Welcome, humans.☕

What to decode:

• 🖼️ Midjourney v5.1 is incredible!

• 🧠 Warren Buffet’s take on AI

• 🔥 OpenAI’s new text-to-3D model

• 🤖 Microsoft and AMD challenge Nvidia

Read time: 4 minutes

🖼️ Midjourney v5.1 is incredible!

Free trials for Midjourney have been reactivated this weekend. The latest version, v5.1, boasts notable enhancements in coherence, sharpness, and beauty, as well as increased accuracy in response to text prompts. Notably, the model now performs better with shorter prompts, eliminating the need for artistically intricate ones.

This update challenges the idea of prompt engineers, who traditionally communicate with AI models to obtain specific outputs. As AI systems continue to learn and become more familiar with us, the need for specialized expertise in AI usage may be diminishing. The updated model's outputs are virtually indistinguishable from reality, making it a significant development for Midjourney users.

🧠 Warren Buffet’s take on AI

During Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, Warren Buffett drew parallels between artificial intelligence and the creation of the atom bomb, expressing both admiration and concern about AI's rapid progress.

He mentioned that his friend Bill Gates had introduced him to ChatGPT and acknowledged its impressive capabilities, particularly its ability to verify legal opinions. However, Buffett also voiced his apprehensions, stating that AI is not something that can be easily undone, and compared it to the creation of the atom bomb, which was developed for good reasons during World War II.

Buffett's remarks align him with other supporters of AI regulation, such as Elon Musk, Geoffrey Hinton, and the US government. This suggests that AI regulation is necessary, and world leaders are beginning to recognize its importance.

🔥 OpenAI’s new text-to-3D model

OpenAI has recently unveiled a new ambitious undertaking. They have shared their latest text-to-3D model, known as Shap-E, along with its research and code.

Shap-E boasts a remarkable ability to generate intricate and varied 3D assets in a shorter amount of time and with superior sample quality compared to its forerunner, Point-E.

While Shap-E currently has some limitations, such as only being able to handle single object prompts with basic attributes resulting in somewhat pixelated and rough outputs, the swift pace of AI development hints at the possibility of text-to-3D printing becoming a reality sooner rather than later.

🤖 Microsoft and AMD challenge Nvidia

Microsoft has teamed up with AMD on a project called "Athena" to challenge Nvidia's dominant 80% market share in the AI processor market. According to a report by Bloomberg, Microsoft has invested around $2 billion in Athena's development and dedicated several hundred employees to the project.

As part of the collaboration, Microsoft is providing engineering support to AMD, while AMD is assisting Microsoft in developing its own in-house AI chips. This move by Microsoft signals a clear intent to not only compete in the AI market, but to emerge as a dominant player, a goal shared by other tech giants like Google and Amazon who have also developed their own in-house AI chips.

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FASCINATING FINDS

• On this day - May 8th, 1879, George Selden filed for the first patent for a gasoline-driven automobile. (link)

  

• Weird but interesting - The United States Navy used Xbox controllers for their periscopes. In 2018, the US Navy equipped its submarines with Xbox 360 controllers. The control sticks for periscopes are both expensive and difficult to master. So the US Navy began to install Xbox 360 controllers as they were much cheaper. It’s not all about cost, though. As many periscope operators have used Xbox controllers in the past, they can easily transfer their skills. (link)

• Mind-boggling statistics - 89% of people have experienced “phantom vibrations” (link)

MISCELLANEOUS

(News, podcasts, videos, blogs etc)

• RedPajama introduces two open source models, 3B and 7B, from the INCITE family. (link)

• Amazon plans to rework Alexa in the age of ChatGPT. (link)

• The importance of open source AI and the challenges of liberating data - from OSI, the open source initiative. (link)

• OpenAI changed its plans and won’t train on customer data. (link)

• Amazon plans to generate photos and videos for advertisers using AI. (link)

• Open AI showcases shap-e to generate 3D objects from text. (link)

• The case for Open AI. (link)

• US sanctions drive Chinese AI companies to work without latest chips. (link)

• Meta’s bizarre AI infrastructure choice costs them $100s of millions. (link)

• America forgot about IBM Watson. Is ChatGPT Next? (link, without paywall here) pss: it’s more about Watson than ChatGPT.

• AttentionViz - A global view of transformer attention. (link)

• AI’s biggest risk is the corporations that control them. (link)

• Is ChatGPT outperforming the top 10 most popular funds in the UK? (link)

• AI tool designs mRNA vaccines that are more potent and stable. (link)

That's all for now!

As always, thanks for reading, and see you next time. 🫡