ChatGPT goes all-in-one

Welcome to the 811 new subscribers who joined in the last two weeks. I’m back after a week’s break – and – I’m delighted that you’re here to learn with me.

Here’s the top stories in AI this week:

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Dario’s Picks

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I. All tools at once in GPT-4

ChatGPT just got a major update:

• OpenAI is rolling out an update that enables vision, web browsing, DALL-E 3 and advanced data analysis in the same chat.
• This means you don’t have to go back and forth between these modes any longer and you can combine them. Here’s some mind-blowing stuff people are already doing with it.
• The update also highlights the possibility of uploading documents directly in the chat, albeit this has was already possible in the advanced data analysis mode.
• Plugins are not (at least not yet) part of the All Tools update, and is still accessed separately.

On a side note, some people have been getting responses from ChatGPT that its cut-off date is now September 2023. However, it’s not necessarily true as ChatGPT seems to be confused about when its knowledge ends.

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II. Google is throwing $2B at Anthropic

The AI arms race continues, with big tech companies are betting hard on LLMs being components of the most revolutionary future technology. While Google is working hard at developing their own LLMs, they are likely hedging their bets by securing a stake in the potential leaders in the space.

The deal reportedly involved $500M now, and $1.5B later. The timings and conditions for the remaining amount are not clear.

Amazon also invested in Anthropic earlier this year, committing up to $4B in the AI startup.

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III. Apple’s new M3 chips are 2.5x faster for AI

The new M3 chips (M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max) have a feature called dynamic caching, which increases the utilization of the GPU. As a result, the new neural engine is way faster and speeds up machine learning.

Translation: If you use or build machine learning apps, Tim Cook could be considered Santa Claus this year, bringing you better tools for the job.

For all the details, watch the Apple Event from October 30.

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IV. Google’s secret new tool: Stubbs

Google’s current model PaLM 2 is soon going to be replaced by the more powerful, multimodal model Gemini. According to a leak, showcasing some of the potential of Gemini (which is interesting in itself), there’s also a new tool called Stubbs that reportedly will be available on Google Makersuite.

Stubbs is a tool where you generate apps using natural language. Imagine a tool that creates Figma Prototypes with just a prompt. That’s what Stubbs is reportedly able to do!

The leak only mentions that launch date of Stubbs is uncertain and could happen well into 2024.

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 In Focus 

On staying techno-optimistic

a16z published an article last week titled The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.

I don’t necessarily agree with all the points made in the article – it might be glorifying technological advances in themselves a bit too much. But it’s true that technology is what allows us to do more with less. To the extent we direct it towards endeavours that have a positive impact on the world, it functions as a lever that accelerates this impact exponentially.

With this in mind, I choose to be more excited than scared of AI.

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 ChatGPT plugins 

There’s now 1,143 ChatGPT plugins, of which 28 were launched in the past 14 days.

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New categories added on whatplugin:

💻 Coding - 24 plugins

• A list of plugins related to coding, especially those enabling you to interact with up-to-date documentation in natural language.
• There is some overlap with the categories AI development tools and Web development tools; be sure to check out these as well if you can’t find what you’re looking for.

🎤 AI Website Analytics - 8 plugins

• Mostly plugins that connect to your existing web analytics tools. Some of these allow you to use natural language for analyzing user behavior, with context-enriched insights from ChatGPT.

💻 Video generation - 8 plugins

• A list of plugins that can turn your prompts into videos.

🎤 Text to Speech - 6 plugins

• Plugins that can help you convert text into high-quality, human-like speech.

Notable launches:

• Aurora - Let’s you chat with and adjust your Philips Hue lights

Let me know if you’ve tried this one and what you think? I don’t have Philips Hue lights, so can’t test it.

• Idealo Best Price - Big German marketplace now available through ChatGPT

Categories with most new launches:

• Data & Research - 62 plugins (5 new)
• Crypto & NFTs - 35 plugins (2 new)
• Academic Research - 30 plugins (1 new)

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 Bytes 

10 more wild things that happened in AI the last two weeks.

• Biden issues executive order to create A.I. safeguards.
• Inflection AI’s Pi now has real-time web access.
• 95 countries now have access to Anthropic’s Claude chatbot.
• Meta AI blog: Toward a real-time decoding of images from brain activity (seriously, wow)
• DALL-E 3 now available inside ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise (probably old news by now, but adding it in case you missed it).
• Artists can use a data poisoning tool to confuse DALL-E
• AI platform Hugging Face confirms China blocked it (paywalled).
• Stanford creates the Foundation Model Transparency Index (FMTI).
• Google’s ‘wartime’ urgency to chase ChatGPT shakes up culture.
• Perplexity releases two new in-house chatbots: pplx-7b-chat and pplx-70b-chat.

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