IBL News

Category: Top News

  • OpenAI Hired Former Director of the NSA and Retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone

    OpenAI Hired Former Director of the NSA and Retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone

    IBL News | New York

    OpenAI announced this month it hired Paul M. Nakasone, a retired U.S. Army general and former director of the National Security Agency, for its Board of Directors.

    “A leading expert in cybersecurity, Nakasone’s appointment reflects OpenAI’s commitment to safety and security, and underscores the growing significance of cybersecurity as the impact of AI technology continues to grow,” explained the company.

    Nakasone will join the Board’s Safety and Security Committee, which recommends protecting the large AI training supercomputers and securing our sensitive model weights and data.

    “AI has the potential to deliver significant benefits in this area for many institutions frequently targeted by cyber attacks like hospitals, schools, and financial institutions,” said the company.

    General Nakasone stated, “I look forward to contributing to OpenAI’s efforts to ensure artificial general intelligence is safe and beneficial to people around the world.”

    He was pivotal in the creation of U.S. Cyber Command, the longest-serving leader of USCYBERCOM, and also led the National Security Agency, where he was charged with safeguarding the United States’ digital infrastructure and advancing the country’s cyber defense capabilities.

    Nakasone joins current board members Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers, Bret Taylor and Sam Altman, as well as some new board members the company announced in March: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former executive vice president and global general counsel of Sony; and Fidji Simo, CEO and chair of Instacart.

    OpenAI on Monday announced a partnership with Apple that includes a ChatGPT-Siri integration as well as the hiring of two top executives:

    • Sarah Friar, previously CEO of Nextdoor and finance chief at Square, is joining as chief financial officer.

    • Kevin Weil, an ex-president at Planet Labs, will be the new chief product officer. Weil was previously a senior vice president at Twitter and a vice president at Facebook and Instagram.

     

  • NVIDIA Released Open Synthetic Data Generation Pipeline for Training LLMs

    NVIDIA Released Open Synthetic Data Generation Pipeline for Training LLMs

    IBL News | New York

    NVIDIA announced Nemotron-4 340B, a family of open models developers can use to generate synthetic data for training LLMs for commercial applications across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, retail, and other industries.

    Robust datasets with high-quality training data are prohibitively expensive and difficult to access. Synthetic data mimics the characteristics of real-world data.

    Through a uniquely permissive open model license, Nemotron-4 340B gives developers a free, scalable way to generate synthetic data that can help build powerful LLMs.

    The Nemotron-4 340B family includes base, instruct, and reward models that form a pipeline to generate synthetic data for training and refining LLMs.

    The models are optimized with NVIDIA NeMo, an open-source framework for end-to-end model training, including data curation, customization, and evaluation.

    They’re also optimized for inference with the open-source NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM library.

    Nemotron-4 340B can be downloaded from Hugging Face.

  • “Generative AI Is More Creative than 99% of People,” Stated a Research

    “Generative AI Is More Creative than 99% of People,” Stated a Research

    IBL News | New York

    Researchers at The University of Arkansas found that AI is more creative than 99% of people.

    They presented these findings in a paper published in Scientific Reports.

    The study showed how 151 humans were put against ChatGPT-4 in three tests designed to measure divergent thinking, which is considered an indicator of creative thought.

    “Not a single human won,” they stated.

  • Pluralsight Introduced AI Prompt and Cloud Sandboxes

    Pluralsight Introduced AI Prompt and Cloud Sandboxes

    IBL News | New York

    Pluralsight introduced AI Sandboxes this month, a tool that allows developers to experiment with multiple LLMs and improve data output by comparing results.

    In addition, users can experiment with sandbox sessions on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud without accidental charges.

    A no-setup SageMaker Studio simplifies the process of coding in multiple languages.

    According to Pluralsight, this hands-on tool facilitates automating, generating, classifying, summarizing, debugging, refactoring, coding, scripting, and innovating.

  • Gen AI Is Transforming Skills and Work, According to the Coursera 2024 Report

    Gen AI Is Transforming Skills and Work, According to the Coursera 2024 Report

    IBL News | New York

    The learning platform Coursera released the Global Skills Report 2024 yesterday. It identifes critical skills and credential trends for employees in 100+ countries.

    The report, which draws on data from 184 million learners, covers domains like GenAI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and other technology and business areas.

    “With Generative AI predicted to automate 60% to 70% of work activities, demand for GenAI skills is surging,” said Coursera’s CEO Jeff Maggioncalda.

    “Individuals are eagerly pursuing AI literacy: every minute, four people enroll in GenAI content on Coursera—up from one per minute in 2023, but in contrast, only 5% of organizations are actively reskilling their workforce at scale.”

    “Business leaders must upskill and reskill employees to adapt to this dynamic landscape,” he added.

    [Download the Report]

  • Apple’s Siri Gets a Revamped Look Along With an Enhancement with ChatGPT

    Apple’s Siri Gets a Revamped Look Along With an Enhancement with ChatGPT

    IBL News | New York

    With a makeover with the system Apple Intelligence [Explanatory video], Siri got a revamped look, including a new icon and glowing indicator light around the edges.

    As announced during the WWDC this Monday, the new Siri will become even more capable of taking action in and across apps.

    Enhancements to the smart assistant will make Siri more natural and personal, with voice or texting interactions.

    During Monday’s WWDC keynote, Apple gave the example of Siri finding a photo of a user’s license, extracting its ID number, and entering it into a web form.

    The new Siri will work on Apple devices that support Apple Intelligence, specifically the iPhone 15 Pro and devices with M1 or newer chips.

    Users will soon be able to ask questions to ChatGPT questions related to their PDFs.

  • Apple Announced Plans to Infuse AI In Phones, iPads, and Macs [Video]

    Apple Announced Plans to Infuse AI In Phones, iPads, and Macs [Video]

    IBL News | New York

    Apple finally entered the generative AI competition on Monday, yesterday revealing plans to bring this technology to over a billion iPhone, iPad, and Mac users worldwide. This system, called Apple Intelligence, is free for users and will be deeply integrated, along with ChatGPT and a revamped Siri, into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. It will be available in beta this fall in U.S. English.

    Some features, software platforms, and additional languages will come over the next year.

    Powered by GPT-4o, ChatGPT will be available “later this year” within Apple’s macOS Writing Tools, which help users generate content for anything they are writing about, and Compose, which provides tools to generate images in various styles to complement their writing.

    Users won’t need to create an account, and ChatGPT subscribers can connect their accounts and access paid features right from these experiences.

    The deal with ChatGPT indicates that OpenAI has become the leading developer in the field. Its chief executive, Sam Altman, attended the Apple event.

    “Privacy protections are built in for users who access ChatGPT — their IP addresses are obscured, and OpenAI won’t store requests. ChatGPT’s data-use policies apply for users who choose to connect their account,” said the company.

    “Apple Intelligence will transform what users can do with our products — and what our products can do for our users,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, during a two-hour presentation from its Silicon Valley headquarters.

    The system will prioritize messages and notifications and offer writing tools capable of proofreading and suggesting what users have written in emails, notes, or text. It will also result in a major upgrade for Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant.

    “With brand-new systemwide Writing Tools built into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, users can rewrite, proofread, and summarize text nearly everywhere they write, including Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps.”

    Apple said that the computer processing would be done on an iPhone rather than in data centers, where personal information is more likely to be compromised. For complex requests that require more computing power, Apple has created a cloud network with Apple semiconductors that, it said, is more private because it’s not stored or accessible, even by the company.

     

    Apple said that Sir, its 10-year-old voice assistant, could remember the context of a user’s question.

    Apple demonstrated other generative AI capabilities, including automatically summarizing audio recordings, allowing customers to create movies from photos by writing a description, and cleaning up photos by removing distracting images in the background.

    “In Mail, with Priority Messages, a new section at the top of the inbox shows the most urgent emails, like a same-day dinner invitation or boarding pass. Across a user’s inbox, instead of previewing the first few lines of each email, they can see summaries without needing to open a message. For long threads, users can view pertinent details with just a tap. Smart Reply provides suggestions for a quick response, and will identify questions in an email to ensure everything is answered.”
    “Priority Notifications appear at the top of the stack to surface what’s most important, and summaries help users scan long or stacked notifications to show key details right on the Lock Screen, such as when a group chat is particularly active.”

    Priority Notifications are shown on iPhone 15 Pro.

    “In the Notes and Phone apps, users can now record, transcribe, and summarize audio. When a recording is initiated while on a call, participants are automatically notified, and once the call ends, Apple Intelligence generates a summary to help recall key points.”

    “Apple Intelligence powers exciting image creation capabilities to help users communicate and express themselves in new ways. With Image Playground, users can create fun images in seconds, choosing from three styles: Animation, Illustration, or Sketch. It’s also available in a dedicated app.”

    The new Image Playground app is shown on iPad Pro.
    “With Image Playground, users can choose from a range of concepts from categories like themes, costumes, accessories, and places; type a description to define an image; choose someone from their personal photo library to include in their image; and pick their favorite style.”

    “In Notes, users can access Image Playground through the new Image Wand in the Apple Pencil tool palette, making notes more visually engaging. Rough sketches can be turned into delightful images, and users can even select empty space to create an image using context from the surrounding area. Image Playground is also available in apps like Keynote, Freeform, and Pages, as well as in third-party apps that adopt the new Image Playground API.”

    “Users can create an original Genmoji to express themselves. By simply typing a description, their Genmoji appears, along with additional options. Users can even create Genmoji of friends and family based on their photos. Just like emoji, Genmoji can be added inline to messages, or shared as a sticker or reaction in a Tapback.”

    “The new Clean Up tool in Photos can identify and remove distracting objects in the background of a photo — without accidentally altering the subject.”

    “With Memories, users can create the story they want to see by simply typing a description. Using language and image understanding, Apple Intelligence will pick out the best photos and videos based on the description, craft a storyline with chapters based on themes identified from the photos, and arrange them into a movie with its own narrative arc. Users will even get song suggestions to match their memory from Apple Music. As with all Apple Intelligence features, user photos and videos are kept private on device and are not shared with Apple or anyone else.”

     

    Three iPhone 15 Pro screens show how users can create Memory Movies.
    A user types to Siri on iPhone 15 Pro.
    On iPhone 15 Pro, Siri answers a user’s question about scheduling a text message.

    “Siri can now take hundreds of new actions in and across apps, including finding book recommendations sent by a friend in Messages and Mail.”

    “With Apple Intelligence, Siri will be able to take hundreds of new actions in and across Apple and third-party apps. For example, a user could say, “Bring up that article about cicadas from my Reading List,” or “Send the photos from the barbecue on Saturday to Malia,” and Siri will take care of it.”

    Siri finds a friend’s book recommendations for an iPhone 15 Pro user.
  • Zuckerberg Gains Popularity in Silicon Valley After Embracing “Open-Source” AI

    Zuckerberg Gains Popularity in Silicon Valley After Embracing “Open-Source” AI

    IBL News | New York

    Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has become a popular figure in Silicon Valley among developers and technologists after embracing the open-source model for AI.

    He is now the highest-profile technology executive who supports and promotes this approach.

    Since last summer, his company has released code that anyone can freely copy, modify, and reuse — largely the opposite of what Google, OpenA, and Microsoft have done.

    The New York Times dedicated an article to him on this subject. “That stance has turned Mr. Zuckerberg into the unlikely man of the hour in many Silicon Valley developer communities, prompting talk of a “glow-up” and a kind of “Zuckaissance,” wrote the paper.

    “This technology is so important, and the opportunities are so great, that we should open source and make it as widely available as we responsibly can so that everyone can benefit,” he said in an Instagram video in January.

    The company said the model LLaMA 2, released in July, has been downloaded over 180 million times. A more powerful version of the model, LLaMA 3, released in April, reached the top of the download charts on Hugging Face, a community site for A.I. code, at record speed.

    Developers have created tens of thousands of customized AI programs on top of Meta’s software, performing everything from helping clinicians read radiology scans to creating scores of digital chatbot assistants.

    Mr. Zuckerberg’s new popularity in tech circles is striking because of his fraught history with developers.

    Mr. Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 and has long backed open-source technology. In 2011, Facebook started the Open Compute Project, a nonprofit that freely shares designs of servers and equipment inside data centers. In 2016, Facebook also developed Pytorch, an open-source software library widely used to create AI applications. The company is also sharing blueprints of computing chips that it has developed.

    Meta technologists like Yann LeCun and Joelle Pineau, who spearhead AI research, pushed the open model, which they argued would better benefit the company in the long term.

    While open-sourcing LLaMA means giving away computer code that Meta spent billions of dollars to create with no immediate return on investment, Mr. Zuckerberg calls it “good business.” As more developers use Meta’s software and hardware tools, they are more likely to become invested in its technology ecosystem, which helps entrench the company.

    The technology has also helped Meta improve its internal AI systems, aiding ad targeting and recommending more relevant content on Meta’s apps.

    “It is 100 percent aligned with Zuckerberg’s incentives and how it can benefit Meta,” said Nur Ahmed, a researcher at MIT Sloan who studies AI. “LLaMA is a win-win for everybody.”

    Competitors are taking note. In February, Google open-sourced the code for two AIs. models, Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B. Other companies, including Microsoft, Mistral, Snowflake, and Databricks, have also started offering open-source models this year.

  • GPT-4 Outperforms Human Financial Analysts In Predicting Earnings Growth, Say Researchers

    GPT-4 Outperforms Human Financial Analysts In Predicting Earnings Growth, Say Researchers

    IBL News | New York

    Researchers from the University of Chicago found that OpenAI’s GPT-4 outperforms human financial analysts in predicting future earnings growth.

    They reflected their conclusions in a working paper titled “Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models.”

    The findings could have significant implications for financial analysis and decision-making, according to VentureBeat.

    The researchers used “chain-of-thought” prompts to emulate the analytical process of a financial analyst, identifying trends, computing ratios, and synthesizing the information to form a prediction.

    They achieved a 60% accuracy in predicting the direction of future earnings, notably higher than the 53-57% range of human analyst forecasts.

    “Our results suggest that LLMs may take a central role in decision-making,” the authors concluded.

  • Sam Altman Is Building an Opaque Investment Empire of $2.8 Billion

    Sam Altman Is Building an Opaque Investment Empire of $2.8 Billion

    IBL News | New York

    As The Wall Street Journal reported, Sam Altman has quietly built an empire of investments that is a direct beneficiary of the success of OpenAI.

    Many of Altman’s startups do business with OpenAI as customers or major business partners. The arrangement puts Altman on both sides of the deal, creating a mounting list of potential conflicts.

    The holdings controlled by OpenAI’s CEO and managed by his family office are worth at least $2.8 billion, and much of the portfolio is widely unknown.

    At OpenAI, a startup valued at $86 billion, the 39-year-old entrepreneur earns just $65,000 a year.

    Altman and his venture funds have invested in over 400 companies, including big names like Stripe, Airbnb, and Reddit. He has a debt line from JPMorgan Chase, which allows him to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into private companies.

    • For example, OpenAI is in talks for a deal with Helion, a nuclear-energy startup chaired by Altman. In this deal, Helion would buy vast quantities of electricity to provide power for data centers. Altman invested $375 million in Helion in 2021. The startup signed on with Microsoft, its first customer and OpenAI’s largest investor, last year.

    Altman has recused himself from the deal talks between OpenAI and Helion, which haven’t been previously reported.

    • Last month, OpenAI announced a partnership with Reddit to pay to bring the messaging site’s content to ChatGPT and other AI products. Altman and the entities he controls own 7.6% of Reddit, making him the third-largest outside shareholder, and he briefly served as its CEO in 2014.

    Reddit’s stock shot up 10% after the announcement, boosting Altman’s stake by $69 million to $754 million. OpenAI said in a blog post that Altman didn’t lead the partnership talks.

    • Altman’s recent investments have focused on companies that aim to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom driven by OpenAI. Apex Security, in which Altman invested an undisclosed amount last summer, aims to sell cybersecurity software to companies using AI products such as ChatGPT.

    • He also invested an undisclosed amount in Exowatt, a startup tackling the clean-energy needs of big data centers used by AI companies.

    • He is an investor in Limitless, an AI startup that offers a device worn like a necklace that can record and transcribe conversations and also uses OpenAI’s software.

    The founder of Limitless, Dan Siroker, said Altman invested in his company, formerly called Rewind, long before it began using OpenAI’s technology.