China is coming for Tesla Optimus

PLUS: AI corrects itself without humans

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

China unveiled a whopping 27 new humanoid robots at the 2024 World Robot Conference, with Tesla's Optimus as the sole foreign competitor.

Can Tesla and the U.S. maintain its lead in the humanoid race, or will the first affordable, commercially available robot come from overseas? Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

  • China is coming for Tesla Optimus

  • Grok-2 improves speed, accuracy, transparency

  • How to use Ideogram for generating images

  • AI learns to plan better without humans

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AGIBOT

Image source: SCMP

The Rundown: At the 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing, Chinese companies showcased 27 humanoid robots alongside Tesla’s Optimus, signalling China’s ambition to dominate the industry.

The details:

  • Chinese tech firms unveiled 27 humanoid robots at the expo, with Tesla’s Optimus being the only foreign competitor present.

  • AGIBOT, founded by a Huawei alumnus, presented robots powered by large language models (LLMs) for industrial use and customer service.

  • Other notable entries included Astribot’s S1 robot assistant capable of writing calligraphy and playing musical instruments, and Galbot’s wheeled robots for food delivery and retail tasks.

  • Despite the impressive showcase, experts note that technological hurdles and high costs still create challenges for Chinese manufacturers.

Why it matters: China may be slightly behind in the AI race against the U.S., but it’s clear the country is committed to dominating the humanoid robotics race. With a whopping 27 China-based humanoid robots demonstrating a wide-range of use cases at the event, commercially available humanoids may be coming sooner than most expect.

TOGETHER WITH CODESIGNAL

The Rundown: CodeSignal recently launched an innovative AI conversation simulator, designed to help you practice important work conversations to make sure you’re ready for real-world scenarios.

You can:

  • Choose the type of conversation you want to work on (job interviews, team management, client communication, etc.)

  • Run through a full voice chat role-play with an AI partner.

  • Get instant customized feedback from Cosmo, your AI tutor

Give it a try and transform your communication skills.

XAI

Image source: The Rundown / Midjourney

The Rundown: xAI’s Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini just made major improvements — doubling the model’s speed in the mini version and showing increased accuracy in both models, just days after its beta launch.

The details:

  • Grok-2 mini is now twice as fast as it was previously, thanks to a rewritten inference stack using SGLang.

  • Both Grok-2 and its mini version have become slightly more accurate due to reduced quantization error, according to one xAI employee.

  • Additionally, both Grok-2 models are now part of the LMSYS Chatbot Arena leaderboard for increased transparency, with Grok-2’s larger model ranking #2 and surpassing Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

  • Grok-2 excels particularly in math, where it ranks #1 and performs at a state-of-the-art level in hard prompts, coding, and instruction-following.

Why it matters: From being founded only ~18 months ago, to creating an LLM ranked third in the world, it’s safe to say that xAI has the entire AI community mind blown. This not only makes Grok-2 a top contender in the AI race but also intensifies competition, potentially accelerating advancements across the industry.

AI TRAINING

Image source: The Rundown / Ideogram

The Rundown: Ideogram 2.0, the latest state-of-the-art AI image generator, excels at creating images that include text — opening new possibilities for use cases like thumbnails, posters, newsletter graphics, memes, and more.

Step-by-step:

  1. Head over to Ideogram’s website and Sign up. You’ll get free credits to try the image generator without a credit card.

  2. Click "Describe what you want to see" and enter a detailed text prompt for your desired image.

  3. Customize settings like aspect ratio, AI model (choose 2.0), and style (Realistic, Design, 3D, or Anime).

  4. Click "Generate" to create four AI-generated images based on your prompt!

Pro tip: Experiment with different prompts and settings to discover its full potential and create unique visuals for your projects!

PRESENTED BY DEFINED.AI

The Rundown: Defined.ai recently partnered with a leading consumer electronics company to revamp its Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) AI models, addressing performance issues, demographic biases, and lack of diversity in responses.

Defined.ai’s solution delivered:

  • Immediate access to large-scale, ethically-collected spontaneous speech data

  • High-fidelity transcriptions with diverse age, gender, and accent distributions

  • Data sourcing for responsible AI that avoids legal and reputational risks associated with web scraping

Download the free case study and discover how Defined.ai’s responsible AI data marketplace can transform your ASR models today.

IBM

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: IBM Research and Cornell University recently created AutoToS, a system that teaches AI to solve complex planning problems at 100% accuracy — without needing a human to check its work.

The details:

  • AutoToS is like a smart tutor for AI, helping it learn how to break down and solve tricky problems step-by-step.

  • The system uses clever tests to check the AI’s work, pointing out mistakes and showing examples of how to do better without human interferance.

  • This approach seems to work equally as well for smaller and larger models.

  • AutoToS succeeded in teaching AI to solve complex puzzles, including classic problems like arranging blocks and solving Sokoban, a box-pushing game.

Why it matters: Right now, it’s difficult to trust AI agents to completely autonomously perform actions on your behalf, but AutoToS is solving complex tasks at a 100% accuracy. If this system works in the real world, it’s the next big step in creating more reliable AI assistants.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

QUICK HITS

Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify’s Daniel Ek advocated for Europe to embrace open-source AI, warning against complex regulations hindering innovation.

Google AI Studio released a native prompt gallery featuring long context, multi-model inputs, and structured outputs for enhanced AI development.

Anthropic supported California’s AI regulation bill after changes were made, saying its benefits likely outweigh its costs for advanced AI development.

Fetch.ai launched Innovation Lab in San Francisco with a $10 million fund to support early-stage AI agent startups.

Google appointed former Character.AI founder and long-time Google researcher Noam Shazeer as co-lead of its Gemini AI model development.

Imagination Technologies abandoned standalone NPUs, integrating AI capabilities into GPUs instead and securing $100 million in financing.

Chinese companies reportedly bypassed U.S. AI chip export restrictions by accessing banned technologies through Amazon Web Services’ cloud platform.

THAT’S A WRAP

SPONSOR US

Get your product in front of over 650k+ AI enthusiasts

Our newsletter is read by thousands of tech executives, investors, engineers, managers, and business owners around the world. Get in touch today.

FEEDBACK

How would you rate today's newsletter?

Vote below to help us improve the newsletter for you.

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

If you have specific feedback or anything interesting you’d like to share, please let us know by replying to this email.

Reply

or to participate.