Meta's rocky AI start

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Welcome back, Superhuman

As the old adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Meta learned that lesson the hard way this week. Reviewers are complaining that instead of improving usability, the company’s new Llama-3 model makes navigating Facebook and Instagram even more difficult. But Meta’s not giving up yet.

Today’s Insights

• Meta’s AI push is getting mixed reviews

• A baby-powered AI model

• Prompt of the day

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• Chart: Apple’s top sources for AI talent

• AI-Generated Images: Out of this world

AI & TECH NEWS

Everything you need to know today

• AI Archipelago: Microsoft is putting $1.7 billion into AI infrastructure in Indonesia, home to Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

• Jail Time: Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, has been sentenced to four months in prison for violating US money laundering laws.

• Take the Wheel: GitHub’s Copilot platform can now help software engineers build new coding projects from scratch. Before, it could only make edits to already-existing code.

• Life Saver: A 16,000 patient study published in Nature claims that implementation of AI-assisted alerts was associated with a significant reduction in deaths.

• Handy Helper: Amazon releases Q, an AI-powered assistant tailored to enterprises and developers that helps with data and coding tasks.

Correction: In yesterday’s issue, we mentioned that Apple’s iPad event was set to take place on Apr 30. The correct date is May 7.

NEXT IN AI

Meta’s big AI push is off to a rocky start

Meta set a new standard last month by releasing what might be the most powerful open-source model on the market. But now that users have had a few weeks with Llama-3, they’re warning it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

Llama’s capabilities aren’t the problem: In fact, it beats out OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 across multiple benchmarks. Instead, reviewers say the issue is that Meta got a little overeager with how it rolled out its new model.

Llama now powers searches on Instagram and Facebook, but some users say they’d rather go back to the old way of doing things. Say you want to search for a band on Instagram to figure out where they’re playing next. Now, the results might get bogged down with AI-generated clutter instead of what you actually wanted — the band’s Instagram page.

But it’s not just the user experience: 

• Firms say Meta’s Advantage Plus, which creates AI-generated ad campaigns, has recently been burning through their marketing budgets without delivering measurable results

• Because Meta’s AI tools are free and open-source, many investors are starting to worry the company won’t be able to profit from its multi-billion dollar investment in AI

Don’t count Meta out just yet: The company deserves credit for moving fast and shipping features. Meta has a track record of placing big bets and pulling them off spectacularly. Don’t be surprised if the company is able to turn around public opinion in the coming weeks and months.

PRESENTED BY GAMMA

How to create beautiful presentations with AI

• Go to the Gamma website and sign up.

• Once you’re signed up, you’ll get an option to create slides by pasting text, uploading a file, or giving it a prompt.

• You can pick any option you like. For this example, I’ll pick the prompting option.

• On the next screen, pick how many slides you want, the language, describe the content of the slides and click generate.

• You can also use its AI to find or generate image

• Next you’ll be able to pick what kind of design and colors you’d like for the presentation.

• The app will create the presentation in a few seconds.

• Edit the contents of the slides to suit your needs.

AI & TODDLERS

An AI model that learns just like babies

The next big advancement in AI training methods might come from an unlikely source: Not coders, computer scientists, or prompt engineers but…toddlers. When it comes to quickly picking up new information, babies have us beat by a longshot. But scientists are still puzzled over how exactly they do it.

AI could help us understand: For nearly a year, a psychologist at New York University has been putting a GoPro camera on his 21-month old daughter once a week, then feeding that video into an LLM. The idea: Help the model learn from baby Luna’s point of view as she moves through the world.

Luna is just one of several babies involved in the experiment, which has already yielded some promising results. By observing children’s experiences, a model was able to identify cribs and stairs while also picking out words associated with those images.

Win-Win: By teaching AI how to learn as a baby does, we can figure out how toddlers acquire new information. That could help us settle age-old debates — like whether infants primarily learn by picking up on patterns in their environment or by exploring and experimenting with the world around them.

The next frontier: Babies have one big advantage over LLMs: They have five senses. The taste of a new food is just as important for learning as what it looks like. While current AI models can find patterns in large swaths of data, they still don’t understand things like taste and touch. In the future, scientists will likely try translating more abstract experiences into code — a context that AI models are more comfortable with.

PROMPT OF THE DAY

Use AI as a language learning companion

Imagine you’re [who] in [what situation]. Ask me [what to do or talk about]. Then give me feedback on how well I did and how I could improve.

You can adapt the prompt to different languages and role-playing scenarios. For example, you can practice ordering a meal at a restaurant or asking for directions, then have the AI respond with more questions for you to answer.

Source: LearnPrompt.org

PRESENTED BY SPEECHMATICS

Introducing Audio Events by Speechmatics [Applause]

Audio Events is a ground-breaking AI feature that automatically detects and labels non-speech events such as [music], [laughter], and [applause] within audio.

This innovation lets users:

1. Increase accessibility of media, globally

2. Automate labelling of non-speech events within audio

Audio Events is transforming the landscape of media accessibility and analytics.

Request Early Access

PRODUCTIVITY

5 AI Tools to Supercharge Your Productivity

✅ Otterly: Monitor how your brand, content, and competitors perform on AI-powered searches.

✅ Outerbase: View, edit, query, and visualize all of your databases with an easy-to-use, AI-powered tool.

✅ Assista: An all-in-one productivity platform that automates tasks, expands your knowledge base, and helps you gain AI-powered insights.

✅ Play AI: Create realistic, human-like conversations with AI agents.

✅ GoProfiles: An AI people platform that combines the best parts of employee directories and peer recognition.

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CHART

Apple’s top sources of AI talent

A Financial Times analysis revealed that Apple has poached hundreds of AI employees from other tech companies to build out its AI team in recent years. At least some of those employees are reportedly working out of a secret lab in Zurich, Switzerland.

AI GENERATED IMAGES

Out of this world

Prompt: A psychedelic interior design of an open mind leading to another mind with a surreal thoughts personified in it. The floor is made up of Henri Rousseau artwork in vibrant colors. The art is in the psychedelic style with an infinity mirror.

--sw 125 --chaos 22 --ar 8:5 --stylize 250

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🧞 Your wish is my command 

Thanks for reading.

Until next time!

Zain

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