UsefulAINewsBackup1Jan24

Last update: Monday 1/1/24
This weekly news page provides links to reports about major innovations in LLM and non-LLM technologies, with emphasis on LLMs. The page also links to reports about LLM flaws and remedies.

Most of the links refer to reports published after the "AI Big Bang", i.e., after Sam Altman's dismissal from and return to OpenAI, i.e., after Monday, November 20, 2023. The previous edition of this page can be found here ➡ PreBigBang

Note:  This news page will be updated every day, but announcements of TL;DR and podcast summaries of top stories will be posted on the blog's @neoskeptics account on X/Twitter and its editor's LinkedIn account on Sundays and Mondays.

A. OpenAI | B. Microsoft | C. Google | D. Other LLMs |E. LLM News |
 F. Non-LLM News | G. Public Policy | H. OpEds | I. Hacks | J. Basics

Top stories ...
  1. LLM News
    "The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement, touching off a legal fight over generative-AI technologies, with implications for the future of the news business", Alexandra Bruell, Wall Street  Journal, 12/27/23
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, BBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, NPR, Engadget, TechCrunch ... and  NY Times

Editor's note: From time to time older articles in each of the following sections whose content has been overcome by events will be deleted, but enough will remain so that readers can get a quick sense of where we are and how we got here by skimming the headlines of the remaining articles in chronological order. No section will ever include more than 12 stories.

A. OpenAI (LLM)
The "AI Big Bang" refers to the tumultuous long weekend that began with Sam Altman' s abrupt removal from his position as CEO of OpenAI on Friday 17 November 23 until his restoration as CEO on Tuesday 21 November 23. Hundreds of articles describing and analyzing these developments were published in tech media. The editor of this blog has selected a few that he found to be highly informative
B. Microsoft (LLM)
  • "Microsoft Copilot is now available as a ChatGPT-like app on Android", Tom Warren, The Verge, 12/26/23
    -- This story also covered by Engadget 


C. Google (LLM)
  • "Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis Says Gemini Is a New Breed of AI", Will Knight, Wired, 12/6/23 

    -- This story also covered by The Verge, MIT Tech Review, NY Tmes, Ars Technica ... and     Google DeepMind

    -- Fake demos in Google's announcements: "Google just launched a new AI and has already admitted at least one demo wasn’t real", Emilia David, The Verge, 12/7/23 ... Also reported by TechCrunch, Gizmodo, BBC

    -- Users access Gemini Pro via Bard: "How to Use Google’s Gemini AI Right Now in Its Bard Chatbot", Reece Rogers, Wired, 12/6/23

    -- Google's new Gemini powered notebook: "Google’s AI note-taking app is now available to users in the US", Emma Roth, The Verge, 12/8/23 ... Also reported by Engadget, Gizmodo, 

    -- Announcements boosted Google/Alphabet's stock: "Alphabet soars as Wall Street cheers arrival of AI model Gemini", Aditya Soni, Reuters, 12/7/23


D. Other LLMs
  • "Textbook Giant [Pearson] Brings an AI Study Buddy to Its Service for Back-to-School Season", Kyle Barr, Gizmodo, 8/1/23 .. Note: This is a focused LLM; it does not know "everything" 

  • "AI startup Anthropic gets $100M to build custom LLM for telecom industry", Shubham Sharma, VentureBeat, 8/14/23 .. Note: This is a focused LLM; it does not know "everything" 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch

  • "Amazon Takes a Big Stake [$4 billion] in the A.I. Start-Up Anthropic", Adam Satariano and Cade Metz, NY Times, 9/25/23 
    -- This story also covered by Engadget, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, BBC News, Bloomberg, Reuters, 
    -- Description of Anthropic in Wikipedia ➡ HERE

  • Amazon's re:Invent 2023 conference (Nov 27-Dec 1, Las Vegas, NV) 
    -- Overview "Here’s everything Amazon Web Services announced at AWS re:Invent", Christine Hall, TechCrunch, 11/29/23

    -- Amazon Q, an AI-powered chatbot for AWS customers ..."Amazon Introduces Q, an A.I. Chatbot for Companies", Karen Weise, NY Times, 11/28/23 ... This story also covered by Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, 

    --     Image generator "Amazon joins AI image creation fray with new model", Emilia David, The Verge, 11/29/23 ... This story also covered by Bloomberg, Engadget, Gizmodo

  • "Elon Musk’s Grok Represents a Serious Threat to ChatGPT",  Shirin Ghaffary, Bloomberg, 12/14/23 
    -- This story also covered by Wired, Fast Company, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, 

E. LLM news 
  • "Meta and IBM Launch AI Alliance, Promise to Be ‘Open’", Maxwell Zeff, Gizmodo, 12/6/23 
    -- This story also coverede by Computerworld, TechCrunch, Fortune, Ars Technica, Bloomberg, 

  • "Apple Scurries Onto the AI Stage With Too Little, Too Late", Maxwell Zeff, Gizmodo, 12/7/23 ... the MLX machine learning framework thar runs on Apple's own chips 
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, Computerworld

  • "When it comes to generative AI in the enterprise, CIOs are taking it slow", Ron Miller, TechCrunch, 12/15/23
  • "Google Gemini is not even as good as GPT-3.5 Turbo, researchers find", Carl Franzen, VentureBeat, 12/19/23
  • "Apple Explores A.I. Deals With News Publishers",  Benjamin Mullin and Tripp Mickle, NY Times, 12/22/23
  • "Upskilling ramps up as gen AI forces enterprises to transform",  Maria Korolov, Computerworld, 12/23/23

  • "The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement, touching off a legal fight over generative-AI technologies, with implications for the future of the news business", Alexandra Bruell, Wall Street  Journal, 12/27/23
    -- This story also covered by The Verge, BBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, NPR, Engadget, TechCrunch ... and  NY Times

  • "ChatGPT Helps, and Worries, Business Consultants, Study Finds", David Berreby, NY Times, 12/28/23
  • "Inside the News Industry’s Uneasy Negotiations With OpenAI", Benjamin Mullin, NY Times, 12/29/23
  • "Boom in A.I. Prompts a Test of Copyright Law", J. Edward Moreno, NY Times, 12/30/23
F. Small Language Models (SLMs) and other non-LLM news 
  • "One of the Biggest Problems in Biology Has Finally Been Solved",  Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 10/31/22 ... protein foldimg problem ... DeepMind
    -- This story also covered by VentureBeat,  CNET, Science, 

  • "Courtesy of AI: Weather forecasts for the hour, the week and the century", Devin Coldewey, TechCrunch, 11/14/23 ... DeepMind
    -- This story also covered by Gizmodo, Financial Times, MIT Tech Review, Ars Technica, Wired, ZDNet, 
    -- These articles describe research published in     Nature and Science

  • "From Land Mines to Drones, Tech Has Driven Fears About Autonomous Arms", Eric Lipton, NY Times, 11/21/23

  • "AI Tool Pinpoints Genetic Mutations That Cause Disease", Even Callaway & Nature Magazine, Scientific American, 11/21/23 ... DeepMind
    -- This story also covered by Wall Street Journal, Wired, 

  • "Google’s DeepMind finds 2.2M crystal structures in materials science win", Michael Peel, Ars Technica, 11/29/23 ... "The trove of theoretically stable but experimentally unrealized combinations identified using an AI tool known as GNoME is more than 45 times larger than the number of such substances unearthed in the history of science, according to a paper published in Nature on Wednesday."
    -- This story also covered by Wired, VentureBeat, Nature, Science, MIT Tech Review,

  • "Liquid AI, a new MIT spinoff, wants to build an entirely new type of AI", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 12/6/23

  • "Microsoft releases Phi-2, a small language model AI that outperforms Llama 2, Mistral 7B", Carl Franzen, VentureBeat, 12/12/23 
    -- This story also covered by ZDNet, TechRepublic, Medium, Computerworld ... and Microsoft

  • "Seeking a Big Edge in A.I., South Korean Firms Think Smaller",  John Yoon, NY Times, 12/24/23

G. Public policy considerations (LLM & non-LLM)
  • "Joe Biden’s Big AI Plan Sounds Scary—but Lacks Bite", Matt Laslo, Wired, 10/31/23  ...  This event also coveed by NY Times, VentureBeat, Forbes, 
  • "The Climate Summit Embraces A.I., With Reservations", Jim Tankersley, NY Times, 12/4/23
  • "How Nations Are Losing a Global Race to Tackle A.I.’s Harms", Adam Satariano and Cecilia Kang, NY Times, 12/5/23
  • "E.U. reaches deal on landmark AI bill, racing ahead of U.S.", Anthony Faiola, Cat Zakrzewski and Beatriz Ríos, Washington Post, 12/8/23
    -- This story also covered by APNews, NY Times, BBC, Forbes, 

  • "AI cannot be patent 'inventor', UK Supreme Court rules in landmark case", Reuters, 12/20/23




H. Opinions, rumors, and long reads (LLM & non-LLM)
  • Two interviews with Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind
    --  "    Inside Google’s big AI shuffle — and how it plans to stay competitive, with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis", Nilay Patel, The Verge, 7/10/23 ... audio and transcript of interview erge
    -- "A.I. Could Solve Some of Humanity's Hardest Problems. It Already Has.". Guest = Demis Hassabis, The Ezra Klein Show (podcast with transcript), 7/11/23 

  • Civil war breaks out among AI experts ... open vs. closed platforms
    -- Open platform ... Yann LeCun's manifesto on X/Twitter, 10/29/23
    -- Closed platform ... "Google DeepMind boss hits back at Meta AI chief [Yann LeCun] over ‘fearmongering’ claim", Ryan Browne, CNBC, 10/31/23

  • "Why the Godfather of A.I. Fears What He’s Built", Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, 11/13/23 

  • "Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China",  Mark Mazzetti and Edward Wong, NY Times, 11/27/23 ... Editor's note: This is a long investigative piece into what might be called efforts by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to engage in "AI washing", akin to efforts by wealthy countries in the Middle East to engage in "sports washing" by investing billions of dollars into soccer teams and soccer championships. 

  • "US Compels Saudi Fund to Exit AI Chip Startup Backed by Altman", Jane Lanhee Lee, Bloomberg, 11/30/23

  • "The Inside Story of Microsoft’s Partnership with OpenAI", Charles Duhigg, The New Yorker, 12/1/23 
  • A multi-part NY Times overview of recent developmentes in AI 
    --  Part 1 "Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit", Cade Metz, Karen Weise, Nico Grant and Mike Isaac, NY Times, 12/3/23 
    -- Part 2 "Big Tech Muscles In: The 12 Months That Changed Silicon Valley Forever", Karen Weise, Cade Metz, Nico Grant and Mike Isaac,     NY Times, 12/4/23 
    -- Part 3: "Inside OpenAI’s Crisis Over the Future of Artificial Intelligence", Tripp Mickle, Cade Metz, Mike Isaac and Karen Weise, NY Times, 12/8/23
  • "Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech", Amba Kak, Sarah Myers West, Meredith Whittaker, MIT Tech Review, 12/5/23

I.  Language model flaws, hacks, and remedies
  • "Prompt injection: What’s the worst that can happen?", Simon Wilson, Weblog, 4/14/23
  • "Prompt Injection Attack on GPT-4", William Zhang, Robust Intelligence, 4/31/23
  • "The Security Hole at the Heart of ChatGPT and Bing", Matt Burgess, Wired, 5/25/23 
    -- Prompt-injection hack for plugins covered by Mashable

  • "Computer scientists claim to have discovered ‘unlimited’ ways to jailbreak ChatGPT", Clint Rainey,  FastCompany, 7/27/23 
    -- This story also covered by NY Times,  Mashable, Yahoo Finance, Wired, ZDNet, 
    -- Note: The research reported in these articles was conducted by Carnegie Mellon University
    -- An earlier study with similar findings was reported by Wired

  • "Stanford study challenges assumptions about language models: Larger context doesn’t mean better understanding", Matt Marshall, VentureBeat, 7/21/23  

  • "Hackers Trick AI With ‘Bad Math’ to Expose Flaws and Biases", Katrina Manson, Bloomberg, 8/12/23 
    -- This story also covered by the NY Times

  • "Uh-oh! Fine-tuning LLMs compromises their safety, study finds", Ben Dickson, VentureBeat, 10/13/23 
  • "Researchers develop ‘Woodpecker’: A groundbreaking solution to AI’s hallucination problem", Michael Nuñez, VentureBeat, 10/25/23
  • "Patronus AI finds ‘alarming’ safety gaps in leading AI systems", Michael Nuñez, VentureBeat, 12/19/23
J. Basics 
  • "Watch an A.I. Learn to Write by Reading Nothing but Shakespeare or Harry Potter or Jane Austen or Star Trek or Moby Dick", Aatish Bhatia, NY Times, 4/27/23 
  • "What Is a Large Language Model, the Tech Behind ChatGPT?", Kurt Muehmel, Data Iku, 6/7/23 
  • "Machine unlearning: The critical art of teaching AI to forget", Matthew Duffin, VentureBeat, 8/12/23 
  • "Levels of AGI: Operationalizing Progress on the Path to AGI", Meredith Ringel Morris et al, arXiv, 11/4/23
    -- Nontechnical summary of this article: "Here is how far we are to achieving AGI, according to DeepMind", Ben Dickson, VentureBeat, 11/16/23 


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