TLDR Index
TLDR

TLDR 2024-08-07

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01GENERAL

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HAMPSHIRE UNIVERSITY

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02BIG TECH & STARTUPS

OPENAI CO-FOUNDER JOHN SCHULMAN SAYS HE WILL LEAVE AND JOIN RIVAL ANTHROPIC

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman recently announced that he will leave OpenAI to join Anthropic to deepen his focus on AI alignment. The move comes less than three months after OpenAI disbanded a superalignment team that focused on ensuring that AI systems can be controlled. Schulman has worked at OpenAI since receiving a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016. Greg Brockman, another co-founder of OpenAI and its president, announced on Monday that he was taking a sabbatical for the rest of the year.

cnbc.com2 min read

‘YOU ARE A HELPFUL MAIL ASSISTANT,' AND OTHER APPLE INTELLIGENCE INSTRUCTIONS

Apple's latest developer betas contain a handful of the generative AI features that were announced at WWDC. The files for these prompts show how these features work. This article contains screenshots of some of the prompts and makes guesses at what features the prompts are related to. Instructions for how to locate the files within the macOS Sequoia 15.1 developer beta are available.

theverge.com8 min read

03SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

FIGURE REDESIGNS ITS HUMANOID ROBOT FROM THE GROUND UP FOR SLICK NEW F.02

Figure's second-generation humanoid robot is aimed at production lines in commercial settings. Its engineers took a ground-up hardware and software redesign approach to developing the robot that included upgrades to the AI systems, computer vision, battery pack, electronics, sensors, and actuators. The robot now has microphones and speakers that allow it to have one-on-one conversations with humans. A video trailer from Figure showing off the robot is available.

newatlas.com5 min read

CHINA BEGINS LAUNCHING A MEGACONSTELLATION, AND IT SOUNDS A LOT LIKE STARLINK

There are two serious efforts underway in China to develop a rival to SpaceX's Starlink project. The first batch of 18 satellites for one of those projects launched into low-Earth orbit on Tuesday on a Long March 4A rocket. Besides providing civilians with internet, the network could be used for military applications and as a diplomatic tool. The full deployment of these networks will require a significant increase in China's launch capacity.

arstechnica.com6 min read

04PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

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PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Software engineering will likely look radically different in a few years. The introduction of coding agents that complete tasks end-to-end will change how engineers work, making them more like engineering managers who spend more time on the higher level parts of coding. This will have many effects, like creating more software, more engineers, and productivity gains for companies. Marketing may even start being directed to AI agents as companies try to get them to choose their products over a rival's.

threadreaderapp.com2 min read

OPENAI: INTRODUCING STRUCTURED OUTPUTS IN THE API

OpenAI has introduced two new ways to guarantee valid inputs. The first is a new 'strict' option for function definitions and the second is a new feature option for the 'response_format' field that lets users pass a JSON schema to specify a required output. OpenAI's models will now return a 'refusal' message if a model denies a request. The new gpt-4o-2024-08-06 model is 50% cheaper on inputs and 33% on outputs compared to gpt-4o-2024-05-13. It also supports up to 16,384 tokens, up from 4,096.

simonwillison.net5 min read

05MISCELLANEOUS

RETURN-TO-OFFICE MANDATES HURT EMPLOYEE RETENTION, PRODUCTIVITY, SURVEY SAYS

Employee retention improves when employees have a say in where they work. A recent survey on employee satisfaction found that those who are allowed to choose between in-person, remote, or hybrid work are three times more likely to want to stay at their company. It also found that workers facing return-to-office mandates are 14 times less likely to 'quit and stay'. Several other studies have found similar results.

arstechnica.com5 min read

DELL MAKES CUTS TO BOOST AI PIVOT, REPORTEDLY LAYING OFF 12,500 EMPLOYEES

Dell is cutting around 10% of its workforce. Impacted employees were mostly in the company's sales and marketing teams. The company is switching up its sales teams to put more emphasis on AI products and changing how it handles data center sales. This is the second round of mass layoffs for the company in the past 15 months.

links.tldrnewsletter.com2 min read