UsefulAINewsBackup29Jan24

Last update: Sunday 1/29/24
This weekly news page provides links to reports about major innovations in language models, with emphasis on small language models (SLMs).The page also links to reports about language model 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 Models | E. LLM News | 
F. SLM News | G. Public Policy | H. OpEds | I. Hacks | J. Basics

Top 2 stories in past week ... out of 9 new stories ...
  1. Microsoft
    "Exclusive: Microsoft has created a new team to build “small” AI that’s cheaper than OpenAI’s.", Aaron Holmes, The Information, 1/23/24 *** 
    -- This "exclusive" report was only published by The Information, but just the first few words are freely accessible; the remainder of the article lies behind an expensive paywall. Fortunately, an extensive summary of this "exclusive" was published by Windows Central. A brief summary also appeared in The Verge

  2. LM News
    "Stability AI unveils smaller, more efficient 1.6B language model as part of ongoing innovation", Sean Michael Kerner, VentureBeat, 1/19/24 *** 
    -- This story also covered by Stability AI

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 10 stories.

A. OpenAI (LLM)
  • "OpenAI Says Board Can Overrule CEO on Safety of New AI Releases", Rachel Metz, Bloomberg, 12/18/23
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch

  • "OpenAI Unveils App Store for Custom Chatbots", Cade Metz, NY Times, 1/8/24 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch, Bloomberg, The Verge, 

  • "OpenAI Signs Up 260 Businesses for Corporate Version of ChatGPT", Shirin Ghaffary, Bloomberg, 1/11/24
B. Microsoft 
  • "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

  • "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 

  • "Microsoft launches a Pro plan for Copilot", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 1/15/24
    -- This story also covered by CNET, The Verge  Windows Central ... and Microsoft

  • "Exclusive: Microsoft has created a new team to build “small” AI that’s cheaper than OpenAI’s.", Aaron Holmes, The Information, 1/23/24 *** 
    -- This "exclusive" report was only published by The Information, but only the first few words are freely accessible; the remainder of the article lies behind an expensive paywall. Fortunately, an extensive summary of this "exclusive" was published by Windows Central. A brief summary also appeared in The Verge


C. Google 
  • "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
    -- 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

  • "Google Chrome adds new AI features to boost productivity and creativity", Michael Nuñez, VentureBeat, 1/23/24
  • "Google shows off Lumiere, a space-time diffusion model for realistic AI videos ", Shubham Sharma, VentureBeat, 1/24/24
  • "Google to Team Up With Startup Hugging Face to Host AI Software", Julia Love, Bloomberg, 1/25/24

D. Amazon and other Big Tech models
  • "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. Large Language Model (LLM) news
  • "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 
    -- A related story (podcast) ➡ "How Adobe is managing the AI copyright dilemma, with general counsel Dana Rao", Nilay Patel,, TheVerge, 1/9/24

  • "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
  • "Generative AI isn’t a home run in the enterprise", Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, 1/11/24
  • "OpenAI Doesn’t Want to Train on New York Times Data After Lawsuit, Altman Says", Brad Stone and Jake Rudnitsky, Bloomberg, 1/18/24 
    -- This story also covered by CNN,

  • "Here are the key differences between the Samsung Galaxy S24 phones", Sheena Vasani, The Verge, 1/18/24  
    -- This story also covered by Mashable,  CNET, The Verge, Wired, Bloomberg     ... and Samsung

  • "Inside the Push to Bring AI Literacy to Schools and Colleges", Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge, 1/23/24
F. Small Language Model (SLM) news  
  • "AI startup Anthropic gets $100M to build custom LLM for telecom industry", Shubham Sharma, VentureBeat, 8/14/23 .. Note: This is a small languagr model (SLM); it does not know "everything" 
    -- This story also covered by TechCrunch

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

  • "Stability AI unveils smaller, more efficient 1.6B language model as part of ongoing innovation", Sean Michael Kerner, VentureBeat, 1/19/24 *** 
    -- This story also covered by Stability AI

G. Public policy considerations 
  • "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
  • "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
  • "Microsoft’s ‘Real Relationship’ With OpenAI Is Key EU Focus", Stephanie Bodoni, Edward Ludlow, and Samuel Stolton, Bloomberg, 1/11/24
  • "Federal Trade Commission Launches Inquiry Into A.I. Deals by Tech Giants", David McCabe, NY Times, 1/25/24
  • "OpenAI and Other Tech Giants Will Have to Warn the US Government When They Start New AI Projects", Will Knight, Wired, Will Knight, 1/27/24
    -- This story also covered by Mashable

H. Opinions, rumors, and long reads  
  • 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 
  • "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 

  • "Mark Zuckerberg’s new goal is creating artificial general intelligence",  Alex Heath, The Verge, 1/18/24
    -- This story also covered by VentureBeat
  • "Exploring The Future: 5 Cutting-Edge Generative AI Trends In 2024", Janakiram MSV, Forbes, 1/2/24

I.  Language model flaws, hacks, and remedies
  • "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

  • "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 
  • "Patronus AI finds ‘alarming’ safety gaps in leading AI systems", Michael Nuñez, VentureBeat, 12/19/23
  • "Anthropic researchers find that AI models can be trained to deceive", Emilia David, TechCrunch, 1/13/24 
    -- This story also covered by     VentureBeat  ... and Anthropic
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 
  • "Textbooks Are All You Need II: phi-1.5 technical report", Yuanzhi Li, Sébastien Bubeck, Ronen Eldan, Allie Del Giorno, Suriya Gunasekar, Yin Tat Lee, Microsoft Research, September 2023
  • "Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models", Mojan Javaheripi and Sébastien Bubeck , Microsoft Research, 12/12/24


  • Dozen Basic AI FAQs
    This page contains links to responses by Google's Bard chatbot to 12 questions that should be asked more frequently, but aren't. 


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Links to some back issues and TL;DRs/podcasts of this news page:  

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