OpenAI is working on robots

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It’s hard to keep OpenAI out of the news. The company is putting together a team to build general-purpose robots, while also reportedly working on new personality features for its chatbot. But it’s not all great news for the ChatGPT maker — a group of researchers at UC Berkeley claim they’ve built an open-source reasoning model that can match OpenAI’s o1 for a tiny fraction of the cost.

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Today’s Insights

• Today in AI: OpenAI’s robots, ChatGPT’s personality, and a new reasoning model

• Tutorial: How to make websites with AI in minutes

• Why top AI talent is getting harder to find

• Everything else you should know today

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

TODAY IN AI

1. OpenAI is building a robotics division: The ChatGPT maker announced they’re hiring for several new robotics roles, with a focus on “unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings.“ OpenAI is no stranger to robotics, having previously invested in several robotics startups, including Figure AI, which is building humanoid robots.

2. Upcoming feature lets you tweak ChatGPT’s personality: No cap, ChatGPT might soon be able to sound just like a member of Gen Z. Users briefly spotted a now-deleted feature that lets you infuse ChatGPT with different traits, like chatty, encouraging, or skeptical. You can share details about yourself, too, like your preferred name and profession. OpenAI is apparently taking cues from the likes of Meta and Character AI, who let users design their own chatbots with unique personalities and backstories.

3. UC Berkley team claim they can match OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model with $450 open-source model: The model is called Sky-T1-32B-Preview and the team behind it claims that the training took just 19 hours and 8 H100 GPUs — a remarkable achievement of innovation and efficiency, if true. You can find more details on the model, training methods, and data here.

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THE AI ACADEMY

How to make websites with AI in minutes

• Go to Durable AI’s website and sign up with your account.

• Now click on ‘Generate your website’.

• Enter your business name, describe your business type, and add your location and the website language.

• Once created, you can change the style, fonts, add widgets, and can even edit the text or images and customize it as needed.

• Once generated, you can get a customized domain and publish your website.

🎧️ DECODING THE FUTURE

10 years of career lessons in less than 30 minutes

In this special episode, podcast hosts Zain and Hassan share their most valuable career lessons learned from building and selling multiple companies, scaling teams, and growing audiences of millions. They break down the frameworks that helped them achieve outsized success in their careers. In our conversation, we discuss:

• Why risk scales better than effort

• The relationship between confidence and hard things

• The myth of work-life balance

• Making decisions with imperfect information

• The importance of persistence and iteration

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FROM THE FRONTIER

The talent problem AI startups can’t shake

Reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1 have started acting strange: While working through tricky problems, they sometimes “think” in Chinese languages before generating their usual English language output. The reason, according to DeepMind’s Ted Xiao, is that companies are turning to Chinese researchers for help training their models as experts get harder to come by in the US.

The details: Recent breakthroughs show that AI might eventually be the best judge of its own outputs. But for now, humans are still an integral part of the process. And while it’s easy to rate AI’s answers for something simple like basic arithmetic, things get more complicated when you’re dealing with PhD-level calculus or quantum physics problems — there are only so many people who are up to the task.

What it means: AI companies are willing to pay top dollar for AI engineers and trainers. The Information points out that both Databricks and Snowflake recently considered acquiring AI startup Voyage AI not so much for the products it builds but for the AI engineers who built them. Another example: When deciding which employees should get a bonus, Microsoft now asks managers which team members are “critical AI talent.”

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

☁️ Cloud Clerks: Salesforce unveiled a library of pre-built AI agent skills that can help retailers automate things like appointment scheduling and order management.

💬 Speed Dial: WhatsApp is testing out a new design that would put its AI features front and center, with a tab dedicated entirely to chatbot characters.

🦙 Llama Logic: Open source data platform LlamaIndex released a new AI architecture that could help agents make more complex decisions, instead of just repeating what they’ve already learned.

🤥 Truth Serum: X announced it’s rolling out special labels for satirical and parody accounts so it’s easier to tell them apart from the real people they impersonate.

⚖️ Byte Fight: The US Supreme Court looks set to uphold a law that would ban TikTok, one of the country’s most popular apps, unless it breaks off from its Chinese parent company. The platform vowed to shutter by Jan. 19 unless there’s a last-minute delay.

💰 Funding: Hippocratic AI, which just launched a new app store for healthcare professionals, vaulted to unicorn status after raising $278M in a Series B funding round led by a16z. And in a first-of-its-kind deal, a16z is also teaming up with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly on a $500M venture fund dedicated to AI and tech projects.

PRODUCTIVITY

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PROMPT OF THE DAY

Analyze Datasets

Prompt: [*upload dataset to ChatGPT, which will require a paid plan and access to GPT-4*] Based on the provided dataset, please analyze and present the top 3 to 5 most interesting observations, highlights, or trends. This may include identifying segments (e.g. age, gender, etc) that were more likely to respond in a certain way, significant patterns, or unexpected insights from the data.

Your analysis should be detailed and insightful, focusing on the most compelling aspects of the dataset. Provide a clear and concise summary that highlights the key findings, ensuring that the trends or observations are presented in an engaging and informative manner.

Please ensure that your response encourages creativity and originality in identifying and presenting the most compelling insights from the dataset while maintaining accuracy and relevance.

_{Source: analythical}

AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Cloud Computing?

Midjourney Prompt: Business woman/man floating in the clouds with his laptop. Dreamy big clouds. Blue sky. Shot on 35 mm film

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Until next time!

Zain & the Superhuman AI team