Popular artificial intelligence (AI) powered image generators can run up to 30 times faster thanks to a technique that condenses an entire 100-stage process into one step, new research shows.
Scientists have devised a technique called “distribution matching distillation” (DMD) that teaches new AI models to mimic established image generators, known as diffusion models, such as DALL·E 3, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.
Posted in business, internet, robotics/AI
A number of companies are racing to make a business on the back of these breakthroughs. Most are figuring out what that business is as they go. “I’ll routinely scream, ‘Holy cow, that is wicked cool’ while playing with these tools,” says Gary Lipkowitz, CEO of Vyond, a firm that provides a point-and-click platform for putting together short animated videos. “But how can you use this at work?”
Whatever the answer to that question, it will probably upend a wide range of businesses and change the roles of many professionals, from animators to advertisers. Fears of misuse are also growing. The widespread ability to generate fake video will make it easier than ever to flood the internet with propaganda and nonconsensual porn. We can see it coming. The problem is, nobody has a good fix.
As we continue to get to grips what’s ahead—good and bad—here are four things to think about. We’ve also curated a selection of the best videos filmmakers have made using this technology, including an exclusive reveal of “Somme Requiem,” an experimental short film by Los Angeles–based production company Myles. Read on for a taste of where AI moviemaking is headed.
Cerebras held an AI Day, and in spite of the concurrently running GTC, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.
As we have noted, Cerebras Systems is one of the very few startups that is actually getting some serious traction in training AI, at least from a handful of clients. They just introduced the third generation of Wafer-Scale Engines, a monster of a chip that can outperform racks of GPUs, as well as a partnership with Qualcomm to provide custom training and Go-To-Market collaboration with the Edge AI leader. Here’s a few take-aways from the AI Day event. Lots of images from Cerebras, but they tell the story quite well! We will cover the challenges this bold startup still faces in the Conclusions at the end.
As the third generation of wafer-scale engines, the new WSE-3 and the system in which it runs, the CS-3, is an engineering marvel. While Cerebras likes to compare it to a single GPU chip, thats really not the point, which is to simplify scaling. Why cut up a a wafer of chips, package each with HBM, put the package on a board, connect to CPUs with a fabric, then tie them all back together with networking chips and cables? Thats a lot of complexity that leads to a lot of programing to distribute the workload via various forms of parallelism then tie them all back together into a supercomputer. Cerebras thinks it has a better idea.
At a time when other AI assistants and chatbots are also beefing up their own voice interaction capabilities — as OpenAI just did with ChatGPT — Hume AI may have just set a new standard in mind-blowing human-like interactivity, intonation, and speaking qualities.
One obvious potential customer, rival, or would-be acquirer that comes to mind in this case is Amazon, which remains many people’s preferred voice assistant provider through Alexa, but which has since de-emphasized its voice offerings internally and stated it would reduce headcount on that division.
Asked by VentureBeat: “Have you had discussions with or been approached for partnerships/acquisitions by larger entities such as Amazon, Microsoft, etc? I could imagine Amazon in particular being quite interested in this technology as it seems like a vastly improved voice assistant compared to Amazon’s Alexa,” Cowen responded via email: “No comment.”
These two chips might be the key to developing sophisticated brain-computer interfacing.
Scientists from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China claim to have developed the world’s most energy-efficient artificial intelligence AI microchips that are small enough to fit inside smart devices and could open doors for innovative offline functions like voice and even mind control.
Generally, AI chips that are designed for heavy tasks often require significant power because of high computational demands, which limits their use in real-world scenarios. Professor Zhou Jun and his team managed to significantly reduce power consumption through algorithm and architectural optimization.
Posted in robotics/AI
Columbia engineers build Emo, a silicon-clad robotic face that makes eye contact and uses two AI models to anticipate and replicate a person’s smile before the person actually smiles — a major advance in robots predicting human facial expressions accurately, improving interactions, and building trust between humans and robots.
Tesla is working on “private 5G” infrastructure to be connected to its electric vehicles and Optimus robot.
The automaker was early in including internet connectivity in all its vehicles. There were many reasons for this. It enabled over-the-air software updates and connectivity features, and it also allowed Tesla to collect a lot of data.
Tesla started with 3G connectivity and later updated to 4G LTE, but now, we learn that the automaker is looking to upgrade to 5G.
In a new study, AI processed text from health histories and neurologic examinations to locate lesions in the brain. The study, which looked specifically at the large language model called generative pre-trained transformer 4 (GPT-4), is published in the online issue of Neurology Clinical Practice.
A stroke can cause long-term disability or even death. Knowing where a stroke has occurred in the brain helps predict long-term effects such as problems with speech and language or a person’s ability to move part of their body. It can also help determine the best treatment and a person’s overall prognosis.
Damage to the brain tissue from a stroke is called a lesion. A neurologic exam can help locate lesions, when paired with a review of a person’s health history. The exam involves symptom evaluation and thinking and memory tests. People with stroke often have brain scans to locate lesions.
