The latest of Sora

Howdy, wizards.

ChatGPT is a Swiss-army knife when it comes to data analysis. It saves me time every week when I analyse search traffic data from Google Analytics and Search console. Hallucinations aren’t so much of a problem when dealing with data because ChatGPT uses Python to do the calculations; in other words, the data isn’t directly manipulated by the LLM. Check out a few inspiring examples on this from Ethan Mollick.

Dario’s Picks

The most important news stories in AI this week

‍

1. New Sora showcases on OpenAI's YouTube page. Eight new Sora videos created by different visual artists just appeared. One of the videos is created by Danielle Baskin, founder of Moonlight, a virtual tarot platform; it showcases a digital tarot deck where each card is a Sora-generated video. Summary and my favourite showcases below.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ Did we just witness the first ever product integrating Sora videos? I'd expect many more of those soon after it releases to the public.‎

‍

2. Fei-Fei Li built a $1 billion startup in 4 months. The startup World Labs is just 4 months old, but has raised $100 million and has a $1 billion valuation. It's founder, Fei-Fei Li, also known as the "godmother of AI" is also the co-founder of Stanford's AI institute and a leader in the development of ImageNet, a database that was instrumental in advancing the field of computer vision. Her new company does something similar to ImageNet, but with behaviours and actions, to train LLMs and robots on how to act in the 3D world.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ The use case of getting robots to navigate physical spaces effectively is probably one of the hottest these days. Of course, investors are betting not only on the solution but also on the team here, considering Li's earlier contributions to AI. In any case, an insane valuation in just 4 months, reflecting the massive interest in AI right now.

‍

3. Microsoft releases a new method for AI models to encode spreadsheets. It's a more efficient way for LLMs to understand and handle complex spreadsheets, and is useful for improving accuracy in spreadsheet related tasks.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ If you've uploaded an excel sheet to ChatGPT, you know it usually struggles to understand everything unless it's super simple and well structured. This could be a step forward for using AI at work, with so many businesses still relying on the ol' Excel/Sheets.

‍

4. Android phones can now get Gemini answers without unlocking their device. Android users can now ask Gemini general questions directly on their lock screens, without unlocking or even touching their device. Fortunately, questions that require handling sensitive info still require an unlock.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ Small but meaningful feature upgrades like this are making AI more accessible in our everyday lives, and also making it unnecessary to "Google" for a lot of the more general questions we have throughout the day.

‍

Behind the news

New Sora showcases available on YouTube

‍

‍

OpenAI is slowly expanding Sora access to more creatives, and just released a series of new videos created with Sora by more of its early testers.

Here’s the coolest showcases imo:

• Music video (check out the character consistency)
• Sora video tarot deck
• Animals doing strange things in the early 1900s

OpenAI has said they’re currently safety testing Sora before public release and expect it to become broadly available “in the fall”.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ It’s astonishing what Sora can do, and it’s interesting to see ideas like the tarot showcase on how to integrate it into products (we’ll have things like Netflix for AI soon!). Now, will you please stop teasing us and release the thing already?

‍