Welcome to cutting-edge innovation and advancement in the fast-changing world of artificial intelligence. Our objective is to keep a continual pulse on the industry and to provide strategic advice and direction.

We’re here to guide, inform, and inspire you on this exciting path, whether you’re a tech expert or just starting with AI. You will find the latest AI, technology, and business news, including further thoughts and insights.

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• New York Times sues Open AI – 27/12/2023
• AI beats humans at physical games – 21/12/2023
• AI life calculator – 21/12/2023
• AI music creations – 21/12/2023
• Bill Gates AI predictions for 2024 – 21/12/2023
• AI cannot be named ‘The Inventor’ – 20/12/2023
• Salesforce has upgraded Einstein Copilot – 18/12/2023
• AI used to design AI – 16/12/2023
• Microsoft unveils its new compact AI model Phi-2 – 15/12/2023
• OpenAI demos a control method for superintelligent AI – 14/12/2023
• Intel unveils new AI chip – 14/12/2023
• Midjourney Alpha is here – 13/12/2023
• French AI startup raises $414 million – 10/12/2023
• EU agree on AI regulation – 9/12/2023
• X unveils chatbot Grok – 8/12/2023
• Gemini AI model launched – 6/12/2023
• X.ai – Elon Musk’s AI company seeks to raise $1Billion – 5/12/2023
• New AI alliance launched – 5/12/2023
• OpenAI delays GPT store – 3/12/2023
• Google AI instrument playground – 1/12/2023

New York Times sues Open AI – 27/12/2023

Microsoft and OpenAI are the subject of a lawsuit initiated by The New York Times, alleging that they violated copyright law by unlawfully utilising millions of their articles to train AI models. [Techcrunch]

AI beats humans at physical games – 21/12/2023

ETH Zurich researchers developed CyberRunner, an AI robot that learns to play a labyrinth maze game, surpassing the previous human record by over 6%.

AI life calculator – 21/12/2023

Life2vec is an AI calculator that predicts death and financial status using income, profession, and medical records. It has a 78% accuracy rate and considers factors like smoking, exercise, gender, mental health, and leadership roles. [The Standard]

AI music creations – 21/12/2023

Microsoft has partnered with AI music startup Suno to integrate its technology into Copilot, allowing users to create complete musical compositions from text. [Venturebeat]

Bill Gates AI predictions for 2024 – 21/12/2023

Bill Gates thinks AI will radically transform jobs, healthcare, and education. [Business Insider]

AI cannot be named ‘The Inventor’ – 20/12/2023

The UK’s Supreme Court has ruled that a machine cannot be named as the inventor of new products or ideas on a patent. [Financial Times]

MN Tech thoughts – This case has being ongoing since 2018 and aims to address ‘machine’ rights and protection. It is event that there is a clear distinction between human and machine creativity, however it will become harder when there is more co-creativity with GenAI in the future.   

Salesforce has upgraded Einstein Copilot – 18/12/2023

Salesforce has upgraded its Einstein Copilot, an AI assistant, to retrieve information from unstructured data like PDFs and emails. The upgrade is expected to be popular among sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, and IT professionals. Einstein Copilot Search also enhances AI search capabilities. The Data Cloud Vector Database will be piloted in February 2024.

MN Tech thoughts – We are going to see more platforms exploring multi-modal technology to view other forms of unstructured data. Also, there is huge interest in using cloud vector databases in order to give extra domain accuracy to queries. 

AI used to design AI – 16/12/2023

Scientists from MIT and the University of California have discovered that large AI models can automatically create smaller AI tools without human intervention. This breakthrough is the first step towards self-evolving AI, as larger models can build smaller ones. These models, known as tiny machine learning, or TinyML, can perform specific tasks in various fields, such as facial recognition and hearing aid devices. The team aims to create these AIs in the future. [Business insider]

MN Tech thoughts – We are going to see a lot more of this in the future. Already, many developers are coding using AI with great effect. Having the ability to produce niche AI models quickly opens the door to many creative technical possibilities. 

Microsoft unveils its new compact AI model Phi-2 – 15/12/2023

Microsoft Research has released Phi-2, a 2.7 billion-parameter language model, enhancing its performance on various benchmarks, surpassing models up to 25x larger, promoting research and development in language models. [Microsoft]

MN Tech thoughts – We are going to see a raft of smaller AI models that will be more efficient. If choosing a partner for your LLM/Generative AI, please choose carefully as there are a new ones that are springing up everywhere. Many are getting very powerful by with reduced cost. 

OpenAI demos a control method for superintelligent AI – 14/12/2023 openAIcontrol

OpenAI is launching a superalignment program to control a superintelligent AI system, aiming to align it with human goals. The project, which will allocate 20% of its compute, aims to have solutions by 2027. OpenAI is offering $10 million in grants to encourage further research on alignment approaches. [IEEE Spectrum]

Intel unveils new AI chip – 14/12/2023

Intel has introduced new AI chips, including Gaudi3, a generative software chip, to compete with Nvidia and AMD. The chips will launch next year. Intel also introduced Core Ultra chips for Windows and fifth-generation Xeon server chips, featuring an NPU for faster AI program execution.

MN Tech thoughts – AI chip development is expected to accelerate due to growing demand for specialized chips in various industries, advancements in chip technology, increased investment, edge computing needs, competition among tech giants, customization for specific tasks, global supply chain improvements, government support, collaboration between academia and industry, and integration of emerging technologies like quantum computing.

Midjourney Alpha is here – 13/12/2023

Midjourney Alpha, a popular image-generating AI service with over 17.5 million users on Discord, has begun testing an “alpha” version of its website, midjourney.com, that allows users to generate imagery directly on the platform. The website’s interface is minimalistic and clean, with a blank text bar marked “Imagine” and a visual interface for adjusting prompt settings. [VentureBeat]

MN Tech thoughts – Midjourney has revolutionised GenAI art creation and they continue to innovate for their growing user-base. I am sure in the future, they will be looking at commercial ways of integrating their creation platform to others. This will help transform the industry as well as increase their user-base.

French AI startup raises $414 million – 10/12/2023

French startup Mistral AI has closed its Series A funding round, raising €385 million ($2 billion) and opening its commercial platform. The company, co-founded by Google’s DeepMind and Meta alums, is working on foundational models with an open technology angle.

MN Tech thoughts – This is a significant step in AI. As more companies race to be ring-fenced AI systems, Mistral is going towards a smaller, powerful, open-souced model. This may be another AI company to keep an eye for.

EU agree on AI regulation – 9/12/2023

The EU has announced a provisional agreement on the EU AI Act, marking the first dedicated law on artificial intelligence. The legislation establishes a global regulatory framework for AI systems, ensuring safety, legality, trustworthiness, and respect for fundamental rights. The Act categorises risks into four levels to foster responsible innovation and investment in AI across Europe.

MN Tech thoughts – This has been on the cards for a while and will have a huge impact on the AI industry. This is just a political agreement at this stage and the legal framwork will be launched early 2024. 

X unveils chatbot Grok – 8/12/2023

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, has been rolled out to all US Premium+ subscribers, with English-language users expected to access it in about a week. This is X’s first step in using a front-end AI in its operations.

Gemini AI model launched – 6/12/2023

Google and Alphabet have introduced Gemini, their most significant and capable AI model, with state-of-the-art performance across leading benchmarks. Gemini is optimised for Ultra, Pro, and Nano sizes and is built to be multimodal, understand, operate across, and combine different types of information. It is the most flexible model yet, running efficiently on data centres and mobile devices. [Deepmind – Google]

MN Tech thoughts – Google’s Gemini AI platform allows organisations to develop internal search engines and chatbots and access sophisticated AI capabilities. It transforms technological interactions, improves customer service, and delivers personalised help 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For AI model training and serving, Gemini is linked with Google’s cloud infrastructure. Another one to watch is the nano version that allows AI processing on devices. This may be an opportunity for many companies.

X.ai Elon musk’s AI company seeks to raise $1Billion – 5/12/2023

Elon Musk’s AI startup, X.AI, has filed with the SEC to raise up to $1 billion in an equity offering. The company has already raised nearly $135 million from four investors, with the first sale occurring on November 29. X.AI aims to understand the true nature of the universe and compete with companies like OpenAI, Google’s Bard technology, and Anthropic’s Claude chatbot. The company is part of Musk’s portfolio, including X Corp, Tesla, Boring Company, and Neuralink.

MN Tech thoughts – Definetly one to watch. 

New AI alliance launched – 5/12/2023

Facebook’s Meta and IBM have formed the AI Alliance, promoting an “open-science” approach to AI development. The alliance, including Dell, Sony, AMD, Intel, and universities, aims to build the future of AI through open scientific exchange and innovation. The alliance will lobby regulators for favourable legislation. [The Guardian]

OpenAI delays ChatGPT marketplace – 3/12/2023

OpenAI has postponed the launch of its custom GPT store until early 2024, citing customer feedback and the surprise ouster of CEO Sam Altman. The custom GPTs, early versions of AI assistants, are expected to perform real-world tasks and allow users to share their GPTs for earning money. [Reuters]

MN Tech thoughts – The store is a masterstroke by OpenAI as it will allow many to produce ‘skinned’ versions of ChatGPT for specific niche applications. We will see a huge rise in whitelabled LLMs and GenAI in the next few years. This is a great way to have powerful LLM turnkey technology. 

Google AI instrument playground – 1/12/2023

Users can create music using over 100 different instruments from around the world thanks to Google’s “Instrument Playground” AI experiment. Users can choose an instrument, MusicLM generates a 20-second sound clip and can customize it with adjectives. The experiment also offers modes like “Ambient,” “Beat,” and “Pitch,” and an Advanced mode for layering and looping up to four instruments.

MN Tech thoughts – With the massive interest in Generative AI, we will see more models that will help create new content, like music. The interest is fuelled by huge benefits, from reduced costs to greater creativity, increased productivity, and dynamic personalisation.

View previous months AI technology and business news:

• AI technology business news May 2024
• AI technology business news April 2024
• AI technology business news March 2024
• AI technology business news February 2024
• AI technology business news January 2024
• AI technology business news December 2023
• AI technology business news in November 2023