WWDC24 Apple Conference, AGI, New Emojis — the top 3 AI news items of the week
Our latest AI Digest covers the biggest breaking AI news of the week. Anywhere Club community leader, Viktar Shalenchanka, comments on key stories.
#1 — Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference
Perhaps the most newsworthy event of this week is the WWDC24, Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Traditionally, at this conference, Apple demonstrates what is coming in iOS, macOS, and IPadOS. This year, as expected, the lion's share of the presentation was dedicated to AI features. The company introduced Apple Intelligence, a set of AI capabilities, that include generating and correcting text, creating and editing images, personalized notifications, and task execution. Apple stressed its commitment to privacy and security since its AI will have access to almost everything on your devices. This means it will possess the key quality of a virtual assistant - knowing about you in almost all contexts. All of this is deeply integrated into the OS, and can be controlled using simple natural language requests. And with beautiful animations - all in Apple style. Oh, and there will also be integration with OpenAI at the operating system level. Apparently, Siri is now friends with ChatGPT, and Apple users will get free and unlimited access to the chat.
#2 — Artificial general intelligence
While Apple showed us the future that will be arriving in the coming months, Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former employee of OpenAI (or, more precisely, its superalignment team), shared his vision of the future for the coming years. In his recently published book, he shares his insights about the AI future that most people do not yet understand or appreciate the impact of. Aschenbrenner’s future includes the impending appearance of AGI - artificial general intelligence that will be almost indistinguishable from that of humans. Spoiler: we don't have to wait very long. Of course, the book also contains information about: scandals, intrigues, investigations, and the financial underpinnings of the industry. It also includes discussion about AI security or, more accurately, the lack of security at labs and the threat posed by state actors. Yes, the book is free and available for download at https://situational-awareness.ai/
#3 — Using AI in antibiotics research
If you think about AI, do you wonder what do we, as ordinary people, get from the AI race? Besides the ability to generate new customized emojis (Genmoji) in the iPhone for when you can’t find an existing emoji that conveys just the right thing? Well, recently, scientists used machine learning to identify about 1 million candidates for new antibiotics. Without the benefit of AI, it would have taken many years to identify the previously unknown molecules. An author of the study described the discovery by explaining that using AI in antibiotics research means that instead of having to wait 5 years or more to discover a single potential antibiotic, researchers can identify hundreds of thousands of candidates in a matter of hours. This does not mean that a million new drugs are coming, but it does mean that new antibiotics are on the way much more quickly than they would otherwise have been. So, it’s not just whimsical benefits, but also direct and meaningful benefits from AI await us in the very near future.
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