New Competitor for GPT-4, Investigation at OpenAI, and Stalker Drones — Top AI News of the Week
Our latest AI Digest covers the biggest breaking AI news for the week. Anywhere Club community leader, Aliaksei Kartynnik, comments on key stories.
#1 — New Competitor to GPT-4
Inflection AI has presented a new model, Inflection-2.5 — an improved version of its previous “personal AI” that is intended to compete with leading AI models such as GPT-4. According to its creators, this model has its predecessor’s high level of emotional intelligence, due to its unique empathy settings, and it now has significantly improved its cognitive abilities, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) areas.
In my experience, Inflection-2.5 operates on the level of GPT-3.5, and it lags far behind in handling small language groups. Moreover, Inflection-2.5 is not connected to the internet and doesn't have an API. This impairs its ability to compete with LLMs from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
#2 — Sam Altman is Back on the OpenAI Board of Directors
Sam Altman has returned to the board of directors at OpenAI after the previous board ousted him and tried to fire him. As revealed during the investigation into those odd events, Altman's dismissal was not dictated by anything that justified his removal, such as company financial issues or any product problems. The recently completed investigation did not lift the veil on Altman's dismissal, and the company declined to release the report, disappointing many.
It should also be mentioned that the position of Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist at OpenAI and former board member, is still not clear. His departure from the company could pose significant risks to OpenAI, but they aren't in a rush to have him back in management; apparently, discussions between the parties about his role moving forward are ongoing. Finally, to address concerns about the diversity of its board, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, formerly the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nicole Seligman, former EVP and General Counsel at Sony, and Fiji Simo, Chief Executive of Instacart, have joined the OpenAI board.
#3 — Stalker Drones for $150
Drone enthusiasts from the U.S. managed to program a cheap DJI Tello quadcopter to recognize a specific person's face. After training it using just one photo of the target, the drone could be programmed to attack or follow that person. This draws attention to the issue of high-tech and AI accessibility, and the possible harmful use of these technologies by and against ordinary people – tracking them in public places or even inflicting physical harm.