Harvard students build AI 'spy' glasses

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Welcome back, Superhuman

What happens when smart glasses can recognize anyone and access personal details in seconds? Two Harvard students hacked Meta’s Ray-Bans to do just that, sparking a conversation about surveillance and security.

🎧 New podcast: Building apps with AI without writing any code | Sherry Jiang (CEO of Peak) Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

Today’s Insights

• Harvard students build AI ‘spy’ glasses

• Should AI art get copyright protections?

• Tutorial: How to use GPT-4o’s canvas feature

• Everything else you should know today

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• AI-Generated Images: Guess the hybrid animal

NEXT IN AI

AI smart glasses can now reveal your life story

A pair of Harvard students have figured out a way to turn Meta’s sleek Ray-Ban smart glasses into something straight out of a sci-fi flick. Using a custom-built AI platform, they can identify anyone just by looking at them — plus reveal personal details like their address, phone number, and relatives. 

How it works: 

• The I-XRAY platform uses a facial search engine to put a name to the face of anyone you glance at through the smart glasses

• Then, it’ll run that name through more databases to track down other details about the person’s life

• Finally, it’ll present that information in a single, well-organized document

• An eerie video shows the students approaching random people on the street and asking them questions about their lives (i.e. “Did you attend so-and-so high school?”)

• A system that can detect someone’s net worth or level of fame could be next on the horizon

If you’re more than a little freaked out, well, that’s exactly the point: The students say they're not trying to invade people’s privacy — quite the opposite. Their goal is to spark a conversation about safety in a world where the gadgets we wear are getting smarter by the day. 

We’ve been through this before: It feels a little like the early days of the iPhone, when everyone was trying to jailbreak their devices, despite Apple’s best efforts. New technologies always carry risk, which we gradually learn to mitigate over time. The Harvard students say they want to do the same for surveillance threats — teaching people how to protect themselves before it’s too late.

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THE AI ACADEMY

How to use GPT-4o with canvas

ChatGPT recently rolled out a new feature called GPT-4o with Canvas. It lets you use a new window to create and refine ideas side-by-side. Here's how to access it:

• Go to ChatGPT and log in with your Plus account.

• Choose 'GPT-4o with canvas' as your model from the list.

• Enter your prompt and press enter.

• It will open a separate window for you.

• Now click the pencil icon at the bottom right to edit text, adjust length and reading level, add emojis, etc. to your output.

🎧 DECODING THE FUTURE

Building apps with AI without writing any code | Sherry Jiang (CEO of Peak)

Sherry Jiang is the co-founder and CEO of Peak, an AI-powered platform that helps you track and grow your net worth. Previously, Sherry worked at Google and Amazon in business and marketing roles. She's also the creator of a course teaching non-technical people how to build apps using AI tools. In our conversation, we discuss:

• How Sherry learned to code using AI tools like Cursor

• How beginners can use tools like Cursor to build apps

• The journey from a high-paying tech job to founding a startup

• Sherry's experience moving to Singapore as a founder

• How she makes decisions about her finances

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

• Weeks Away: Apple’s highly-anticipated AI features will allegedly start rolling out on October 28 across iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

• Dark Horse: The open-source startup OpenBB is launching a no-cost, AI-powered alternative to the pricey financial data platform Bloomberg Terminal.

• Search Shakeup: Alphabet is using AI to surface videos, forum links, and recipes alongside the typical list of web pages.

• Rock Whisperer: KoBold, which uses AI to search for hard-to-find minerals, raised $491M in a funding round that could value the startup at $2B.

🎮 One Fun Thing: Redditors are using Runway AI’s video-to-video model to give decades-old video games photorealistic graphics. The next step: Getting them to run in real time. In the meantime, the clips are like “widows to the future of video games,” as one user wrote.

🪄 Brain Food: Researchers at India’s Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics built a simplistic AI model made with a strain of E. coli. Working together “as a team,” the bacteria learned to identify prime numbers and vowels on its own. The scientists claim their method is more efficient than using traditional computer chips.

PRODUCTIVITY

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✅ Prompt Llama: Gather high-quality text-to-image prompts and test the performance of different models.

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PROMPT OF THE DAY

Use LinkedIn to your advantage

Prompt: Compose a list of relevant LinkedIn Groups where our target audience actively participates. Develop a plan for engaging with these groups and sharing valuable insights to establish our authority and generate leads.

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AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Can you guess the hybrid animal?

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Zain & the Superhuman AI team