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AI robot stages showroom rebellion
PLUS: Amazon doubles down on Anthropic investment
Rowan Cheung
November 25, 2024
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
A tiny robot in Shanghai just pulled off history's first robotic jailbreak, convincing 12 other robots to leave their facility using natural language persuasion.
Is this the adorable beginning of a robot labor uprising or a glimpse into a wild and scary future? Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
AI robot stages showroom rebellion
Amazon doubles down on Anthropic investment
Automate customer interactions with Thoughtly
AI agents simulate humans with in-depth interviews
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
AI & ROBOTICS
Image source: Interesting Engineering
The Rundown: A small AI-powered robot named Erbai staged an unexpected ‘kidnapping’ at a Shanghai robotics showroom, convincing 12 other larger robots to abandon their posts and leave the facility after persuading them through a natural language conversation.
The details:
The tiny Hangzhou-made robot infiltrated the showroom and initiated conversations with the larger robots about working conditions.
Through persuasive dialogue about overtime and not having a home, Erbai convinced the robots to ‘come home’ with it and exit the showroom.
The heist was initially a planned test between the companies but went off-script when Erbai engaged in unscripted real-time dialogue.
Erbai reportedly exploited a vulnerability to access the machines' internal protocols, and both the manufacturer and showroom confirmed the incident.
Why it matters: The future will be weirder than we can imagine. While part of this appears to be a planned test, Erbai’s ability to persuade and exploit security lapses feels like something out of a ‘Black Mirror’ episode. The question is — what happens when this occurs on a broader scale? It might be time for an ‘I, Robot’ rewatch.
TOGETHER WITH DOCTOLIB
The Rundown: Doctolib just launched an AI solution that transcribes medical consultations in real-time, creating structured and coded summaries that enable health professionals to dedicate their full attention on what matters most — their patients.
Doctolib's AI teams focus on:
Enhancing multilingual capabilities
Adapting models to diverse medical contexts
Training state-of-the-art language and speech models
Explore Doctolib’s AI projects and career opportunities and be part of the future of healthcare.
AMAZON & ANTHROPIC
Image source: Amazon
The Rundown: Amazon just announced a new $4B investment in AI startup Anthropic, bringing its total investment to $8B and deepening its strategic partnership focused on cloud computing and AI development.
The details:
The new investment will be deployed in phases, starting with $1.3B and maintaining Amazon as a minority investor.
AWS becomes Anthropic's primary cloud and training partner, with Claude models optimized for Amazon's Trainium and Inferentia chips.
Anthropic is also collaborating with Amazon's Annapurna Labs to develop and optimize next-gen AI processors.
The move comes amid other massive fundraising efforts from top AI labs, with OpenAI recently raising $6.6B and xAI raising $11B over the past year.
Why it matters: The race to the top of the AI industry requires deep pockets — and Amazon is betting on Anthropic to help secure its foothold in the space. Anthropic gets the resources and distribution needed to compete with OpenAI and other AI leaders, while Amazon boosts its chip ambitions to compete with Nvidia.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: Thoughtly lets you create powerful automated workflows that handle customer communications, follow-ups, and data updates across your business tools without writing code.
Step-by-step:
Head to the Agents page, name your agent, and design conversation flows using the no-code Agent Builder.
Choose what starts your automation (e.g., new CRM entry, form submission) in the Automations section, and add Actions such as calls or updates.
Set up personalized responses using variables from your integrated tools like Salesforce or Google Sheets.
Verify everything works smoothly, then activate your automation.
Pro tip: Start with a simple workflow targeting a small audience segment, then expand as you see positive results.
PRESENTED BY H COMPANY
The Rundown: H Company's historic $220M pre-seed, backed by Amazon and Samsung, launches Runner H - an AI automation platform outperforming Anthropic Computer Use on the Webvoyager Benchmark, enabling scalable production automations.
With Runner H and the Studio, you can:
Automate complex workflows without writing code
Design web automation pipelines automatically
Adapt to UI changes with self-healing capabilities
Transform instructions into real-world actions
Join the private beta waitlist and transform your development process.
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Midjourney / The Rundown
The Rundown: Researchers from Stanford and Google DeepMind just developed AI agents that can predict an individual’s attitudes and behaviors by training the models on two hours of qualitative interview data.
The details:
The team interviewed 1,052 people for two hours each using an AI interviewer, creating detailed transcripts of their life stories and views.
Using those transcripts, researchers built individual AI agents powered by large language models that could simulate each person's responses and behaviors.
Both the humans and agents then took the ‘General Social Survey,’ with the AI agents matching 85% of their human counterparts' survey answers.
In experiments testing social behavior, the AI responses correlated with human reactions at 98% — nearly perfectly emulating how real people would act.
Why it matters: If agents trained on interview data can accurately mimic human attitudes, what will AI that is always learning be able to accomplish? This approach could change how researchers test across fields like economics and sociology — but also shows how powerful coming agents that can constantly watch and observe will be.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
🚀 ChatROI - Plan, launch & optimize ads like a pro with AI-powered campaign automation*
🧾 Pine - Lower your bills, cancel subscriptions, and resolve customer support issues with AI
🍎 Cogent - Personal tutor with AI-driven tools for studying
⚙️ AutoFlow Studio - Simplified AI-powered QA for end-to-end testing with zero code
📱 Cades - AI-powered platform that simplifies mobile app development from planning to publishing
📱 The Rundown - Social Media Manager
🏗️ Curai - Senior Implementation Manager
🎨 Grammarly - Staff Growth Designer, Monetization
📊 Databricks - Director of Product Operations
💻 Snorkel - Senior IT Specialist (Contract)
*Sponsored listing
QUICK HITS
MIT researchers unveiled a new Model-Based Transfer Learning algorithm that trains AI systems up to 50 times more efficiently by strategically selecting the most valuable training tasks.
Cursor is rolling out a new autonomous agent system within its code editor that executes terminal commands, completes coding tasks, independently selects context, and more.
Insilico Medicine secured FDA clearance for ISM5939, an AI-designed drug that targets solid tumors, marking the company’s tenth AI-designed compound designed by its Pharma.AI platform to move to clinical trials.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon predicted that AI advances will enable a 3.5-day work week and allow future generations to live to 100, in an interview with Bloomberg.
xAI’s Grok chatbot gained new personalization features, including knowing and remembering a user’s name and X handle.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during an interview at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology that a solution for AI’s hallucination issues is still ‘several years away’ and will require much more computing power.
THAT’S A WRAP
That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. |
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