Biden signs historic executive order on AI

Biden put his stamp on the hot issue of AI regulation Monday, signing a sweeping executive order. Turbocharged with the considerable power of the Defense Production Act, which allows the White House to directly intervene in industry in times of national emergency, the order requires that powerful AI systems be certified as safe; safeguard privacy; advance equity and civil rights; protect consumers, patients, students, and workers; promote innovation and competition; and advance American interests abroad. The order also requires that the federal government itself use AI responsibly, and to modernize the federal AI infrastructure.

Here’s the summary Fact Sheet:

Fact Sheet on Biden’s Executive Order on AI

And here’s the new US government website on AI - and yes, they’re hiring!

AI.gov

The AI competitive landscape

Private markets research firm Sacra has mapped out the competition at the high end of the AI wars, comparing top-rated models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Mosaic. Each rated model is ranked on smarts (ELO), speed (latency), and cost ($ per 1,000 tokens.)

TL;DR: GPT-4 rules, but is pricy and slow; Claude is equally smart, but a hair faster and a lot less expensive; and Llama and MPT are noticeably less clever, but faster and waaay more budget friendly.

ChatGPT vs competitors

OpenAI releases yet another GPT upgrade

Just ahead of OpenAI’s first-ever Developer Conference on Monday, the company drops another GPT-4 upgrade: the first piece, known colloquially as All Tools, allows the user to simultaneously employ all the major capabilities (browsing, data analysis, and image generation) without all the tedious tool-switching formerly required. The second piece is a document analyzer that combines data analysis and PDF chatbot capabilities.

Monday’s DevCon is gonna be lit!

Google Maps gets AI upgrade

Google’s venerable Maps app has gotten an AI facelift. It rolls out Immersive View, which allows you to get a more realistic view of your route than the traditional flat-map or satellite views. It also contains an Augmented Reality function called Lens, which permits you to scan your surroundings and find your route or the nearest coffeeshop. Maps also helps EV drivers find the nearest charging station, and enhances search with more relevant images.

Google Maps’ AI upgrade

Robot dog “Spot” learns to speak with ChatGPT

Boston Dynamics builds some of the best mobile robots in the world. In these videos, they show how stuffing AI into the brains of their robo-dog model “Spot,” they can make a highly capable tour guide, who is now an instant YouTube star.

Quick video of Spot-bot personas

Complete video 8:35

Now add a walrus

Simon Willison, a developer of open-source tools for data journalism, recounts how he learned how to prompt engineer some striking images from the newly upgraded DALL-E 3 text-to-image generator. One of his favorite stress tests for an image generator is to craft a detailed image, then append the phrase, “Now add a walrus.” The image below started out as an elegant stork viewing the races at Monaco, then was transformed by commands to add a walrus, and then make both characters muppets. Instructive, and so fun.

Now add a walrus

AI tidies up Wikipedia’s references - and boosts reliability

This article from Nature recounts how researchers used an LLM connected to a browser to identify suspect citation links in Wikipedia articles, then search the web for better citations.

AI tidies up Wikipedia’s references

Pixelated 8-bit images of famous masterpieces by ChatGPT

Digital artist @ARTiV3RSE asked ChatGPT to create 8-bit pixelated images of famous paintings. The results are fascinating and whimsical. Below, see Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”

Pixelated 8-bit images of famous masterpieces

New Beatles song released tomorrow with a little help from AI

Bygone Fab Four bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison will join survivors Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr tomorrow, November 2, on a new Beatles release titled “Now and Then.” The song incorporates a rough demo of the tune recoded by Lennon before his untimely death, plus a guitar part recorded by Harrison years later, both cleaned up by modern AI-fueled sound technology. McCartney and Starr then added bass, drums, piano, and backing vocals to create the finished track.

“Final” new Beatles song to be released tomorrow.

AI diagnoses diabetes from voice recordings

Researchers at a health technology company have developed methods to diagnose Type 2 diabetes, which affects 37 million Americans and over a half-billion persons worldwide, using only short audio clips of the patient’s voice.

AI diagnoses diabetes from voice recordings

AI diagnoses heart disease from heart sounds

Most doctors suck at accurately identifying heart valve problems through a stethoscope. This is the reason echocardiograms were invented. Now researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ have developed an AI system that can accurately detect disease in heart valves using just a short audio clip.

AI diagnoses heart disease from heart sounds

30 major healthcare organizations band together for AI

30 large healthcare organizations, with a collective presence in 42 of the 50 US states, have launched a national collaborative to develop AI health solutions. The collaborative is called VALID AI, and aims to explore uses, pitfalls, and best practices for generative AI in health care. Members include the University of California health campuses, Yale New Haven Health System, Ochsner Health, Boston Childrens Hospital, Cedars Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian, and a host of other marquee names. Like most All-Star teams in sports, such consortia usually founder on too much individual ego and too little team spirit. Maybe this time it will be different. Or not.

VALID AI Consortium launches