The most important week in the AI community following the release of ChatGPT

Written by: Samantha Kelly

Compiled by: Heart of the Metaverse

Last week was undoubtedly the most significant week in the field of artificial intelligence since the launch of ChatGPT last year.

OpenAI released the latest technical version supporting its viral ChatGPT chatbot. Elon Musk announced that a satirical AI ChatGPT competitor named "Grok" would be launched on his platform X (formerly Twitter). A Senate subcommittee held hearings on AI regulation in the healthcare sector, and OpenAI faced targeted attacks. The first wearable AI device aims to eventually replace smartphones.

At the OpenAI DevDay event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman delivered a speech.

ABI Research analyst Reece Hayden stated, "These major announcements indicate the rapid development of the AI market."

Hayden pointed out that the AI developments this week reflect the changes occurring in the industry. The AI community will continue to balance the risks of unintended consequences from rapid development while striving to remain competitive and innovative as quickly as possible.

Hayden added, "Overall, it was a groundbreaking week."

Below are all the highlights regarding AI this week:

A Significant Day for OpenAI

OpenAI held its first developer conference a year after the launch of ChatGPT. The conference helped spark a competition among tech companies to develop and deploy similar AI tools.

The company released a series of updates to its AI tools, including the ability for developers to create custom versions of ChatGPT, called GPTs. Similar to plugins, GPTs can connect to databases for emails or facilitate e-commerce orders. CEO Sam Altman demonstrated how anyone can easily create a GPT without any coding experience in just a few minutes.

The company will also launch a GPT store later this month, making GPTs searchable content. Similar to other app stores, they will be listed on leaderboards, and the company will highlight practical tools in categories such as productivity, education, and "entertainment."

Hayden noted that these announcements, along with the Apple-like Keynote structure and focus on developers, indicate their intention to "address their business strategy challenges" by building a robust developer ecosystem, which includes high costs and limited revenue sources.

Altman also showcased GPT-4 Turbo, the latest version supporting ChatGPT technology. He stated that the technology can now support input equivalent to about 300 pages of a standard book, approximately 16 times longer than the previous version.

Altman shared the platform's growth statistics: there are currently about 2 million developers using the platform, and around 90% of Fortune 500 companies are using these tools internally. There are currently 100 million active users.

Humane Launches Ai Pin

The startup Humane, founded by former Apple employees, has released its first AI wearable device, Ai Pin, a small flashing gadget that can be attached to clothing. This tool aims to eventually replace smartphones by projecting information onto the user's hand, allowing users to answer calls and perform various tasks without holding a smartphone.

The company stated that Ai Pin is also equipped with several AI-based tools, including the ability to search, send messages, and manage emails. Ai Pin uses a Snapdragon processor, features a Qualcomm AI engine, and is equipped with depth and motion sensors, an ultra-wide camera, and a laser ink display.

Gartner analyst Arun Chandrasekaran stated that this launch marks a "significant step forward in the future of generative hardware design and an exploration of potential new ways of human-computer interaction."

However, it remains unclear how its AI adoption will fare. Despite the company's promise of all-day battery life, Hayden stated that the biggest challenge for AI deployment on the device is battery life. "Given how small this device is and its claims to provide various behaviors and use cases while sensing data to inform the model, whether the battery life is adequate will be an interesting question."

There are also other concerns: "Always-on AI collecting and processing data will require a leap of societal confidence, which most people are unlikely to achieve at this time," Hayden said.

The Ai Pin starts at $699 and will be available in the U.S. on Thursday, November 16.

Launch of Grok

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has launched a chatbot named Grok for some users of X, which he believes has a satirical sense of humor similar to his own. Musk has owned X (formerly Twitter) for a year and stated that Grok was trained using "real-time access" to platform information.

xAI stated in a blog post that Grok's design was inspired by Douglas Adams' comedic science fiction novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." "Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has some rebelliousness, so if you hate humor, don't use it!" xAI emphasized.

Musk stated that Grok is still in the early stages of testing but will soon be rolled out to X's Premium+ service in the U.S., which includes features like a $16 monthly blue checkmark.

Musk is one of the co-founders of OpenAI but resigned from the board five years ago, partly due to disagreements over the company's direction.

OpenAI Faces Malicious Attacks

Two days after the developer conference, OpenAI's services experienced a massive outage, which the company later attributed to a targeted malicious attack on its servers. The company wrote on its website Wednesday evening, "We are addressing periodic outage issues due to abnormal traffic patterns reflecting a DDoS attack."

DDoS attacks, or distributed denial-of-service attacks, typically involve attackers flooding internet servers, disrupting normal traffic.

On Wednesday, users were unable to access all of OpenAI's tools and services and received messages indicating that the platform was at capacity.

According to its statement to editors, no user information was compromised.

More in the AI Field

Major tech companies are also continuing to double down on AI development. According to Reuters, Amazon is investing millions of dollars in training an AI codenamed "Olympus," which is expected to have twice the number of "parameters" or building blocks as OpenAI's GPT-4 model.

Additionally, YouTube is testing AI tools that can answer questions about content, make recommendations, and summarize topics in video comment sections.

Chandrasekaran stated that while not all companies will create large AI models, many will continue to build smaller, specific models to improve products, automate tasks, and gain a competitive edge.