Microsoft looks to nuclear power for AI, Siri gets its upgrade
what to know for now
🧠 Apple launches AI Siri update. iOS 18.1 update introduces the anticipated "Apple Intelligence" Siri features, enhancing the assistant’s capabilities and adding AI-powered writing, editing, and photo management tools. Limited to newer iPhone models with specialized processors, aiming to boost sales. Read more
🎬 YouTube rolls out AI tools for Shorts, powered by Google DeepMind. Veo AI features allow creators to generate backgrounds and six-second video clips from text prompts. YouTube Studio app to offer AI-driven title, thumbnail, and video idea generation in late 2024. Read more
🚀 Microsoft details wave 2 of Copilot AI updates. New features include Copilot Pages for persistent AI collaboration, Python integration in Excel, and customizable Copilot agents. Microsoft states they want to transform knowledge work through multiplayer human-AI interaction and automated business processes across their popular 365 suite. Read more
🤖 Slack AI generates huddle transcripts and automates workflows. New features include AI-powered huddle notes, enhanced search capabilities, and no-code workflow automation. Slack aims to streamline communication and boost productivity for businesses through intelligent task automation and improved information retrieval. Read more
🧪 AI Research of the Week
Qwen2.5-Coder Technical Report
From Alibaba GroupJake’s Take: Qwen2.5-Coder is another coding-focused series of AI models, that Alibaba claims outperforms other models of similar size across various programming languages and benchmarks. These models demonstrate strong capabilities not just in code generation, but also in areas like mathematics, general knowledge, and long-context understanding.
This release continues the prove that AI assistance and generation has high value in coding, potentially accelerating software development and making programming more accessible to non-experts.
what to know for later
☢️ Three Mile Island nuclear plant to restart for Microsoft AI. Constellation Energy and Microsoft partner to revive Unit 1, shut down in 2019, with a $1.6 billion investment. The 835 MW facility will power Microsoft's data centers for 20 years, showcasing nuclear energy's role in AI infrastructure. Read more
🍓 OpenAI's Altman forecasts rapid advancements for o1 'Strawberry' model. Altman compares o1's current state to GPT-2, anticipating significant improvements in coming months. The model's reasoning capabilities mark progress towards human-level problem solving, with potential for rapid development of AI agents.
🎥 Lionsgate partners with AI firm Runway to analyze vast content library. Runway will train a custom AI model on Lionsgate's film and TV portfolio. The deal allows the studio to explore AI-assisted content creation, augmenting creative workflows and potentially reducing production costs. Read more
🤖 Groq partners with Aramco for massive AI data center in Saudi Arabia. Groq will operate world's largest AI inferencing center with 19,000 language processing units, expandable to 200,000. $100M+ investment to make Saudi Arabia an AI hub for Middle East, Africa and India by year-end. Read more