Welcome to our roundup of this week’s hottest AI news.
This week ChatGPT finally found its voice.
Microsoft looks to a nuclear meltdown site for power.
And Chinese AI seems unstoppable.
Let’s dig in.
It speaks!
OpenAI is finally rolling out ChatGPT’s advanced voice assistant. We’ve been waiting for months to get our hands on the feature that was demo’d back in May. Advanced Voice Mode (AVM) comes with some interesting customization options, but it’s still missing some of the things we saw in the original demo.
If you’re in the UK, EU, and a few other countries then you’ll have to wait until the legal issues are settled before you get to talk to ChatGPT.
Some of the things people are doing with AVM are really cool.
Watch ChatGPT travel the world and order food in foreign languages.
Advanced voice is amazing at accents! pic.twitter.com/CAEeEfcyuN
— Clintin Lyle Kruger (@Lyle_AI) September 25, 2024
How open is open?
Meta keeps insisting its models like Llama 3.1 are “open” but not everyone agrees. The Open Source Initiative has released its updated definition of open-source AI and it looks like Meta’s models don’t make the grade.
It will be tricky for Meta and other companies to comply with the OSI’s definition and it has legal ramifications too.
Tracking cities
Sprawling cities in the developing world often grow organically with little urban planning. This makes it increasingly tough for governments to be effective in delivering high-quality healthcare, urban development, environmental conservation, and resource management.
Google’s Open Buildings project now maps urban expansion across the Global South. AI is giving people in developing countries the same tools the Global North has to make better policy decisions.
AI-fueled research
The 2024 Nature Index reveals how AI is transforming every aspect of scientific research. Papers are being published faster than human peer reviewers can keep up.
The flurry of AI research has come with its own set of questions: Where are the big tech companies hiding their research and how did a nonsense paper with giant AI-generated rat testicles get published?
Nuke it
AI uses a lot of power and Microsoft is looking for new sources to plug into as it expands its data centers. The company has decided to resurrect the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in a deal that will give it exclusive rights to the power.
With doomsayers increasingly highlighting AI safety concerns, is Microsoft tempting fate by restarting a power station on the island that saw the worst nuclear disaster in US history? What could possibly go wrong?
East to West
Despite US export bans, China’s AI ambitions have surged ahead. There are some big hitters with top minds and advanced tech in the list of Chinese companies leading the AI pack. There’s no shortage of money and some of their AI solutions aren’t just keeping up with the US, they’re moving ahead.
Alibaba is one of the biggest players in Chinese AI. The company just released over 100 models, including Qwen 2.5 which is now the top open-source model in math and coding. The company’s new Qwen 2-VL vision model and text-to-video capabilities are impressive too.
Countries in the Middle East are looking left and right as they decide who to partner with.
The UAE’s presidential visit to the White House will have to navigate some tricky issues as the country looks to transform itself into an AI powerhouse. ‘We’ve got oil and money, you’ve got chips and AI,’ might be the short version of the talks.
The UAE’s AI ambitions face a crucial test in the White House talks with Chinese influence being the elephant in the room.
AI events
Here’s a list of some exciting AI events happening soon:
In other news…
Here are some other clickworthy AI stories we enjoyed this week:
How it started vs. How it’s going
openAI pic.twitter.com/pYzz1S61KR
— nishan (@notnishan) September 25, 2024
And that’s a wrap.
Have you got access to ChatGPT’s advanced voice assistant yet? It’s really cool, but I miss Sky. Maybe now that Sam’s colleagues are leaving en masse he might give us Sora as a distraction.
What do you think of Microsoft’s idea to reboot an old nuclear power station? Powering potentially dangerous AI from a nuclear disaster site sounds like a cheesy SciFi script, not a business plan.
Let us know what you think, follow us on X, and send us links to cool AI stuff we may have missed.
