Stay Up-to-Date on Artificial Intelligence! December Edition

TD Publishing’s Monthly Update on Artificial Intelligence.

TD Publishing, a company that provides artificial intelligence educational programs, offers a monthly newsletter sharing the latest advancements in artificial intelligence to keep non-tech professionals and students up-to-date.

Each monthly newsletter will provide 3-4 informative articles and podcasts, which are expected to take 30-60 minutes to read through. Below is the December edition, written by Craig Gordon, founder of Don’t Count Us Out Yet and co-founder of TD Publishing.

If you would like to subscribe to this monthly newsletter by TD Publishing, please email jay@tdfactfind.com.

Dear Readers,

Here is the December edition rounding up everything you should know to stay up-to-date in artificial intelligence – And what a month it’s been!

The Miriam-Webster dictionary has chosen “authentic” as its word of the year, and we think this is in part due to advances in artificial intelligence. However, if we would have had a chance to vote, we would have selected “overwhelmed.” Things just seem to be moving faster and faster, and though there is a lot of noise with talking heads creating fear and nonsense, there are many true advancements. So, let’s get started.

1. OpenAI Stays at the Cutting Edge With New Innovations

First, if you didn’t come back from a month long meditation retreat or a hike without any cell phone service, you’ve probably seen hundreds of articles regarding how visionary Sam Altman was fired from the OpenAI’s CEO position. Altman was then hired by Microsoft with an offer to hire his entire staff if they wanted and then re-hired by OpenAI with the old board resigning. Suffice to say, perhaps with a bit more worry from some of their enterprise customers, not much has actually changed and there’s no need to write about it.

The real changes came the week before in OpenAI’s developer conference, including major announcements regarding chatbots. The announcement that most non-tech professionals and students will now be able to create their own chatbots is a huge disruptive force. Imagine being able to create your own phone apps with no programming required? And that app not only follows your instructions, but follows up with suggestions and ways it thinks you might want to research, write, pay bills, look for dates and shop, just to name a few examples. An app that learns from your likes and dislikes and can ask questions to make it even smarter. No more unwanted Facebook algorithms making suggestions for you, but just you and your data. Then, if you create something you think others might like, there is now a Chatbot App Store, where you can give it away for free or at a price. Is this the start of smartphone apps becoming obsolete? We don’t know, but Craig is going to build his own research and writing chatbot starting in January without any programming help and will report back to you.

2. How is Google Going to React to all the AI Challenges?

So with OpenAI making all these new announcements and most highly regarded experts, academics and AI reporters still believing OpenAI is the leader in this industry, what is Google and its DeepMind division doing to innovate or keep from getting its products disrupted? Well, this month we got a hint as to what their strategy might be.

First, DeepMind came out with a paper talking about AI processes evolving in two different ways to make them more human-like. The first, as we all know, is doing one task as good if not better than humans. The second way is more general. As tasks start being put together in one process, the ability for the AI process to switch what it learned from one part to another part has to be created as humans do. This could create places where AI processes already surpassed human ability, such as drug discovery compounds or reading radiologists pictures, to places similar approaches can be used, such as looking at the galaxy. Imagine installing this in a robot for many uses!

Additionally, Google just announced its AI weather forecasting, which now outperforms human interactive predictions. It seems like Google is taking it piece by piece, achieving goals in specific realms to make their products superhuman, then perhaps Google will eventually merge them in one general ability.

3. Is Humor Really a Competitive Advantage for xAI?

What would a monthly newsletter be without some mention of Elon Musk? Well, we tend to shake our heads like most concerning his spoiled rich kid behavior in the news, but we have to admit he is brilliant. His new company xAI, which is set to compete against the likes of Google Bard, OpenAI, Anthropic, Wu Dao 2.0 and more with less resources - you're kidding us right?

Yes, he is actually, by stating the difference in his product is it incorporates humor. How can any AI process become human like without humor? Using the “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" book as one of the learning tools, his new product, Grok, built in less than two months, is out for testing and uses humor as one of its differential factors. We can’t wait to hear more about this.

At the end of the month, Amazon also announced a general AI product intended for businesses. Since it was just released, we will talk about this new product next month.

4. Two Notes on Small Steps Forward in Trying to Attain Super AI

Here are two last items that you may find interesting regarding general advancements in AI. First, for any of you who have taken our “Understanding Artificial Intelligence” seminar, or any other respectable course not aimed at selling you products or services, you know one needs to define human intelligence and its many parts before jumping into what AI can or can’t do. One of the biggest issues with AI becoming more human-like is how to create consciousness. We have heard a lot about this in the past month or so, from how consciousness will be created when AI can experience pain or pleasure, to the pursuit of understanding simpler animal consciousness and figuring out if we can replicate that. One small step, but a big step, would be an accomplishment like that. Here is a good write up on a possible advancement.

Finally, an area we are really excited about! This is one that could truly help AI create a future reality that benefits the world and all of us on it. Imagine a library where any scientist or student wanting to explore existing findings or tests for what might exist tomorrow is all in one place. It’s easy to search with AI, which is able to give suggestions you haven’t thought of, creating more ideas of what you might want to explore.

Well, this scientific library of congress type of foundation has just been announced. Perhaps someday soon with AI, the time spent collecting old data, looking for lateral approaches and coming up with questions we haven’t thought about, will take less time than it should. Now if this works, how about people show more faith in AI than fear? And not profit oriented. Hip Hip, Hooray!

Overwhelming, isn’t it? And all of that information is just from one month of AI advancements. We will try to keep you abreast of what we think is important for all you non-tech professionals and students, especially those who have taken our seminars. Have a great holiday season, and we will see you next time with our first 2024 issue in mid- January!

Best,
Craig, Jay, Jeffrey, Ariana and all of the freelancers who helped us.