you very much
Prompt: Produce an email to thank my employees for (insert what you are thankful for).
You can adapt the prompt to your needs. For example, you can specify whether you’d like to thank a single person, a specific team, a branch of the company, or even all of your colleagues.
Source: godofprompt ai
CHART
Words associated with AI are becoming more common in academic writing
Andrew Gray/Scientific American
Vocabulary commonly used in AI chatbots like ChatGPT is showing up more frequently in newly published research, according to a recent analysis by University College London librarian Andrew Gray.
Gray found that certain words associated with AI, including “intricate,” “meticulously,” and “commendable” became much more common in academic writing in 2023 compared with 2022.
That suggests that researchers are increasingly turning to ChatGPT for help writing their papers, raising important questions about the reliability of scientific writing in the age of AI.
PRODUCTIVITY
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✅ ProfessorAI: Use AI to grade advanced questions, and generate follow-up questions to mimic a tutor in a virtual setting.
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AI GENERATED IMAGES
Retro Theme Parks
Source: @.brinkman on Midjourney
Prompt: a 1950s theme park map in the style of Disneyland or Six Flags, retro-future, flat, illustration, tan border, map, with table of contents in corner, dense, retro-futurism architecture, pastel color palette, rollercoasters, water rides, graphic design, graphic design, with table of contents in the corner
--ar 9:16
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