TLDR AI 2024-08-05

CHARACTER CO-FOUNDERS RETURN TO GOOGLE

Noam Shazeer, one of the authors of the original Transformer paper, is returning to Google after Character.AI licensed its tech for 2x the last funding valuation.

THREE NEW ADDITIONS TO GEMMA 2

Google is adding a new 2B parameter model, safety content classifier model, and model interpretability tool to the Gemma 2 family.

MICROSOFT SAYS OPENAI IS NOW A COMPETITOR IN AI AND SEARCH

Microsoft has classified OpenAI as a competitor in its latest annual report, despite being OpenAI's biggest investor and long-term partner, marking a shift in their relationship.

SCALING INFERENCE COMPUTE WITH REPEATED SAMPLING

AUDIO-VISUAL QUESTION ANSWERING IN VIDEOS

Researchers have developed a Temporal-Spatial Perception Model (TSPM) to improve the ability to answer questions related to visual and audio cues in videos.

REAL-TIME HIGH-QUALITY HAND AVATARS RENDERING

XHand is a new hand avatar designed for real-time rendering in virtual environments and gaming. Unlike previous models, XHand focuses on generating detailed hand shapes, appearances, and deformations.

PROMPT POET

Character AI has open sourced its prompting construction library, which is used in production to serve millions of conversations.

MINIGRID IN JAX

A popular testing bed for RL has been accelerated in JAX.

IMAGE-TEXT PAIR GENERATION FOR VISION MODELS

SynthVLM is a new data synthesis pipeline for Vision Large Language Models (VLLMs). Instead of generating captions from images, SynthVLM uses advanced diffusion models to create high-resolution images from captions.

FUTURE OF LLMS FOR AVATARS AT GENIES

Genies is harnessing LLMs for user profiling, enabling personalized experiences by mapping behaviors to foundational traits. Its advancing chatbots and NPCs in gaming create immersive, conversational scenarios. Combining conversational data with traditional personalization techniques, Genies is elevating user engagement and providing intuitive data analysis for game devs through natural language processing.

AI EXISTENTIAL RISK PROBABILITIES ARE TOO UNRELIABLE TO INFORM POLICY

This essay critiques the use of AI existential risk probability estimates for policy making, arguing that they are too unreliable and lack a solid inductive or deductive basis, often resembling educated guesses rather than evidence-based forecasts. The authors challenge the legitimacy of these forecasts in guiding public policy, especially when linked to costly or freedom-limiting actions, and advocate for an evidence-based approach that acknowledges uncertainty in AI progression. They propose focusing on definable AI milestones for more meaningful policy decisions while cautioning against leveraging speculative existential risk probabilities in high-impact decisions.

IS AI JUDGING THE FUTURE OF GYMNASTICS OR JUST A SURVEILLANCE TOOL?

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has teamed with Fujitsu to launch an AI-assisted judging support system at the World Gymnastics Championships, aiming for fairer, more transparent scoring. The Judging Support System (JSS), which will not replace judges, offers 3D model-based second opinions in difficult cases and inquiry disputes, with scope for future improvements and broader applications. Despite concerns over replacing human judgment, the JSS may enhance scoring accuracy and consistency, vital in a sport where minimal point differences greatly impact rankings and athletes' careers.

NETWORKS THAT COMPRESS THEMSELVES (GITHUB GIST)

By including the size of the network in the loss function, You can train a model that improves in accuracy and is self quantized to be smaller.

GITHUB MODELS

GitHub has announced a competitor to Hugging Face's model hosting service.

REDDIT CEO SAYS MICROSOFT NEEDS TO PAY TO SEARCH THE SITE

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is calling for tech giants like Microsoft to negotiate terms for using Reddit data in AI models, citing unauthorized scraping and misuse.