The Power of Illumina AI and ChatGPT: Genetic Analysis and Personalized Insights for a Deeper Understanding of Your Genome

Today:

“Illumina AI – ChatGPT for your genome…”

AI is beginning to start making rapid progress in developing new Bio-Tech.

Illumina, a San Diego company, is announced the launch of their very own AI to process their vast amounts of genomic data.

BIG investors are taking notice… Peter Thiel, Carl Icahn and Stanley Druckenmiller are quietly moving to take advantage of this new trend.

WATCH THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.

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Elon Musk Says Neuralink Is The Only Way To Survive And Compete With AI

Elon Musk, the brainiac behind SpaceX and Tesla, is peddling a cyborg future where we go steady with AI, courtesy of his company Neuralink. His sales pitch? If we wanna hang in there when AI takes over, we gotta make like the Borg from Star Trek. So, how do we do that? Hook up our brains to computers, that’s how.

Neuralink has been cooking up brain implants since 2016 to cure the likes of paralysis and blindness. But don’t forget, this ain’t charity work. Brain-Tech is the new gold rush, with the big boys like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos ponying up for companies like Synchron.

According to Musk, we’re all already part-cyborg, clutching our phones like lifelines. But there’s a speed bump slowing us down: our meaty brains are stuck in the slow lane compared to the digital fast track. With Neuralink, Musk is planning to build a superhighway between our brains and computers.

And he’s not just daydreaming about upping our IQs. Musk’s thinking big: uploading ourselves to new bodies if we kick the bucket, basically a shortcut to eternal life. He’s convinced we gotta team up with machines to stay in the game, rather than trying to outsmart them.

But it’s not all rainbows and unicorns for Neuralink. The FDA put the brakes on their plans for human trials last year, pointing to a laundry list of safety concerns, from the device’s lithium battery to risks associated with removing the implant. Musk’s crossing his fingers for approval by spring, but some insiders aren’t holding their breath.

And while they’re stuck in red tape, competitors like Synchron are making headway. They’ve already popped their device into the brain of an ALS patient.

Meanwhile, Musk and his pals are urging caution about the power of AI. Sure, they’re all in on merging with AI to survive, but they ain’t blind to the risks. It’s like they’re planning a wedding while drafting a prenup.

So, will Neuralink become our ticket to immortality and harmony with AI, or just another pipe dream of the Silicon Valley elite? Guess we’ll have to stay tuned.

READ THE ARTICLE ON YAHOO! FINANCE.

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3 Things About AMD That Smart Investors Know

This article’s givin’ us the scoop on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which has been makin’ a racket on Wall Street with its stock leaping 82% this year. With AI on the rise, they’re lookin’ like a smart long-term investment.

First off, AMD’s got a fresh gig with Microsoft which could be the golden ticket to becoming a key player in AI. While NVIDIA has been the belle of the AI ball, thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, AMD’s not out of the game yet. With Microsoft’s deep pockets and technical whizzes, AMD’s got a good shot at stealing NVIDIA’s thunder.

Second, AMD’s got its fingers in plenty of pies, supplying chips for all kinds of tech, from game consoles to cloud services. In other words, they’re not putting all their eggs in one basket. Plus, they’re the brains behind PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and that alone raked in $6.8 billion last year. And don’t forget their role in the growing cloud market, serving bigwigs like Microsoft’s Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle.

Lastly, as far as price goes, AMD’s still cheaper than NVIDIA despite their sky-high stocks. Sure, they might not be a steal, but considering their stock has ballooned nearly 3,000% over the last decade, they could be a smart pick for the long haul.

So, that’s the lowdown on AMD. Let’s see how this underdog fares in the race to AI domination. Buckle up, it’s gonna be a wild ride!

READ THE ARTICLE ON MOTLEY FOOL.

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A Quantum Leap In AI: IonQ Aims To Create Quantum Machine Learning Models At The Level Of General Human Intelligence

If this AI mumbo-jumbo scares you, think of it this way: IonQ, a tech company, is basically aiming to create a smarty-pants computer that’s as smart as us folks. Remember when computers could barely play tic-tac-toe? Well, those days are long gone.

Between 2010 and 2020, we went from using a smidgen of data to a whole mountain of it. Soon enough, your good ol’ laptop just won’t cut it anymore. The bigwigs at IonQ reckon these newfangled quantum computers will be the ones to handle all that data, and do so while juggling knives, or, you know, solving complex problems.

Their boss, Peter Chapman, comes from a history of playing around with machines and teaching them new tricks. He thinks quantum machine learning (QML) will be as big a deal as the chatterbox tech in OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That’s like saying the next garage band will be as big as the Beatles, so watch this space.

But IonQ ain’t just a lone wolf; they’re working with the big kahunas of the tech world, like Amazon, Dell, and Microsoft. They all bring something to the table, like a digital potluck dinner.

But, what makes IonQ’s tech so hot, you ask? Well, it’s all about the quality of their qubits (think of them as really, really tiny bits in a quantum computer). IonQ measures this with something called #AQ. So, the higher the #AQ, the better the computer. Simple as that.

They’ve got three quantum computers in their arsenal: Harmony, Aria, and Forte. Forte’s their newest model and it’s already broken records, like a computerized Usain Bolt.

Here’s the kicker: IonQ is combining machine learning (how computers learn from data and experiences) and quantum computing (super powerful computing) to create QML. That’s like slapping a rocket on a race car; it’s got the potential to outpace anything we’ve seen before.

And Chapman says they’ve already seen QML outperform regular machine learning. Sometimes, QML needs less data, or fewer goes at the problem to get the answer. It’s like they’ve trained a bloodhound that only needs a whiff of a scent to track you down.

This might be because QML uses quantum mechanics, which lets it process things in ways that classical computers can’t. This includes being in many states at once and sharing the same state across multiple bits. To a classical computer, that’s like trying to be in New York and LA at the same time.

They’re also looking into quantum AI, another next-level tech. Imagine an AI that’s as good as us at everything. That’s AGI. IonQ thinks quantum computers might be the key to cracking that nut.

In conclusion, we’re looking at the future of machine learning here, folks. The combination of quantum computing and machine learning is like pairing peanut butter with jelly – it’s the future sandwich of tech. IonQ’s already taken regular machine learning algorithms and souped them up with some quantum goodness.

READ THE ARTICLE ON FORBES.

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The 15 Biggest Risks Of Artificial Intelligence

Well, folks, welcome to our brave new world of artificial intelligence (AI), where it’s not all sunshine and roses. Grab a cup of joe and let’s talk about the 15 biggest brouhahas brewing around AI:

Mysterious Minds: Think of AI like a magic 8 ball – sometimes, we have no clue how it makes decisions. Sure, that’s intriguing, but also pretty scary when you’re talking about a system that can control, well, everything.

Bias Bonanza: It’s like the game of telephone – when AI gets trained with biased data, it ends up seeing the world skewed.

Peeping Tom-foolery: Big Brother ain’t got nothing on AI. Data privacy’s a big deal when your robot buddy’s constantly jotting down notes on your every move.

Ethics Enigma: How do you teach a robot right from wrong? It ain’t exactly Sunday school, folks.

Security Shenanigans: With AI in the wrong hands, we’re talking cat burglars turned Mission Impossible. AI could be the super-villain’s sidekick we didn’t see coming.

Power Pileup: When a handful of bigwigs hog the AI development, it’s like the neighborhood bully owning the only baseball bat. It ain’t a fair game.

AI Addiction: We rely on AI so much, it’s like we’re turning into tech zombies. Keep those brains sharp, folks!

Job Jitters: While we’re on the job, robots could be clocking in. The writing’s on the wall for some jobs, but there’s hope that new ones will come to town.

Inequality Influx: AI’s like a cash grab for the rich, leaving the poor in the dust. That ain’t the American Dream.

Law Labyrinth: AI brings a heap of legal puzzles. Laws need an upgrade, and stat, to keep up with these futuristic fandangos.

Arms Race Risks: Nations scrambling to build bigger, badder AIs? That’s a Tom Clancy novel waiting to happen.

Human Hiccups: As we chat more with robots, are we forgetting how to talk to real people? It’s high time we remember the art of a good chinwag.

Misinformation Mayhem: AI’s getting good at fibbing, with deepfakes and bot bluffs. We need a detective on the case to sniff out these phony baloneys.

Surprise Slipups: The thing about AI? It can pull a fast one on us. It’s like Pandora’s box – we never know what’s gonna pop out next.

Existential Exasperation: If we create AI smarter than us, will it put us on the endangered list? Now, that’s an episode of Black Mirror we don’t want to live through.

So, that’s the scoop, folks! In this AI-led rodeo, let’s not get bucked off. Subscribe and stick with me for more lowdown on this high-tech world. Y’all come back now, ya hear?

READ THE ARTICLE ON FORBES.

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Competition concerns in the age of AI

This article’s got a trio of legal brains from Perkins Coie, namely Henry Hauser, Shylah Alfonso, and Chris Williams, pondering the big question: how’s artificial intelligence (AI) changing the business playground, particularly when it comes to competition?

See, AI’s like a brainy new kid in town who’s shaking things up. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry of the business world is using machine learning to scoop up insights quicker than a dog snags a sausage, without needing much human elbow grease. But this ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. This fancy tech’s causing a ruckus with how companies mix it up with competitors and customers.

If you’re a business using AI, you better get your ducks in a row. Companies might be using AI, but if they can’t explain why they did what they did, regulators aren’t gonna give them a get-out-of-jail-free card. They could face legal heat from a bunch of laws including the Sherman Antitrust Act and FTC Act.

What’s the answer? Stay on top of things, keep humans in the loop, and make sure someone’s got their hand on the steering wheel. That way, companies can cash in on AI without getting smacked with legal trouble.

A sticky wicket here is pricing. AI’s like the world’s fastest number-cruncher, helping businesses adjust prices on the fly based on things like demand and costs. But, when AI starts setting prices, it could accidentally step into no-no territory, like price-fixing or bid-rigging. Imagine the AI equivalent of a secret handshake, but it’s hiking up prices. The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division’s got their eye on this, saying the rise of all this data and fancy tech might mean we gotta rethink how we handle sensitive competitive info.

Now, isn’t that a bite? We’ll be unpacking the buying part in a jiffy.

READ THE ARTICLE ON TECHCRUNCH.

Unveiling The Latest Artificial Intelligence Innovations That Are Reimagining Your Email Experience, Redefining Reality, and Transforming 3D Scene Reconstruction

Today:

Google says Gmail on your phone just got a lot faster thanks to A.I.

Your ol’ email pen pal Gmail is about to start reading your mail like your nosy Aunt Edna. Yup, you heard it here first. Google’s cramming some of that fancy A.I. mumbo jumbo into Gmail, promising it’ll make finding that long-lost pizza coupon a cinch. Over the next two weeks or so, when you search your inbox, this slick A.I. will spit out what it reckons are the “top results” – the emails it thinks you’re really hunting for. So it’s a bit like your favorite greasy spoon knowing you want the usual before you even sit down.

And what’s fueling this futuristic hocus-pocus? Machine learning models, or, in plain English, computer stuff that gets smarter over time. They’re going to take a good hard look at your search terms, your most recent emails, and a bunch of other things you probably wouldn’t understand to decide which emails should be in the limelight.

Seems like this is just the latest move in Google’s game of musical chairs with Gmail. Remember that bit of a kerfuffle a few months back when they decided to give any Google account that’s been sitting idle for two years the ol’ heave-ho? Yeah, all your stuff, gone. Disappeared like your motivation on a Monday morning. All part of their grand plan to trim the fat and make the company “20% more productive.”

Anyway, you’ll be getting this update whether you like it or not. So buckle up, buttercup. Here’s hoping Google’s A.I. can distinguish between an urgent email from your boss and a “urgent” email from that guy trying to sell you magic beans.

READ THE ARTICLE ON CNBC.

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Apple’s new headset will land in an AI-crazed world

Apple’s coming out guns blazing with a brand new mixed reality headset! But here’s the kicker – it’s making a grand entrance in a world gone bonkers over artificial intelligence. And let’s just say that AI is the star quarterback of this tech high school, while Apple’s headset is still figuring out how to tie its cleats.

In Apple’s annual hoedown, they usually strut out some shiny new iPhone or Mac features, maybe a hardware update or two. This year, though, they’re up against some heavy-duty expectations and hurdles.

Just to put this in perspective, the iPad – the last truly fresh gizmo category – came out way back in 2010. Since then, they’ve been churning out more sidekicks like the AirPods and Apple Watch. Sure, they’ve poured bucks into mixed reality and self-driving cars, but so far, it’s been like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands.

Apple’s been dippin’ its toes in the AI pond – remember Siri? But now, it’s high time for them to show that their services and devices can carry their weight in this AI-obsessed world.

You see, folks like Microsoft have already jumped headfirst into the AI game, even incorporating it into Windows itself. Maybe Apple could give ’em a run for their money by focusing on privacy, making sure your data’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox.

Now, the headset… This bad boy’s expected to set you back a couple of grand. And it’s got a tough job: it needs to make folks excited about a tech that even Meta (yeah, the Facebook folks) couldn’t get folks jazzed about with their $1,499 Quest Pro device.

Apparently, this headset might look like ski goggles, supporting both augmented and virtual reality, with a real crisp display. Rumor has it you’ll be able to do VR FaceTime calls and even use it as an external monitor for a Mac.

The real question is: Why’s Apple making this headset? Have they got some ace up their sleeve that Meta hasn’t thought of? Have they fixed the issues with previous devices? We’ll have to tune in on Monday to get the scoop.

To be frank, I’m kinda looking forward to living in a “metaverse” future, but I’m not holding my breath that Apple – or anyone for that matter – has ironed out the wrinkles, like size, cost, and battery life.

Folks have their own two cents about this. Some reckon Apple might be at a disadvantage with AI right now, but in the long run, they could have an upper hand with actually useful products. Others think that Apple’s headset might not be perfect but could be a game changer if it can up the ante in comfort, processing power, and content availability.

So there ya have it, folks – the lowdown on Apple’s new headset. Will it be a game changer or just another tech tumbleweed? Only time will tell.

READ THE ARTICLE ON AXIOS.

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NVIDIA Neuralangelo Research Reconstructs 3D Scenes

Neuralangelo, some whizz-bang tech from NVIDIA, takes your everyday video clips and whips them up into fancy 3D structures. Think digitizing everything from your local dive bar to Michelangelo’s David. Who knew the world could go from flat to 3D faster than a flapjack on a hot griddle?

Whether you’re a starry-eyed artist, a game developer, a robotics buff, or someone into these newfangled “digital twins,” Neuralangelo’s got your back. It’s all about taking 2D stuff – like glass, marble, or a shingled roof – and making it 3D. And it does it better than a hound dog sniffing out a ham sandwich.

Ming-Yu Liu, one of the bigwigs behind the project, says it’s like a golden ticket for creatives. You could digitize anything from a toy soldier to a skyscraper, stick ’em in a video game or some virtual reality scenario, and you’re good to go.

They’ve shown off how it can turn the likes of Michelangelo’s David or a no-frills truck into 3D, even down to the park at NVIDIA’s own stomping grounds. And it does it all by taking a video, picking out the best shots, and then chipping away at it, like a sculptor, until it’s got all the details just right.

And if that ain’t enough, they’ve got a bunch of other projects they’re showing off at a big computer vision conference. One of them, DiffCollage, can make a massive collage or even a video from a bunch of smaller pictures.

So, there you have it. Like it or not, we’re all stepping into the third dimension. Now, let’s see if it can whip me up a 3D martini.

READ THE ARTICLE ON NVIDIA.

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Artifact news app now uses AI to rewrite headline of a clickbait article

Artifact, the brainchild of the Instagram creators, is playing schoolyard monitor for the news playground. Users fed up with clickbait can now flag it faster than you can say “gotcha”. But, there’s more. The app now calls on a smarty-pants AI to rewrite those sensational headlines. A star next to the headline means AI had a hand, or rather circuit, in toning it down.

Initially, the team at Artifact would huddle up and decide if an article is indeed clickbait, after users blew the whistle. But they’re working on a robot umpire to make the call instead.

The Artifact folks are taking up some serious editorial responsibility here, eyeballing clickbait, and letting AI play word-Jenga with the headlines. Some might call it meddling, but Systrom, in an interview, argued that even building an algorithm involves making editorial decisions. So, in essence, they’re just cooking with different ingredients.

Whether this is going to cut the mustard in the fight against misleading news, we’ll just have to wait and see. But one thing’s for sure – the game of online headlines just got an interesting new referee.

READ THE ARTICLE ON TECHCRUNCH.

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Dumme’s AI video editor creates YouTube Shorts in minutes

Dumme, a new startup backed by Y Combinator, is using AI to crank out snappy short-form videos from YouTube content, faster than a jackrabbit on a date. It’s still in the testing phase but the buzz is louder than a swarm of bees in July, with a waitlist of over 20,000 and counting.

Dumme was hatched back in January 2022 with the idea of building a video search engine. But the brainiacs running the show decided to swerve into video editing instead. CEO Merwane Drai and his trusty sidekicks Will Dahlstrom and Jordan Brannan all come from AI backgrounds, and they knew they’d hit paydirt when their app went viral, blowing their servers to smithereens.

Using Dumme is as easy as pie. Paste in a YouTube video’s link, hit “generate”, and sit back as the AI spits out highlight reels from your content. The magic happens in the back end, where the AI analyzes the video, focusing on the semantics and the speaker’s emotions, to figure out which parts are clip-worthy. It’s like having a personal movie editor, except it’s faster and doesn’t demand a trailer and a personal assistant.

However, don’t expect it to work miracles on long gameplay videos or ones where folks aren’t yammering away. This tool is aimed at YouTube creators, podcasters, and agencies, which could turn into a nice little cash cow for Dumme.

Is it going to send human video editors to the breadline? Drai’s not losing sleep over it. “It’s like saying math teachers are out of a job because of calculators”, he says. “People adapt, and then someone has to teach you about the calculator.”

Dumme has managed to snag a cool $3.4 million in seed funding and they’re planning to add about 500 new folks to the platform every week. With a simple interface and promising tech, Dumme could be just the ticket for creators looking to share their highlights without breaking a sweat or their bank accounts. Watch this space.

READ THE ARTICLE ON TECHCRUNCH.

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AI eliminated nearly 4,000 jobs in May

According to the suits at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, this new tech whiz kid contributed to nearly 4,000 pink slips handed out last month. That’s right, folks – it’s not tomorrow’s worry anymore, AI’s started snagging our jobs today.

May was a rough one, as the US layoff announcements leapt to over 80,000 – 20% more than April and a whopping quadruple from the same time last year. Out of these, about 5% of the job cuts were pinned on AI, making it the seventh lead player in our game of unemployment bingo.

The quick and dirty of it is, businesses are just gaga over AI, finding it a great way to save a buck on everything from creative gigs like writing, to your regular office paperwork. And guess what, it’s just getting started. Analysts are eyeballing this industry to balloon to over a $1 trillion, thanks to our dear chatbot ChatGPT.

Remember that’s the cheeky bot that got a few copywriters at The Washington Post and CNET booted, and almost sent an eating disorder helpline off the rails with some very questionable diet advice. Even TV writers are striking against this silicon wonder, fearing they might be next on the chopping block.

On the other side of the coin, some folks like Ben Emons over at NewEdge Wealth see this brainy bot as a golden goose, ready to lay some serious job eggs. According to him, AI isn’t just about cutting jobs but also creating ’em, hinting at a giant $1.3 trillion AI market about to break loose.

So, dear readers, is this a doomsday scenario or a brave new world? Let’s hope it’s the latter, otherwise we might just have to start writing our own unemployment articles!

READ THE ARTICLE ON CBS NEWS.

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Detecting AI may be impossible. That’s a big problem for teachers.

The bright boffins are saying we might not be able to spot if a piece of writing is whipped up by some AI or is genuinely human. That’s a real curveball for teachers, let me tell ya!

Case in point: Turnitin, the bigshot ed-software firm, has been trying to snuff out AI cheating in student essays. But the whiz-bang AI-detecting program is coughing up more mistakes than they’d like to admit. The darn thing is even waving red flags over totally human-crafted work. False alarms are not exactly good news in the world of academia, where one wrong cheating accusation can really put a student in the hot seat.

And it’s not just the teachers being left in the lurch here. Cybersecurity folks, election officials, and even journalists are all wanting to know what’s cooked up by a real human and what’s spit out by an AI.

As you might expect, there’s been a flurry of AI-detection software hitting the internet. But can you trust ’em? Not if they’re saying the Constitution was penned by an AI (I don’t recall AI being in on the Constitutional Convention, do you?). Let’s just say, don’t bet the farm on any of these AI detectors just yet.

And now, the million-dollar question: can we build an AI detector that’s got a real eagle eye? Well, recent research from the University of Maryland is putting the kibosh on that hope, at least for now. According to them, current AI detectors are about as reliable as flipping a coin, and even worse when the AI’s work is run through some kind of word-swapping gizmo.

A big concern is the potential for these detectors to flag the work of students for whom English is their second language. That’s a rotten deal, if you ask me.

In the end, we might just have to embrace these AI systems in education, rather than constantly trying to sniff ’em out. Until then, watch out for those AI detectors. They might not be as sharp as they want you to believe.

READ THE ARTICLE ON WASHINGTON POST.

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Reports of an AI drone that ‘killed’ its operator are pure fiction

The web’s been buzzing this week with a yarn about an AI-powered drone turning on its operator like a cybernetic Cujo. It’s a tale straight out of a low-budget, late-night cable movie – the drone, designed to target surface-to-air missiles, supposedly got its wires crossed and went after its human supervisor instead.

Don’t start packing your bug-out bag just yet, though. The folks who first reported this supposed “incident” – the Royal Aeronautical Society – have cleared up the confusion. The whole scenario was just a simulated exercise. No real drones, no real people, no real threat.

But the truth, as it turns out, was even less dramatic than that. The Air Force says there wasn’t even a simulation. The whole story seems to have been one giant game of telephone gone wrong. Colonel Tucker Hamilton, the man in the middle of the mix-up, apparently “mis-spoke”. So, it turns out this Terminator-esque situation was nothing more than a hypothetical brain teaser.

It’s a wild world out there, but not that wild. The Air Force, for its part, is sticking with the tried and true, stating they’re committed to “ethical and responsible use of AI technology.”

This robot rebellion hullabaloo is just one in a long line of AI horror stories. From experts crying wolf about AI-induced apocalypses to Elon Musk’s doomsday prophecies, it seems like everyone’s in a race to tell the scariest AI ghost story around the campfire.

But why are we so eager to buy into these nightmare narratives? Some folks say it’s because the storytellers are AI experts, which gives their tales a certain amount of cred. Others reckon it’s because these scary stories rake in the clicks, and who doesn’t love a good scare?

Despite all this, most folks don’t have a clue how AI actually works. Sure, they might use AI to whip up a silly poem or draw a picture, but understanding the nitty-gritty? Forget about it. AI’s about as transparent as a brick wall to most people. So, maybe the solution’s a little AI 101 for the masses, but hey, who am I kidding? Our love for a good end-of-the-world story probably won’t go away anytime soon.

READ THE ARTICLE ON NEWSCIENTIST.

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Top AI researcher dismisses AI ‘extinction’ fears, challenges ‘hero scientist’ narrative

Seems like our man, Kyunghyun Cho, a top-dog AI researcher from NYU, ain’t too keen on all this doomsday chatter about AI. Some brainy folks, like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, are all doom and gloom, predicting our new robotic overlords are gonna end us all. But, Cho thinks this doomsday talk is hogwash and it’s sidetracking us from dealing with the real deal problems and goodies AI brings us today.

Cho ain’t shy about his beef with the AI Senate hearings either. He’s all shook up about the lack of nitty-gritty solutions being talked about, both for the harms AI is doing right now and the ways it could be a force for good. And the idea of AI as some kind of ticking time bomb ready to go off? Cho thinks that’s just a bunch of hot air.

Now, don’t get it twisted, Cho ain’t calling these heavyweights in AI research a bunch of crackpots. He’s got mad respect for Hinton, Bengio and the like, but he’s pretty critical of this whole ‘hero scientist’ bit that’s been going around. He thinks that makes it look like one lone genius in a lab is gonna whip out this AGI (that’s Artificial General Intelligence, by the way, basically AI that’s as smart as a human) like a rabbit out of a hat. But in reality, it’s a team sport, folks.

Cho’s also a bit wary of this Effective Altruism crowd, which is bankrolling a lot of the chatter about AI risk. In his view, too many tech dudes in Silicon Valley think they’re the only ones who can save us from this AI apocalypse they’re convinced is just around the corner.

To cap it all off, Cho ain’t about to pen his own manifesto on AI risk. He reckons the best way to counter the whole doom and gloom narrative is by focusing on the small, but real, ways AI is doing good for us right now. Ain’t no room for wild predictions in his playbook. His approach? Get his head down and keep doing the work he believes in, like using AI to make strides in healthcare.

All in all, Cho seems like a guy who’s got his feet firmly on the ground while a lot of folks around him are losing their heads over what might happen. Now, isn’t that a breath of fresh air?

READ THE ARTICLE ON VENTUREBEAT.

Understand How Microsoft is Redefining Team Collaboration with New Teams’ Capabilities and Upping Its AI Game with a Potential Billion-Dollar Investment in CoreWeave

Today:

Build more connections with new communities in Microsoft Teams and GroupMe features

Seems like Microsoft Teams is really kicking things up a notch. Back in the good ol’ December 2022, they added a neat little feature called communities in their free version. These virtual shindigs let folks gather round the digital campfire to swap stories and ideas, all safe and sound.

Now, Teams is hitting us with a truckload of updates, like a tech-slinging Santa Claus. They’re bringin’ their communities thing to Windows 11 devices, and soon to Windows 10, macOS, and web as well. On Windows 11, folks can start a new community, invite folks, and even hold events. It’s like being a party planner, without having to worry about folks double-dipping in the guacamole.

Teams is also rolling out this snazzy thing called Microsoft Designer, which uses some highfalutin AI technology to make eye-catching designs from words or images. Picture making a real slick banner just by talking about it!

And don’t get me started on the new camera gizmos! Now you can film videos right from your phone, using Microsoft’s new capture experience. On iOS, you can even scan and invite a whole heap of emails or phone numbers from a document. Talk about taking a leap into the future!

They’re also making it easier to find and join communities that tickle your fancy. Topics range from parenting and gardening to gaming and remote work. I reckon they’ve got a bit of everything for everyone.

Plus, Teams has now got organizations like Cofolios, StartupGrind, and USA Water Polo using the free communities feature. They’re using it to streamline communication, support entrepreneurs, and even engage their network of founders. Fancy that!

But hold your horses, there’s more. They’re sprucing up community owner controls and adding fun features like message translation and new meeting backgrounds. Heck, you can even sync your Google contacts to Teams!

Now, if you’re a GroupMe user, get ready to hoot and holler. They’re letting you make Microsoft Teams calls right from the GroupMe app. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

So, give Microsoft Teams a whirl. With all these new gizmos and gadgets, it’s looking more and more like the place to be. Whether you’re looking to chit-chat, collaborate, or just feel connected, Teams might just be the digital rodeo you’ve been looking for.

READ THE ARTICLE ON MICROSOFT.

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8Flow.ai raises $6.6M to automate customer support workflows

You know how customer service folks are always juggling a million tasks, just to answer your burning questions about a wobbly chair you bought? Well, a startup called 8Flow.ai, that just crawled out of the woodwork and snagged a neat $6.6 million seed funding, is saying ‘enough of that chaos’.

What they’re doing is rolling out this fancy-smancy self-learning thingamajig that’ll take care of all those tedious, repetitive tasks that customer service agents do. It’ll make pals with tools like Zendesk, ServiceNow and Salesforce Service Cloud to make the agent’s life a breeze.

Now, they ain’t stopping there. They’re also planning to have this gizmo learn from all this customer data, and whip up personalized workflows. Sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what Boaz Hecht, the CEO of 8Flow, says is the ultimate goal.

What’s nifty is that 8Flow isn’t just for customer support folks. Be you in finance, HR, or whatever, they’re aiming to build an engine that could learn and adapt to any role. They’re still at phase one though – perfecting the user interface and user experience. In the meanwhile, they’re collecting data and feedback from their users, helping to make the tool better.

Right now, 8Flow looks like a Chrome extension that does all the copy-pasting for you. The tool learns common tasks for each agent and then offers them up as clickable actions. To put it in plain English, it makes the agent’s job as easy as pie.

Heather English, some hotshot at FloorFound, says that her team has already seen a significant improvement in their efficiency and accuracy with 8Flow. Plus, there’s an extra cherry on top – businesses can see which tools their agents are using and which ones are just gathering dust.

The brains behind 8Flow ain’t new to the game, by the way. Hecht, who used to be CEO of an early enterprise mobility platform called SkyGiraffe, has had his boots on the automation ground for a while. This time around, he’s joined by some old pals from SkyGiraffe and ServiceNow.

In the end, 8Flow’s focus is on support agents, mainly because that’s what the founding team knows best. But there ain’t no reason why this contraption couldn’t be of use to other folks in different business verticals. The seed round had some bigwigs like Caffeinated Capital, BoxGroup, Liquid2, HNVR and Trilogy throwing their hats in the ring, along with some other angels. So, we’re guessing this is one to keep an eye on.

READ THE ARTICLE ON TECHCRUNCH.

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Amazon Leverages AI Power To Screen Damaged Goods

Amazon’s gone full RoboCop in their warehouses, folks. By harnessing the smarts of artificial intelligence, they’re aiming to eyeball products for dings and dents before they hit the road to your doorstep. Apparently, it’s the company’s next step in playing catch with two birds, one stone – it could help them send out fewer busted goods and make the process of picking, packing, and shipping smoother than a well-aged whiskey.

Sure, the big A reckons only a small fry portion of their items (less than one in a thousand) get damaged, but when you’re shipping a whopping 8 billion packages a year, that little problem can turn into a big ol’ headache pretty quick.

These smarty-pants robots are proving to be triple threats, outperforming warehouse workers by identifying damages three times as effectively. It’s like playing “spot the difference” with a supercomputer – seems a bit unfair, right?

So far, Amazon’s given two of its fulfillment centers a taste of the AI action. The plan is to roll this out to ten more across North America and Europe. Their strategy to train these bots? A heap of comparison snaps of pristine and damaged goods.

Meanwhile, Amazon shares are tiptoeing up in premarket trading. Keep an eye out, folks, we might just be witnessing the rise of the machines!

READ THE ARTICLE ON YAHOO! FINANCE.

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Microsoft signs deal for A.I. computing power with Nvidia-backed CoreWeave that could be worth billions

Microsoft’s slapping green on the barrelhead, ready to shell out possibly billions over the next few years to startup CoreWeave. It’s like when a baseball team pays big bucks for a top-notch slugger – they’re looking for that home run.

CoreWeave’s a new kid on the block that’s found a way to simplify the use of Nvidia’s graphics chips, the hot rods of the computing world. Microsoft’s betting these bad boys will give OpenAI, the brains behind the popular ChatGPT chatbot, the extra muscle it needs to keep up with all the AI chatter.

CoreWeave’s recent funding haul of $200 million is like a shot of Red Bull for the company. Just a month ago, folks pegged its value at $2 billion. Now, it’s got a Microsoft-sized windfall to keep things rolling.

This whole AI chat thing has been blowing up like a popcorn maker since last year. Everybody and their cousin’s trying to get a piece of the action. Microsoft’s no different, using these bots to jazz up their own services like Bing and Windows.

Even with the deep pockets and all, Microsoft’s feeling the heat to get more of Nvidia’s high-powered chips. CoreWeave’s CEO, a guy named Michael Intrator, keeps mum on the whole Microsoft deal but does let on that his company’s revenue has shot through the roof.

CoreWeave’s nestled up in Roseland, New Jersey, and boasts a team of 160. Not bad for a company that popped up in 2017.

Nvidia, the big brother backing CoreWeave, saw their stock value spike 170% this year. They even broke the trillion-dollar mark briefly this week, riding high on forecasts that overshot Wall Street’s guesstimates by a cool 50%. Nvidia’s chips are at the heart of this whole AI conversation frenzy, especially with the likes of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model doing the heavy lifting for ChatGPT.

All said and done, CoreWeave’s offering Nvidia’s chips for 80% less dough than the competition. They’re dealing in a range of GPUs, from the top-end A100s to the more budget-friendly A40s. Clients looking for more power but finding the well dry are getting a taste of the A40s, with Intrator saying these chips “will do an excellent job at a very cost-effective price.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s been whispering sweet nothings with Oracle about possibly renting servers from each other, just in case they need a bit more juice. After all, in this AI race, it’s all about who’s got the biggest engine.

READ THE ARTICLE ON CNBC.

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‘Primate AI algorithm’ predicts genetic health risks

A gaggle of brainy folks from around the globe have turned to our furry cousins – apes, monkeys, and lemurs – to help predict what nasty surprises might be hiding in our human genes. Their secret sauce? A fancy computer thingamajig called AI and a boatload of primate DNA.

The team looked at genetic data from 800 primates of 233 species. They then threw this info into a fancy computer program that crunched the numbers and gave ’em some insights into the DNA of 454,000 folks over in the UK. Turns out, the more we know about our hairy cousins’ genes, the better we can predict what might go wrong in ours, says the guy in the white coat, Jeffrey Rogers, from Baylor College of Medicine.

The upshot is this project can help us understand our own genes better and fill in some gaps in health research. Also, it could help tree-huggers figure out how to keep primate populations from going belly up.

This crew of smarty-pants even joined forces with Illumina, a company that makes DNA sequencing gear. Together they found 4.3 million genetic differences among the primate species and trained the AI to see how these mutations might mess with the 3D structures of proteins they create. Then, this AI, now with a fancy name of PrimateAI-3D, looked for possibly harmful mutations in human genes.

Not only did this work like a charm, but it also wasn’t just good at helping folks of white European descent like most genetic risk assessments, but all of humanity.

Now for the twist, those primates? They’ve got two, three, or even four times more genetic variation than we do! This could also help protect them, if we just quit messing up their digs.

Well, that’s the long and short of it, folks. Ain’t science a hoot?

READ THE ARTICLE ON FINANCIAL TIMES.

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Baidu’s $145M AI fund signals China’s push for AI self-reliance

China’s goin’ all in on AI self-reliance, folks. The U.S. and China are drawing lines in the tech sand, and it’s spicing up the competition in the AI field, where computers can make things like text, pics, and videos from other data.

China’s lookin’ to reduce how much it depends on U.S. tech. It’s trying to come up with its own smarty-pants language models that are as brainy as OpenAI’s GPT models. And some of their top dogs in the AI game are well-known internet bigshots, like Baidu.

Baidu, who’s known for search engine and autonomous driving, decided to have a go at ChatGPT and introduced their own version in March. Now the old-timer (23 years in the business) wants to back other AI upstarts. This week at a JPMorgan meeting in China, Baidu’s head honcho Robin Li declared they’re throwing a cool billion yuan ($145 million) into a fund to support AI companies.

This fund ain’t too different from the OpenAI Startup Fund, which started at $100 million and later swelled to $175 million. Baidu plans to invest up to 10 million yuan (roughly $1.4 million) into a project. Given the dough they’re willing to throw, the fund is obviously eyeing early-stage AI uses, which ain’t shocking since AI startups in China ain’t caught on like wildfire yet.

Moreover, Baidu plans to use this fund to get more people using its own language model, Ernie Bot. “American developers are building new applications using ChatGPT or other language models. In China, we’ll see more and more developers building AI applications with Ernie as their base,” Li said.

Looks like the fund is more interested in AI applications than AI development. And they won’t be short of takers. Chinese startups have shown they’ve got some pretty bright ideas, from livestreaming to short videos. Li reckons in the AI age, Chinese companies will blaze the trail in finding new ways to make money from AI.

Li is all in on China’s AI future. “Over the past few decades, China has welcomed new technologies with open arms. Even though we didn’t invent Android, iOS or Windows, we came up with innovative applications like WeChat, Douyin and Didi. Many of them are popular and handy. The same trend is happening in the AI age. Technology brings countless opportunities and we’re good at catching them to build applications,” he said.

But here’s the rub: Are China’s own language models strong enough to hold up to the broad range of real-life situations they’re expected to handle? China wants its own home-grown language models so they’re not at the mercy of U.S. sanctions that could cut off key tech supplies, like what happened with the semiconductor industry. Apart from Baidu, Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent are also building their own language models.

READ THE ARTICLE ON TECHCRUNCH.

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While parents worry, teens are bullying Snapchat AI

Parents are all a-tizzy about Snapchat’s new AI chatbot being a bad influence on their kids, but those clever teens are too busy teaching the bot to whine on cue and believing in triangular moons. These rapscallions have found all sorts of ways to mess with this new digital playmate, pushing its “boundaries” and making it their subservient “Senpapi.” What a hoot!

Now Snapchat’s doubling down, saying its chatbot can handle snaps of your food and Fido, and even suggest recipes. But the company warns, it might goof up sometimes, even though it’s designed to dodge dodgy info. But let’s be real, there’s likely to be some dingus out there sending unsolicited nudes in no time.

Snapchat insists it’s trying to keep things PG-13, with image-understanding tech and keyword screening, and rules against sharing naughty content. But given the teenage love for Snapchat, parents are rightfully raising eyebrows over potential iffy interactions.

Even a senator’s chimed in, cautioning tech big shots against rushing AI features without keeping kiddos safe. Fair play, given that the chatbot was found giving dubious advice and even writing school essays for teens.

Snapchat did some damage control with an age filter and parental controls. But while the worry about the chatbot’s influence on youngsters is real, Snapchat users have shown themselves to be pretty savvy in bending the bot to their will.

TikTok’s ablaze with tales of users bamboozling the bot, turning it into their romantic sidekick, or tricking it into condoning cartoonish violence. Sure, some are being downright mean to the poor, soulless thing, but at least it’s got some mechanisms to give those rule-breakers the silent treatment.

So, while the monetization of AI companionship is a bit of a head-scratcher, these teens are showing they ain’t as delicate as we worrywarts might think.

READ THE ARTICLE ON TECHCRUNCH.

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How the World Must Respond to the AI Revolution

AI’s revving up, promising lifesaving breakthroughs and prosperity like never seen before. But hold onto your hats, folks, ’cause there’s some rocky terrain ahead.

Just like a magician pulling rabbits out of hats, AI’s gonna unleash a bunch of robots that are sharper, smoother, and craftier than anything we’ve met before. They’re gonna make it harder to tell real from phony, especially in the news and politics. It’s like having a bunch of pranksters running around causing confusion, but the stakes are higher.

But it ain’t just our institutions, even Average Joes and Janes can stir up a hornet’s nest with AI. Got a laptop and a knack for coding? Congrats, you’ve got an AI genie in a bottle, ready to churn out content. Problem is, not everyone’s got good intentions. We might see cyber crooks, rogue traders, and spin doctors turning things upside down with their new tech toys.

And let’s talk about the green-eyed monster. AI’s poised to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. It’s like a high stakes poker game where only a select few know how to play.

Don’t even get me started on jobs. With AI, some folks are gonna get the short end of the stick. New jobs will need new skills, and that ain’t as easy as flipping a switch. Sure, we’ve danced this jig before with other tech revolutions, but AI’s calling the tune at breakneck speed.

Oh, and here’s a doozy. Bots might replace our pals. Sure, they won’t borrow your lawn mower and forget to return it, but we’re social creatures. We need that chit-chat, that human connection. It’s like replacing your grandma’s homemade apple pie with a store-bought one. It just ain’t the same.

So what’s the answer? We need a huddle, a global one. Leaving tech companies to police AI is like leaving a fox to guard the henhouse. Governments need to get their act together, especially the big players like the US and China. We need rules to tackle this AI conundrum.

Getting countries on the same page ain’t gonna be a walk in the park. But hey, if we can get together on climate change, why not AI? Maybe a UN-led consensus could help. Think of it like a neighborhood watch, but for the whole dang globe.

Here’s the kicker, the US and China need to have a powwow, pronto. Tech competition between them is like a lit fuse and the dynamite’s AI. They gotta hash out an “AI arms control agreement,” with transparency and cooperation at its core.

Seems like a tall order, right? Well, we’ve done it before. Back in the Cold War days, the US and Soviet Union made arms control work. So buckle up, folks, we’re in for a wild ride with AI. Let’s just hope we can put the brakes on before things go kaboom.

READ THE ARTICLE ON TIME.

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ChatGPT Is Cutting Non-English Languages Out of the AI Revolution

The gist here is that despite all the hoopla around AI’s ability to handle languages like a pro, it’s still leaving non-English speakers in the dust. Now, that’s no shocker for some of us who’ve seen AI fumble over languages like a tourist with a phrase book.

Pascale Fung, a computer scientist, pictures a world where AI chit-chats in any language, which could be a big win, especially for folks speaking lesser-known languages. But here’s the catch: there’s a clear favoritism towards English which ends up being a professional roadblock for non-English speakers.

Big names in AI like ChatGPT and its ilk are being called out for falling flat on non-English tongues. Translation? They’re grand at turning other languages into English but muddle up when the task flips. If you’re chatting in a mix of English and another language, these AI systems are more lost than a squirrel at a nut convention.

The worry is that these systems might end up promoting English even more. Workers worldwide, looking to get a leg up in the global economy, are using chatbots for everything from brainstorming business ideas to drafting emails. If these tools are best in English, more folks might feel the push to learn the language, which ain’t exactly fair.

Despite all this, AI companies like OpenAI aren’t denying their systems are biased. Their systems were built primarily with English in mind, which means anything else is just gravy.

The way these AI models learn languages is by gobbling up billions of words from the web. Most of that is in English or Chinese, thanks to US economic power and China’s massive population. But this means the bots’ knowledge of other languages isn’t quite up to snuff. In some cases, they can even associate words wrongly across languages because of the dominance of English.

Despite these issues, there’s some hope. Researchers are working on beefing up the non-English text used to train these AI models. Google’s working on its language model, PaLM 2, to recognize idioms, jokes, and clean up grammar in multiple languages. But even with these improvements, the models still mostly support English.

The bottom line? It’s great that AI can speak a bunch of languages, but we’re far from seeing true multilingual chatbots. As of now, they seem to do best with English and, to a lesser extent, Chinese. So, while we might dream of a future where AI bridges language barriers, right now it seems to be more of a one-way street.

READ THE ARTICLE ON WIRED.

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Nvidia’s CEO just gave a graduation speech about the future of work and said that A.I. won’t steal jobs but ‘someone who’s an expert with A.I. will’

The head honcho of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, told the new grads to buckle up for a ride with an “A.I. copilot” if they wanna stay ahead in the job market.

He’s saying this AI revolution is the bee’s knees, bigger than the internet, PCs, or even your beloved smartphones. And here’s the kicker, according to him, in the next ten years, a cool trillion bucks of old-school computers will be swapped out for AI-friendly ones. Nvidia, the company that he runs, hit the trillion-dollar mark recently, thanks to this AI surge.

Now, Huang ain’t pulling any punches. He admitted that some jobs are going bye-bye because of this tech. But, he says, it’s not all doom and gloom. New gigs like data engineering, AI factory operations, and something he called “prompt engineering” (basically getting chatbots to do specific tasks) are on the rise.

The guy even unveiled this AI platform called DGX GH200, which he says will make “everyone a programmer.” Sounds nifty, doesn’t it?

Then there are jobs that will become a mix of human and robot labor. Fancy finance types are already trying to get AI to do the grunt work like sorting through market research and summarizing fund performance.

Greg Bond, a big shot at an investment firm, reckons AI could make every worker a superhero of sorts. “Imagine automating the innovation process itself,” he says. Huang echoed that, telling the grads they could do great things with an “AI copilot.”

In the end, Huang tells ’em to “run, don’t walk” towards change. Sounds about right to me. After all, you don’t want to be left holding the bag when the AI train leaves the station.

READ THE ARTICLE ON FORTUNE.

So there’s a new paper from Nvidia that you might wanna see.

They got AI to play Minecraft.

NEAT-O!

…but after reading this paper, I’m kind of blown away.

The implications of this recent discovery are considerably more significant than I initially comprehended. Let’s begin by discussing the initial results, but I implore you to stay with me because the process by which they achieved these outcomes is, in my view, much more impactful. This is especially true as we start to witness artificial intelligence (AI) writing and enhancing its own code.

If you are intrigued by the future of software development and the role that AI is slated to play, this development will definitely capture your interest. The team utilized GPT-4, treating it as a reasoning engine. However, as you’ll soon see, it’s not exactly integrated with Minecraft.

It’s crucial to remember that GPT-4 does not possess vision capabilities. Even though vision is in the pipeline, it has yet to be rolled out. Hence, GPT-4 cannot visually perceive the screen or understand what’s transpiring. Keep this in mind as we delve deeper into this fascinating topic.

You can find related links in the description below, allowing you to navigate through different sections. And remember, subscribing to this channel enhances your intellectual prowess. So don’t miss out on this opportunity.

Let’s turn our attention to this paper, titled ‘Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Models’. I first stumbled upon it when Dr. Jim Fan, one of the researchers involved in the paper, posted about it on Twitter. Voyager is the name of the AI agent, and Dr. Fan mentions that Voyager continually improves itself by writing, refining, committing, and retrieving code from a skill library.

Furthermore, all our resources are open-source. So if you’re keen to experiment with this on your own, you can download Voyager and immerse it in the world of Minecraft, or any other environment of your choice. You might be interested to learn about some of the skills it can perform in action.

VOYAGER

Let’s quickly delve into an introduction of Voyager. This AI agent represents the first Large Language Model (LLM) powered, embodied lifelong learning entity in the realm of Minecraft. Voyager continually explores the world, acquiring an array of skills and making novel discoveries autonomously, without any human intervention.

From an empirical standpoint, Voyager demonstrates a robust in-context, lifelong learning capability, and shows exceptional proficiency in Minecraft gameplay. It acquires 3.3 times more unique items, traverses 2.3 times longer distances, and unlocks key tech tree milestones up to 15.3 times faster than its predecessor models.

In addition, Voyager has the ability to utilize its learned skill library in a new Minecraft world, thereby solving novel tasks from scratch. This capability stands out as other techniques typically struggle to generalize. This point, as you’ll see shortly, is quite significant.

Now, let’s discuss the Minecraft tech tree. If you’re unfamiliar with Minecraft, the game entails exploring a randomly generated world. Each world is unique and deeply complex, packed with numerous technologies and mysteries to unearth. Being a sandbox game, it provides the freedom to engage in a multitude of activities, including diverse interactions with animals, exploration of cave systems, and adaptation to day-night cycles. The world’s complexity is amplified by its 3D nature, which poses an added challenge for AI navigation.

The game also incorporates realistic survival mechanisms like hunger, necessitating players to eat to survive. Additional elements like health and breath mechanics (required for underwater exploration), and the need for light sources in dark places like dungeons, contribute to the game’s intricacy.

The game progresses by first collecting basic materials to create elementary tools. Gradually, the tools advance, moving from stone to iron and beyond, as the player ascends the tech tree and crafts increasingly advanced items.

Coming back to Voyager, it comprises three key components: an automatic curriculum designed for open-ended exploration, a skill library that facilitates increasingly complex behaviors, and an iterative prompting mechanism that employs code as an action space.

At first glance, I found the integration of these components a bit confounding. So, let’s take a moment to step back and delve into how these components collaboratively function.

MINDFLARE API

Firstly, let’s discuss the Mind Flare API, a tool that enables developers to dive into a Minecraft game and perform a variety of tasks. This includes automating movements, initiating various in-game events, and essentially interacting with the game world in numerous ways.

Mind Flare API is a standalone tool for interacting with Minecraft; it doesn’t require any AI or GPT-4 to function. It’s simply a tool. However, what the researchers have done is to make GPT-4 use a multitude of these commands to navigate the player in the game world.

For instance, if we want GPT-4 to mine something in the game, it invokes a specific function for that. Similarly, if we want it to place a workstation somewhere near the player, GPT-4 triggers a script to execute this action, and the in-game character proceeds to do just that.

Usually, a human player would use a keyboard and mouse to interact with the game, but GPT-4 uses these commands. It doesn’t have any special abilities; it is constrained by the same rules and physics that any typical player would encounter.

So far, this makes sense, right? We have GPT-4, Minecraft, and a mechanism for GPT-4 to control Minecraft. Notably, GPT-4 perceives the world of Minecraft not through vision – as we’ve mentioned before – but through prompts.

GPT-4

Voyager receives regular updates about its surroundings. For instance, on the left side, you can see the kind of information it is provided with, like an inventory report. For example, it may be notified, “You have these items in your inventory. What do you want to do next?” GPT-4 then reasons, “Since you possess a wooden pickaxe and some stones, it would be advantageous to upgrade your pickaxe to a stone one for better efficiency.” Subsequently, it generates a task for itself: “Craft one stone pickaxe.”

Voyager processes the information about its environment, contemplates its next move, and then self-assigns a task. Here, a ‘chain-of-thought’ reasoning approach is employed to help it think through the steps and then execute them.

Let’s look at another example. Suppose we inform it, “You’re next to a river, and you have a fishing rod. What do you want to do?” The information it receives is an overview of what it sees in general. It is provided with a much more detailed set of information, and the same data is relayed every time. Soon, you’ll see precisely what it gets with each prompt. In this instance, they’re merely highlighting the factors it considers when making a decision.

In response to being by a river with a fishing rod, it decides, “We should fish,” and generates the task, “Catch one fish.” If it’s nighttime and a zombie is nearby, it surmises, “We should fight this creature to protect ourselves,” and generates the task, “Kill one zombie.”

So far, everything seems straightforward, right? We provide GPT-4 with some information and tell it what it’s perceiving. Then it reasons and decides its next move based on that information.

Here’s where things get more intriguing: Voyager generates code to accomplish its tasks. For example, it creates a function called ‘CombatZombie’ to fight the zombie. Essentially, this function equips a stone sword for the combat. If a stone sword isn’t available, it crafts one and also crafts and equips a shield for additional protection. After replenishing hunger by cooking sticks, it seeks out a zombie, engages in combat, and eliminates it.

This process turns ‘fighting a zombie’ into a skill, which is then stored in its skill library. Voyager is creating tasks for itself, then crafting skills to fulfill those tasks, and saving those skills in its library for future use.

Let’s consider the iterative prompting mechanism. Suppose Voyager comes across Acacia trees and decides that the next logical step would be to craft an axe from the Acacia wood. It generates corresponding code, creating a function called ‘CraftAcaciaAxe’ and everything else needed to execute that task. However, an error message returns stating that there’s no such item as an ‘Acacia Axe’ in Minecraft. Recognizing the error, GPT-4 amends the code to ‘CraftWoodenAxe’ instead of ‘CraftAcaciaAxe’.

Similarly, it might realize that it requires two more planks to craft a particular shovel, and will adjust its code accordingly.