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- The 10 biggest AI events of 2023
The 10 biggest AI events of 2023
PLUS: Google preparing for first AI election season
Rowan Cheung
December 29, 2023
Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
Today is our last newsletter of 2023. It’s been one heck of a ride.
We’re signing off with the top 10 biggest developments this year to end the most significant year in AI history. Let’s take a trip down memory lane…
In today’s AI rundown:
The 10 biggest AI events of 2023
Google restricting election AI queries in 2024
How to leverage the best free alternative to ChatGPT
Research: AI beats humans at identifying photo locations
9 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
AI RECAP
Image source: The Rundown
The Rundown: From multimodal LLMs, to world leaders trying to pause AI, to Sam Altman getting fired and rehired within a week, the developments in AI in 2023 will be remembered in the history books.
The top 10 biggest AI events of 2023:
March 17: OpenAI launches GPT-4
March 30: Elon Musk and AI experts call for a 6-month pause in developing AI systems more powerful than GPT-4
May 26: Swiss scientists rebuild spinal cord with AI
June 27: Breakthrough AI research can understand and decode whale language
September 26: ChatGPT goes multimodal with voice and images
September 29: Mistral AI unveils open-sourced 7B language model
November 6: Elon Musk's xAI launches Grok
November 7: OpenAI reveals GPT Builder, GPT-4 Turbo, Assistants API and more at DevDay
November 22: Sam Altman fired and rehired as CEO of OpenAI
December 6: Google DeepMind reveals Gemini
Our thoughts: While we look back at the most significant year in the history of AI, it’s hard not to think that the developments this year were the start of the most transformative period in the history of humankind. With GPT-5, autonomous agents, and major medical breakthroughs on the horizon — we’re truly just getting started.
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Image source: Google
The Rundown: Ahead of high-profile 2024 elections, Google announced it will be restricting the types of election-related queries its AI systems like Bard and Search Generative Experience can respond to starting early next year.
The details:
The policy will start in early 2023 out of "abundance of caution" on the sensitive topic.
The move builds on other transparency efforts like requiring content creators and advertisers to disclose use of altered or synthetic media.
Part of Google's wider plan of safeguarding AI platforms for the polarizing campaign cycle, which includes providing high-quality election info and partnering with campaigns on security.
Why it matters: The first election season in the AI era could get weird — and while it’s positive that Google is being proactive in aiming to prevent AI misinformation and manipulation, bad actors will likely leverage the tech to sow confusion regardless.
AI TRAINING
Image: Microsoft Copilot’s video understanding capabilities
The Rundown: While ChatGPT grabs headlines, Microsoft has quietly built an impressive alternative — and it’s 100% free. Copilot matches ChatGPT's capabilities while exceeding in some areas.
Here are some of the best features:
Multi-Modal Capabilities: By combining text, images, and web data, Copilot’s search grounding develops a deeper understanding of queries.
Coding & Calculation Strengths: Via its Code Interpreter, Copilot also compares to ChatGPT at complex coding, math, data analysis, and visualization tasks.
Music Creativity: Through a new partnership with Suno AI , Copilot can now generate music tracks and even summarize/answer questions about videos.
Video Understanding: Copilot can summarize or answer questions about videos watched in Edge — something not even ChatGPT offers.
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: Stanford students created an AI called PIGEON that can pinpoint the location of a photo faster and more accurately than even expert humans by picking up on subtle visual clues within images.
The details:
PIGEON was trained on 500,000 Google Street View images to play the online location-guessing game GeoGuessr.
The AI previously went up against influencer GeoGuessr Trevor Rainbolt, beating him in multiple head-to-head rounds.
The AI guesses the country right 92% of the time and within 25 miles over 90% of the time — and located personal photos to within blocks or miles of where they were taken.
The system leverages foliage, weather patterns, soil etc. that humans would likely miss.
Why it matters: While an impressive feat, the practical applications for extracting locations lean much more towards surveillance — and likely won’t bring much comfort to those already fearing the technology.
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QUICK HITS
Microsoft's upcoming Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 will reportedly be its first "AI PCs," featuring new AI capabilities and next-gen Qualcomm Snapdragon and Intel chips.
Baidu says its ChatGPT rival Ernie Bot now has amassed over 100M users since its public launch in August, though it still trails ChatGPT in quality according to benchmarking.
Intuition Robotics' AI companion ‘ElliQ' shows promise in reducing loneliness for seniors by providing personalized conversations, entertainment, and health reminders.
Domo AI released two new model updates for the platform’s video-to-video tool alongside increased stability and optimized outputs.
LG announced new laptops featuring Intel's latest chips and AI capabilities, including LG Gram Pro Models with Intel Core Ultra processors and boosted on-device AI power.
The UK's Berrow's Worcester Journal, claiming to be the world's oldest newspaper, is using an AI-assisted reporter to free up human journalists to do more in-depth reporting.
Korean researchers are using AI to investigate how microplastics are impacting global soil and agriculture.
THAT’S A WRAP
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