September 17, 2024

# 182 - Alexa 2.0, MiniMax, Surskever raises $1B, SB 1047 approved

1 hour 38 minutes

Our 182nd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! With hosts Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.

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In this episode:

- OpenAI's move into hardware production and Amazon's strategic acquisition in AI robotics.

- Advances in training language models with long-context capabilities and California's pending AI regulation bill.

- Strategies for safeguarding open weight LLMs against adversarial attacks and China's rise in chip manufacturing.

- Sam Altman's infrastructure investment plan and debates on AI-generated art by Ted Chiang.

Timestamps + Links:

(00:00:00) Intro / Banter

(00:05:15) Response to listener comments / corrections

Tools & Apps

(00:07:32) Amazon Picks Anthropic to Power Alexa 2.0

(00:12:12) Forget Sora — MiniMax is a new realistic AI video generator and it’s seriously impressive

Applications & Business

(00:14:56) Ilya Sutskever’s startup, Safe Superintelligence, raises $1B

(00:22:20) TSMC’s A16 Process Creates a Buzz Before Mass Production, as OpenAI Reportedly Secures Capacity

(00:29:13) Amazon hires the founders of AI robotics startup Covariant

(00:33:33) OpenAI weighs changes to corporate structure amid latest funding talks

(00:37:43) Chinese GPU-maker XCT, once valued at $2.1B, is on the verge of collapse — shareholders now suing founder

(00:40:34) TSMC aims to ready next-gen silicon photonics for AI in 5 years

Projects & Open Source

(00:44:10) Alibaba releases new AI model Qwen2-VL that can analyze videos more than 20 minutes long

Research & Advancements

(00:48:32) Fire-Flyer AI-HPC: A Cost-Effective Software-Hardware Co-Design for Deep Learning

(00:55:52) 100M Token Context Windows

(01:03:50) Smaller, Weaker, Yet Better: Training LLM Reasoners via Compute-Optimal Sampling

(01:06:16) AnyGraph : An Effective and Efficient Graph Foundation Model Designed to Address the Multifaceted Challenges of Structure and Feature Heterogeneity Across Diverse Graph Datasets

Policy & Safety

(01:08:16) California Legislature Approves Bill Proposing Sweeping A.I. Restrictions

(01:11:14) Tamper-Resistant Safeguards for Open-Weight LLMs

(01:17:12) China's chip capabilities just 3 years behind TSMC, teardown shows

(01:20:50) China Threatens to Cut Off ASML Over New US Chip Curbs

(01:23:22) Altman Infrastructure Plan Aims to Spend Tens of Billions in US

Synthetic Media & Art

(01:26:23) NaNoWriMo is in disarray after organizers defend AI writing tools

(01:28:54) Tom Hanks warns followers to be wary of 'fraudulent' ads using his likeness through AI

(01:30:48) Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art

(01:34:28) Outro

...more

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By Skynet Today

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