IBL News

Category: Top News

  • Perplexity Launches ‘Pages’ to Present Search Results in a Visually-Attractive Format

    Perplexity Launches ‘Pages’ to Present Search Results in a Visually-Attractive Format

    IBL News | New York

    AI-driven search platform Perplexity launched a new feature called Pages, which generates and allows users to share well-formatted and visually attractive web pages based on user prompts.

    The structure of the article can be rearranged and sections removed.

    Pages’ target audience is educators, researchers, and hobbyists who need to break down complex topics into digestible content.

    Perplexity Pages featured the following examples:

    > Beginner’s Guide to Drumming by Henry

    > How to Use an AeroPress by Phi

    > Writing Kubernetes CronJobs Guide by Nikhil

    > Steve Jobs: Visionary CEO by Abdul

    > The Definitive Guide to San Francisco Tennis Courts by Raman

    > Quantum Machine Learning: The Next Leap in AI Technology by Eliot


  • ACI Learning Launches a Personalized, AI-Driven Skills Building Platform

    ACI Learning Launches a Personalized, AI-Driven Skills Building Platform

    IBL News | New York

    ACI Learning, a Denver, Colorado-based IT, cyber, and audit training leader, launched myACI, a personalized enterprise learning system for IT teams.

    It’s a skills-building platform that provides an adaptive learning experience, supports industry-recognized certifications, and includes an AI-powered career mentor.

    The company said that the company has an 80% content completion rate.

    “With myACI, we are shifting the company’s market-defining content offerings to a full-service, scalable solution enabling individuals and organizations to leverage amazing training, real-world labs, and integrated AI mentoring to understand and gain the critical skills needed to succeed today,”      said Brett Shively, CEO of ACI Learning.

    With over 1,000 courses and labs in IT, cyber, and audit, ACI Learning serves over 3,000 customers and 250,000 subscribers worldwide.

    According to the company, key features of myACI include:

    • “AI Mentor: This innovative tool empowers learners to identify skill gaps for targeted growth, engage deeply with personalized learning insights, and build custom course curriculum and content tailored to individual needs — without leaving the platform.
    • Skill Labs: With over 5,000 custom labs, the market-leading Skill Labs offer a dynamic and immersive environment to provide learners with hands-on practice and real-world application. Unlike traditional simulations, Skill Labs replicate authentic scenarios and challenges, allowing learners to hone skills in a genuine and practical setting.
    • Leader Dashboards and Reporting: A comprehensive view for leaders to track learners’ progress, customize training paths, and add internal training modules. The platform also allows organizations to upload internal training modules and specialized learning paths tailored to team members’ needs.
    • Gamified Learning: A fun and motivating way to track progress and achievements, encouraging continuous learning and engagement. Gamification features include skill points, badges, and credentials.
    • Secure Integrations: myACI securely integrates with all existing technologies, including any existing Learning Management Systems (LMS), and can scale to any size team and organization.
    • Improved Content Catalog: A thoughtfully designed catalog that curates content based on individual preferences and past use, making it easier for users to find relevant learning paths.”

    • myACI on LinkedIn

    [Disclosure: ibl.ai serves ACI Learning]

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  • Mistral Introduced Its First Code Model Called ‘Codestral’

    Mistral Introduced Its First Code Model Called ‘Codestral’

    IBL News | New York

    The French AI startup Mistral released this week its first model for coding, dubbed Codestral. It can be downloaded on HuggingFace.

    Like other code-generating models, Codestral is designed to help developers write and interact with code.

    As a 22B model, Codestral has been trained on a diverse dataset of 80+ programming languages, including Python, Java, C, C++, JavaScript, and Bash. It also performs well on more specific ones like Swift and Fortran.

    Codestral can complete coding functions, write tests, and “fill in” partial code. It can also answer questions about a codebase in English.

    Mistral’s open-source license prohibits commercial use of the code. Techcrunch wrote that the reason could be that Codestral was trained partly on copyrighted content.

    Mistral Codestral
    According to a June 2023 Stack Overflow poll, over 44% of developers said that they use AI tools. However, security researchers have warned that such tools can amplify existing bugs and security issues in software projects.

  • Anthropic’s Claude 3 Can Now Create AI Agents

    Anthropic’s Claude 3 Can Now Create AI Agents

    IBL News | New York

    Anthropic announced yesterday that it is releasing a new feature called “tool use” for its chatbot, Claude 3. This release allows people to create various assistants or agents.

    The feature enables Claude 3 to interact with external tools and APIs, perform tasks, manipulate data, and provide more dynamic responses.

    • Extract structured data from unstructured text: Pull names, dates, and amounts from invoices to reduce manual data entry.
    • Convert natural language requests into structured API calls: Enable teams to self-serve common actions (e.g., “cancel subscription”) with simple commands.
    • Answer questions by searching databases or using web APIs: Provide instant, accurate responses to customer inquiries in support chatbots.
    • Automate simple tasks through software APIs: Save time and minimize errors in data entry or file management.
    • Orchestrate multiple fast Claude subagents for granular tasks: Automatically find the optimal meeting time based on attendee availability.

    Tool use is generally available across the Claude 3 model family on the Anthropic Messages API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LLVS_a46Q&t=2s

  • OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT Edu for Universities

    OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT Edu for Universities

    IBL News | New York

    OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Edu, a GPT-4o version built for universities to deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations.

    This model can reason across text and vision and use advanced tools such as data analysis.

    “This new offering includes enterprise-level security and controls and is affordable for educational institutions,” said OpenAI.

    “We built ChatGPT Edu because we saw the success universities like the University of Oxford, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State University, and Columbia University in the City of New York were having with ChatGPT Enterprise.”

    Campuses can use ChatGPT Edu for various tasks, such as providing personalized tutoring for students and reviewing their resumes, helping researchers write grant applications, and assisting faculty with grading and feedback.

    OpenAI provided a few examples:

    • Professor Nabila El-Bassel at Columbia University built a GPT with her team that analyzes and synthesizes large datasets in seconds to inform interventions, reducing overdose fatalities. 
    • Undergraduates and MBA students in Professor Ethan Mollick’s courses at Wharton completed their final reflection assignments through discussions with a GPT trained on course materials, reporting that ChatGPT got them to think more deeply about what they’ve learned.
    • Christiane Reves, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, is developing a custom Language Buddies GPT for students to engage in German conversations suited to their language level while receiving tailored feedback. The GPT will help students build communication skills and save faculty assessment time.

    OpenAI’s said that its ChatGPT Edu was including:

    • “Access to GPT-4o flagship model, excelling in text interpretation, coding, and mathematics
    • Advanced capabilities such as data analytics, web browsing, and document summarization
    • The ability to build GPTs, custom versions of ChatGPT, and share them within university workspaces
    • Significantly higher message limits than the free version of ChatGPT
    • Improved language capabilities across quality and speed, with over 50 languages supported
    • Robust security, data privacy, and administrative controls such as group permissions, SSO, SCIM, and GPT management
    • Conversations and data are not used to train OpenAI models.”

    Pricing info was not provided, and the San Francisco research lab encouraged universities to contact sales.

  • Zapier Makes Available Personalized AI Bots Through a Chrome Extension

    Zapier Makes Available Personalized AI Bots Through a Chrome Extension

    IBL News | New York

    Zapier launched this month an experimental AI workspace where users can teach bots to work across over 6,000 apps, like Google Sheets, Slack, and Shopify.

    Powered with ChatGPT, this solution, Zapier Central, works through a Chrome extension that allows users to chat with any website, summarize and translate page content, and take action via personalized AI bots in thousands of apps.

    “People are using Zapier Central bots to save time in sales, marketing, operations, engineering, and more,” said Zapier on its Chrome Web Store page.

    These are some use cases, according to Zapier:

    • Draft a cold email based on a LinkedIn profile.
    • Perform sentiment analysis on a YouTube transcript and save it to a spreadsheet.
    • Add data about sales leads on the page to your CRM
    • Post a team update in Slack based on a change log in your project management app
    • Generate a list of key takeaways from any blog post and save that to a document

    Users can use Zapier Central for free and upgrade it. A Zapier account is required to use Central and this Chrome extension.

     

  • Anthropic Hires OpenAI’s Lead Engineer While this Company

    Anthropic Hires OpenAI’s Lead Engineer While this Company

    IBL News | New York

    Jan Leike, the leading researcher who resigned from OpenAI earlier this month before publicly criticizing the company’s approach to AI safety, has been hired by Anthropic.

    Leike was co-leading OpenAI’s Superalignment team, which intended to solve the core technical challenges of controlling superintelligent AI in the next four years, 

    OpenAI’s leadership, headed by Sam Altman, recently dissolved this team.

    In a post on X, Jan Leike said that his team at Anthropic will focus on various aspects of AI safety and security and automated alignment research.

    Anthropic has often attempted to position itself as more safety-focused than its rival company, OpenAI.

    Its researchers are currently working on techniques to control large-scale AI behavior in predictable and desirable ways.

    Years ago, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, who was once the VP of research at OpenAI, split with OpenAI after a disagreement over the company’s direction — namely OpenAI’s growing commercial focus.

    Amodei launched Anthropic with some ex-OpenAI employees, including OpenAI’s former policy lead, Jack Clark.

    Meanwhile, OpenAI has formed a new committee to oversee “critical” safety and security decisions related to the company’s projects and operations.

    OpenAI decided to staff the committee with company insiders — including Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO — rather than outside observers.

  • Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $6 Billion at a Valuation of $18 Billion

    Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $6 Billion at a Valuation of $18 Billion

    IBL News | New York

    Elon Musk’s owned xAI announced yesterday that it raised $6B Series B from investors, such as Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, and Kingdom Holding, at a pre-money valuation of $18 billion.

    In November 2023, xAI released the chatbot Grok-1 as open-source (but without any training code). Months later, it announced the Grok-1.5 model with long context capability and Grok-1.5V with image understanding.

    “The funds from the round will be used to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies,” said the company. xAI is hiring now for numerous roles.

    xAI’s pitch revolves around developing “advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity” after “understanding the true nature of the universe.”

    xAI partners closely with X Corp to bring its technology to more than 500 million users of the X app.

     

  • OpenAI Improves ChatGPT, Allowing It to Import Files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive

    OpenAI Improves ChatGPT, Allowing It to Import Files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive

    IBL News | New York

    OpenAI updated its signature ChatGPT to import files—including tables and charts—directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive and its apps, such as Google Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

    This capability, which understands datasets for analysis improvements, will be available in OpenAI’s new flagship model, GPT-4o, over the coming weeks for ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise users.

    To perform these in-depth analyses, users start by uploading one or more data files directly from Drive and OneDrive, and ChatGPT will analyze their data by writing and running Python code on their behalf. It can handle various data tasks, like merging and cleaning large datasets, creating charts, and uncovering insights.

    This makes it easier for beginners to perform in-depth analyses and saves experts time on routine data-cleaning tasks.

    ChatGPT conducts data exploration of customer data allocated to massive datasets. For example, it can combine spreadsheets of monthly expenses and create a pivot table categorized by expense type. Or they can select a Google Sheet with their company’s latest user data directly from Google Drive and ask ChatGPT to create a chart showing retention rates by cohort.

    Users can customize and interact with bar, line, pie, and scatter plot charts in the conversation. They can also hover over chart elements, ask additional questions, or select colors. When ready, they can download the chart for presentations or documents.

    In addition, ChatGPT suggests prompts to go deeper into the analysis.

    ChatGPT Charts Blog Summary v3

     

     
  • A Start-Up that Uses AI Avatars for 1-1 Tutorship Secures $35.5 Million

    A Start-Up that Uses AI Avatars for 1-1 Tutorship Secures $35.5 Million

    IBL News | New York

    Praktika, a Palo Alto, California–based start-up that lets users create personalized AI avatars as 1-1 tutors for learning languages through its app, secured a $35.5 million Series A funding round led by Blossom Capital.

    The round follows a $2.5 million seed fundraiser by Creator Ventures and Blue Wire Capital.

    Praktika claims it has generated $20 million in the last year, with 1.2 million active monthly users.

    AI avatars tailor lessons for users by mimicking human-to-human interaction and speaking with several accents, such as American, British, Asian, and Indian.