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- U.S. Army Tests Robots with Guns and Microsoft Redesigns Copilot
U.S. Army Tests Robots with Guns and Microsoft Redesigns Copilot
Plus, How To Be Irreplaceable in the Era of AI
Steve Brown
October 03, 2024
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The week’s most exciting and relevant AI news and analysis
This Week in AI
The new Microsoft Copilot Interface
Microsoft’s recent acqui-hire of talent from Inflection AI is now showing dividends in their latest release of Copilot, which is now a more personalized AI assistant. New features include the ability for Copilot to see what you’re looking at, a virtual news presenter to read you the latest headlines, a voice feature similar to OpenAI’s advanced voice mode, and “Think Deeper” mode, which takes more time to deliver higher quality answers to complex questions. Copilot has been redesigned with a totally new interface, personalization features, and updates for mobile, web, and Windows versions of Microsoft apps.
Uh oh. Right from the “disturbing but somehow inevitable” category comes the news that the U.S. Army has sent at least one Quadruped-Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV), perhaps better summarized as a robot dog with a gun, to Saudi Arabia for testing. It appears to be fitted with an AR-15/M-16-pattern rifle on a rotating turret and will fill most of our nightmares for the coming months. 🤖 🔫
A Quadrupedal-Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) goes over rehearsals at Red Sands IEC in the CENTCOM AOR Sept. 18, 2024. (Dean John Kd De Dios/U.S. Army)
Quick Hits
Apple Intelligence Has a Release Timeframe—iPhone users wanting to experience Apple Intelligence will see the first new features (AI photo editing, notification, and email summaries) in mid-October with iOS 18.1. ChatGPT integration, AI-generated emojis, and the Image Playground will likely follow, with iOS 18.2 coming in December. Not all iPhones will get the updates. 📲
Accenture and Nvidia Join Forces - Accenture has created a new business group focused on helping clients speed up efforts to build agentic AI using Nvidia platforms.
Video: Meet Tesla' Bot’s Biggest Competitor 🤖
This is an interview with Brett Adcock, CEO of Figure AI, perhaps the world’s leading humanoid robotics company. Adcock discusses Figure’s partnership with BMW, his approach to AI development, and Figure’s plans to cost-reduce their Figure 03 robot and ramp high-volume manufacturing starting in 2025. (1h 2m)
AI Tech and Innovation
Late last year, Sam Altman met with TSMC, Samsung, and Hynix executives to discuss his vision for the future of AI and the incredible capital investment he believes it requires. Rumors abound that he made a poor impression. Altman was perceived as over-ambitious, over-optimistic, and unrealistic about the risks of such a huge investment.
At an invitation-only developer event in San Francisco this week, OpenAI leaders revealed new APIs for customers who integrate OpenAI models into their products and services. The new capabilities streamline integration, improve fine-tuning, speed up inference, and reduce costs.
AI Insights
Three-quarters of workers are concerned that AI will make jobs obsolete, and about two-thirds are worried their jobs will be eliminated (Source: EY Study). What can we do to make ourselves robot-proof? Pascal Bornet, author of Irreplaceable: The Art of Standing Out in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, shares three vital competencies to successfully navigate the future: human-ready, AI-ready, and change-ready.
In a recent blog post, entrepreneur Vinod Khosla says he expects AI to do most jobs better, faster, and cheaper than humans, thus reducing the need for human labor. He points to the need for government regulation on AI and suggests moving to a 3-day working week. Ultimately, he believes Universal Basic Income (UBI) is needed to ensure equitable distribution of wealth. 🫰
“I estimate that 80% of 80% of all jobs, maybe more, can be done by an AI. Be it primary care doctors, psychiatrists, salespeople, oncologists, farm workers or assembly line workers, structural engineers, chip designers, you name it.”
Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer of deep learning and artificial intelligence and known as one of the ‘godfathers of AI’ alongside giants like Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun, believes AI could damage the fabric of human society and carries unanticipated risks. He has called for a moratorium on AI development. ☠️
Relative newcomers to the world of artificial intelligence will find this AI glossary a helpful way to spin up on terms you may have heard but aren’t quite sure of yet. Dive in to learn the meanings of terms, including alignment, emergence, foom, and the stochastic parrot. 🦜
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