AI Godfather Leaves

PLUS: The need for new ways to interact and AI brain scans

May 02, 2023

Hey folks, today we have some big hits: the Godfather of AI leaves Google, reading people’s minds, the future of chatbox UI and AI content farms in the wild.

Let’s get to it.

From our sponsor:

A Banksy got everyday investors 32% returns?

Mm-hmm, sure. So, what’s the catch?

We know it may sound too good to be true. But thousands of investors are already smiling all the way to the bank, thanks to the fine-art investing platform Masterworks.

These results aren’t cherry-picking. This is the whole bushel. Masterworks has built a track record of 13 exits, including net returns of +10.4%, +27.3%, and +35.0%, even while financial markets plummeted.

But art? Really? Okay, skeptics, here are the numbers. Contemporary art prices:

  • outpaced the S&P 500 by 131% over the last 26 years

  • have the lowest correlation to equities of any asset class

  • remained stable through the dot-com bubble and ’08 crisis

Got your attention yet? Ben’s Bites readers can skip the waitlist with this exclusive link.

See important disclosures at masterworks.com/cd 

🤌 Our Picks

Highlights if you've only got 2 minutes

1/

For those who don’t know, Geoffrey Hinton is a pretty big deal in the AI world - so much so that he’s often called the “Godfather” of it. So it’s also a pretty big deal that he’s just left Google, and according to the NYT’s article it’s because he wants to be able to speak openly about AI dangers without having to think about the impact it’ll have on them. He’s even gone as far as saying that he’s beginning to regret his life’s work, because no matter what, the bad actors will get their bad acting done. With the backdrop of concerned critics like Yudkowsky and Gary Marcus, this is quite the headline for a Tuesday.

Another article here with a good background on Hinton.

2/

Chat interfaces for LLMs - the good, the bad and what’s beyond

Let’s get a bit nerdy today. If you’re using ChatGPT or other LLMs regularly, you have felt this; a chatbot is not the easiest to interact with. Sometimes, I just want to click a button, or choose from a list, instead of typing the whole thing out.

So, what’s wrong with the chatbox UI? The glove example in this post from Amelia (Github R&D) is chef’s kiss. “The shape and material of a glove tell me how to wear it and what can I do with it. Chatboxes don’t do that. They don’t tell me what to give them and what I can expect.”

Check this talk from Linus (from Notion AI), where he goes deeper into discussing the technical bits of creating user interfaces beyond chat for interacting with AI.

3/

Wow, this is some serious futuristic Black Mirror type stuff - so much so that it’s almost hard to believe! Using a combination of fMRI scans and GPT tech, researchers have shown patients a film, and managed to decode the general idea of what the film is about. I mean that is pretty damn crazy, effectively reading someone’s mind! The model was trained to associate fMRI scan activity with known video/audio content, and then use that understanding to look at an fMRI scan and understand what the people were watching or listening to. Beyond the scary Black Mirror stuff, this could one day be used to help people with disabilities communicate - lovely stuff!

NYT coverage without paywall.

🛠️ Cool Tools

Product launches, updates and demos

  • Google translate but with a clone of my voice. (link)

  • Neural Frames - AI animation generation for everyone. (link)

  • RPG engine hacked into an AI chatbot to make an adventure game. (link)

  • New AI music - AI music covers and song generations from popular artists. (link)

  • Style AI - Build fully customizable, SEO-optimized, and ready-to-launch websites in under 60 seconds. (link)

  • Plugin Lab - Authentication and analytics for ChatGPT plugins creators who want to launch fast. (link)

  • Cyberzon - Build you own 5-day study plan for any topic. (link)

  • Landing AI - Explain your product, branding, and get a unique landing page with our generative AI. (link)

🤓 Miscellaneous

News, podcasts, videos, blogs etc

  • AI will make our society even more unequal, economists warn. (link)

  • The computer scientist peering inside AI’s black boxes. (link)

  • IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI. (link)

  • AI isn’t the app, it’s the UI. (link)

  • What do self-supervised vision transformers learn? (link)

  • Speak, Memory - An archaeology of books known to ChatGPT/GPT-4. (link)

  • The attack of AI-generated news content farms is just beginning. (link)

🎓 Learn

How-to’s and resources

  • Expanding ChatGPT code interpreter with Python packages, Deno and Lua. (link)

👋 Too many links?! I created a database for all links mentioned in these emails. Refer 1 friend using this link and I'll send over the link database.

📰 Unclassifieds

Short, sponsored links 

  • ChatGPT Skool - Step-by-step video lessons, real-world examples, 1000s of content creation prompts. Perfect for business owners, freelancers, and marketers.

  • Meet the fastest Stable Diffusion yet - Try it today using the OctoML compute service, now in early access. (link)

  • Zapier’s AI team is looking to hire a full-stack engineer. (link)

  • HackAPrompt - The first-ever prompt hacking competition, designed to enhance AI safety, launching this Friday. (link)

Have a product, service, job, event, newsletter, app, book, movie, tool, or anything you'd like to share with over 80k subscribers? 
Advertise

🖼 AI Images of the day

Funny memes and pics from around the web

Send this to 1 AI-curious friend and receive my AI project tracker database! Use this link.

How was today's email?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Reply

or to participate.