This Week in AI

Anthropic grabs the lead with Claude 3

Anthropic, backed by tech heavy weights Google, Amazon, and Salesforce, has released their latest generative AI model, Claude 3. It comes in three sizes (Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku), has multimodal capability, and according to benchmarks published by Anthropic, it outperforms the previous king of the AI world, Open AI’s GPT-4, in important metrics like content creation, code generation, and conversing in non-English languages. This seems to born out by early reviews, too. Anthropic claims the Sonnet version is also twice as fast as Claude 2/2.1. To be fair though, Claude 3 is coming almost a year after the release of GPT-4, so it really ought to be in the lead.

Claude 3 is the most human AI yet

Early testing by Every reveals that Claude 3 can be “warm” and human feeling and describes it as a “breakthrough for users”. Every tested Claude 3’s ability to provide sound editing advice, and they even tried to put it to the test…asking it to help them convince someone to follow Jesus. Check out this article to find out how it did, and to learn more about Claude 3 pricing, capabilities, and how you can get it.

Open AI: Elon Musk wanted us to merge with Tesla or take full control

As early information emerges from the lawsuit that Musk files against Open AI, Open AI is spilling the beans and sharing email communications between their leadership and the billionaire, Musk. This short article from AI News explores the latest from what is quickly becoming AI gossip corner.

Demis Hassabis on Gemini, AGI, and the future of AI

An interview with my old boss, Demis Hassabis. It’s a fun conversation that’s worth the hour.

AI Innovation

Prompt engineering is dead

Prompt engineering is dead; Long live prompt engineering. Such is the premise of this IEEE Spectrum article that explores the use of LLMs to generate AI prompts, a process known as autotuned prompting. Prompting has become an art form, but prompts engineered for one LLM may not work well on another, or even on another version of the same LLM. It’s the Wild West. This article explores the space.

Stable Diffusion 3 research paper

Details on Stability’s latest text to image model which seems to deliver the best image quality of any model yet. Specifically, it finally seems to get text right, at least most of the time. They use diffusion transformers, the same technique used by Open AI’s Sore video generation platform, to deliver impressive results. The paper explains how, and includes lots of images generated by Stable Diffusion 3.

AlphaGeometry: An Olympiad-level AI system for geometry

DeepMind continues to crank out research paper after research paper, pushing the bounds of AI capabilities, particularly focused on solving challenges in science and mathematics. This paper explains how they built an AI to solve geometry problems. Why is it important? It’s another step forward in building machines that can reason, a vital capability for the AGIs of the future, something DeepMind hints at in final paragraphs. The paper was released in January, but I’m sharing it here in case you missed it.

AI Insights

Turn Generative AI from an existential threat into a competitive advantage

Harvard Business Review: CEOs and senior leaders must make sure that AI is treated as a fundamental part of company strategy, not just a technological issue to be delegated to IT. In that sense, it’s different from cloud computing, where the decision of how much to rely on external cloud providers versus build in-house hosting capability is not quite strategic. Generative AI, by contrast, can and should affect the customer value proposition directly. Even if generative AI is not an existential threat, leaders should push their organizations to add capabilities preemptively to make sure they don’t fall behind.

How AI could disrupt Hollywood

Excellent Vanity Fair article on the future role Generative AI might play in the production of movies. Over a year ago, Gartner Group predicted that by 2030, over 80% of a Hollywood blockbuster movie would be created using AI. With Open AI’s recent release of Sora, that prediction is no longer looking as far fetched. The same way Amazon closed shopping malls, will AI turn the giant sound stages of Hollywood into pickleball courts? Only time will tell. The only thing that’s for sure: massive change is coming to the film industry, and sooner rather than later.

Toolkit for the Future

Melio: Pay and get paid, exactly how you want

Melio is a free and easy-to-use payment solution that helps US small businesses to pay any expense by bank transfer or credit card - even where cards are not accepted. With no setup or monthly fees, users can pay with a bank transfer for free, or a credit card while the vendor receives a check or bank transfer. Additional features let customers pay over time and allow you to accept international payments. If you’re a small business like I am, Melio is really worth taking a look at.

Notion: The tool I didn’t know I needed until I tried it

I’ve only just started to tap into Notion myself, but boy has it changed the way I work. A simple to use tool that helps you to organize information, thoughts, to-do lists, calendars, articles, tasks, notes, discussions, and more. It’s replaced a bunch of disparate apps and enabled me to work in one, well-organized space. And the team collaboration features make it a breeze to work together and share insights and information so you have less meetings! It has easy-to-use, powerful features and templates to get you started quickly. Notion is a calm, clear place to focus on the things that actually matter to you. Give it a go today.