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China's Baidu Announces a ChatGPT-Style Search Engine for March

1-31-2023

January 31, 2023

⚡ Today’s Highlights

  • 📰 News: China’s Baidu is launching a chatbot search engine in March and deepfakes are wreaking more havoc

  • 🦾 Tools: A ChatGPT-powered Google assistant and a shiny new product management tool

  • 👀 More Reading: Astronomers are using Deep Learning to investigate nearby stars

  • 📅 Events: The RE•WORK Virtual AI Summit and Deep Learning Summit

📰 Today's Top Stories

(2 min read) (Source: Bloomberg)

TLDR: Baidu, the Chinese tech giant, is diving headfirst into AI with investments in cloud services, chips, and autonomous driving. It recently showcased three AI "creators" that can take on various creative roles. Now, they're set to launch an AI chatbot service in March, taking on OpenAI's ChatGPT. The chatbot will be a standalone app at first, but will eventually be integrated into Baidu's search engine.

Unlike other chatbots in China that are more geared towards social interaction, this one will be more like ChatGPT, able to do professional tasks like programming and essay writing. And, instead of just providing links, the chatbot's results will be incorporated into search requests.

The Big Picture: It will be interesting to see how China will address the problem of misinformation and copyright infringement that has plagued generative AI tools, and how media censorship may affect the search engine’s accuracy and biases.

(5 min read) (Source: VICE)

TLDR: ElevenLabs, an AI voice startup founded by former Google and Palantir employees, has identified "an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases" in its recently launched beta. 4chan members appear to have used the product to generate voices that sound like celebrities to spread racist and other harmful material. The high quality of the generated voices highlights the risk of deepfake audio. ElevenLabs is exploring more safeguards around its technology, including requiring payment information or full identification or manually verifying each request. Check out ElevenLabs' response below for the full thread.

The Big Picture: Deepfakes continue to be a growing problem with generative AI and present a number of problems for privacy and accountability. Terrible accusations might be falsely attributed to innocent people. On the other hand, how long will it take someone who has been rightly accused of something terrible to dismiss evidence as a deepfake?

(4 min read) (Source: Axios)

TLDR: The entertainment industry is buzzing with AI investment, driven by deepfake and de-aging tech. Startups like MARZ and Metaphysic have raised millions, but the biggest investment so far is the $20 million by CAA and NEA in Deep Voodoo, an AI startup co-created by "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The streaming era's demand for quality content and VFX industry bottlenecks are leading the exploration of AI to streamline the process. However, the lack of government oversight is causing concern for lawmakers. It's crucial for the industry to come together and ensure ethical and responsible AI use.

The Big Picture: As mentioned in the VICE article above, legal regulation on deepfake technology is imperative before it is used commonly to ensure its ethical and responsible use.

(8 min read) (Source: The Washington Post)

TLDR: Construction sites are embracing robots to automate tasks like digging, surveying, pouring concrete, and moving heavy items. Startups like Built Robotics, Fastbrick Robotics, Advanced Construction Robotics, and Canvas are building construction robots that can work autonomously. According to Matthew Johnson-Roberson, Director of the robotics institute at Carnegie Mellon University, these robots are essentially heavy equipment with better sensors, designed to do more basic human tasks.

Robots are currently more suited for large-scale projects like dams, bridges, and roads, as they perform better on defined tasks, compared to home building, where fine motor control is required. The construction industry is turning to robots due to a construction crisis of rising costs and unfilled jobs while government funding for infrastructure increases. However, there are concerns about job losses and increased safety risks for workers, as companies may try to speed up tasks with automation.

The Big Picture: While these innovations could make construction projects appear safer and more efficient by decreasing the amount of intense labour required by humans, they could indirectly make them more dangerous by tempting companies to unrealistically speed up jobs and increase the likelihood of worker burnout and injuries.

(10 min read) (Source: VentureBeat)

TLDR: AI is big business, with the global AI market size growing to $432.8 billion in 2022 according to IDC. However, companies are still figuring out how to manage AI teams and who should take the lead role. Typically, tech executives with senior data scientist backgrounds are driving the AI strategy, but many organizations lack a senior AI leader who can focus on business value and integrate successful AI programs throughout operations. To fully harness AI's potential, companies should consider creating two AI leadership roles: Chief AI Officer (CAIO) and Vice President of AI. The CAIO focuses on business decisions, funding, and strategy while the VP of AI focuses on product delivery, recruitment, and technical infrastructure. Don't make the mistake of limiting AI to just the IT department, as AI is going to impact every aspect of business and requires a strong business and corporate understanding.

The Big Picture: AI will be permeating every aspect of business very soon and companies will need to organize around it quickly to keep up with the rapidly evolving tech. Creating teams around executives with a deep understanding of the tech will help keep businesses at the forefront of the AI revolution and will determine how effectively they can implement it in their operations.

🦾 Trending Tools

  • Introducing Liner AI, a Google-assisting browser extension powered by ChatGPT. 

  • Delibr is a product management tool that helps product managers and their teams develop better product requirement documents (powered by GPT3) and facilitate decision-making around feature/product development.

🌎 Popular Content

2. A computer science professor over at Princeton says not to worry about ChatGPT, the “bulls*** generator”. Check out the discussion here. (Reddit)

3. Some people love it, and some people hate it. Do you think AI could fundamentally change education? Check out the discussion here. (Reddit)

4. It seems like deepfakes (especially the ones being used for the wrong stuff) are going to play a large part in how legislation is formed around visual generative AI. Check out this (NSFW...obviously) discussion on Twitter about the recent use of deepfakes for pornography. (Twitter)

5. Is it just me or does it look like everyone has been indulging a little too much in 'the blood of Christ'? (Twitter)

6. Whoa… 😯 (Twitter)

👀 More Reading

🧠 Resources

In 2022, the World Economic Forum introduced a toolkit aimed at informing corporate leaders on the basics of artificial intelligence and assisting them in understanding the impact of AI on their responsibilities, asking relevant questions, comprehending crucial trade-offs, and making knowledgeable choices regarding AI initiatives and implementations.

 📅 Upcoming Events

The RE•WORK Virtual AI Summit (January 30-31, 2023) and RE•WORK AI Summit West, Deep Learning Summit (February 15-16, 2023, San Francisco, CA), a chance to hear the latest technology advancements, practical examples of how to apply AI to solve challenges in cross-industry settings, business and society, and delve deeper into the work of leading AI experts in a series of presentations, panel discussions, interviews and fireside chats.

 💼 Jobs

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