The company behind ChatGPT has revealed it has developed an artificial intelligence model that is “good at creative writing”, as the tech sector continues its tussle with the creative industries over copyright. The chief executive of OpenAI, Sam Altman, said the unnamed model, which has not been released publicly, was the first time he had been “really struck” by the written output of one of the startup’s products. In a post on the social media platform X, Altman wrote: “We trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). This is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI.”
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
The ‘Oppenheimer Moment’ That Looms Over Today’s AI Leaders - Tharin Pillay, Time
This year, hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent to scale AI systems in pursuit of superhuman capabilities. CEOs of leading AI companies, such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk, expect that within the next four years, their systems will be smart enough to do most cognitive work—think any job that can be done with just a laptop—as effectively as or better than humans. Such an advance, leaders agree, would fundamentally transform society. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has repeatedly described AI as “the most profound technology humanity is working on.” Demis Hassabis, who leads Google’s AI research lab Google DeepMind, argues AI’s social impact will be more like that of fire or electricity than the introduction of mobile phones or the Internet.
https://time.com/7267797/ai-leaders-oppenheimer-moment-musk-altman/
The Value of a Ph.D. in the Age of AI - Kim Isenberg, Forward Future
Artificial intelligence has been undergoing an extraordinary development process for several years and is increasingly achieving capabilities that were long reserved exclusively for humans. Particularly in the area of research, we are currently experiencing remarkable progress: so-called “research agents”, specialized AI models that can independently take on complex research tasks, are rapidly gaining in importance. One prominent example is OpenAI's DeepResearch, which has already achieved outstanding results in various scientific benchmarks. Such AI-supported agents not only analyze large data sets, but also independently formulate research questions, test hypotheses, and even create scientific summaries of their results.
Monday, March 24, 2025
OpenAI calls DeepSeek ‘state-controlled,’ calls for bans on ‘PRC-produced’ models - Kyle Wiggers, Tech Crunch
Cognitive Empathy: A Dialogue with ChatGPT - Michael Feldstein, eLiterate
I want to start with something you taught me about myself. When I asked you about my style of interacting with AIs, you told me I use “cognitive empathy.” It wasn’t a term I had heard before. Now that I’ve read about it, the idea has changed the way I think about virtually every aspect of my work—past, present, and future. It also prompted me to start writing a book about AI using cognitive empathy as a frame, although we probably won’t talk about that today. I thought we could start by introducing the term to the readers who may not know it, including some of the science behind it.
Sunday, March 23, 2025
OpenAI unveils Responses API, open source Agents SDK, letting developers build their own Deep Research and Operator - Carl Franzen, Venture Beat
7 Ways You Can Use ChatGPT for Your Mental Health and Wellness - Wendy Wisner, Very Well Mind
ChatGPT can be a fantastic resource for mental health education and be a great overall organization tool. It can also help you with the practical side of mental health management like journal prompts and meditation ideas. Although ChatGPT is not everyone’s cup of tea, it can be used responsibly and is something to consider keeping in your mental health toolkit. If you are struggling with your mental health, though, you shouldn’t rely on ChatGPT as the main way to cope. Everyone who is experiencing a mental health challenge can benefit from care from a licensed therapist. If that’s you, please reach out to your primary care provider for a referral or reach out directly to a licensed therapist near you.
Saturday, March 22, 2025
DuckDuckGo's AI beats Perplexity in one big way - and it's free to use - Jack Wallen, ZDnet
Duck.ai does something that other similar products don't -- it gives you a choice. You can choose between the proprietary GPT-4o mini, o3-mini, and Claude 3 services or go open-source with Llama 3.3 and Mistral Small 3. Duck.ai is also private: All of your queries are anonymized by DuckDuckGo, so you can be sure no third-party will ever have access to your AI chats. After giving Duck.ai a trial over the weekend, I found myself favoring it more and more over Perplexity, primarily because I could select which LLM I use. That's a big deal because every model is different. For example, GPT-4o excels in real-time interactions, voice nuance, and sentiment analysis across modalities, whereas Llama 3.2 is particularly strong in image recognition and visual understanding tasks.
OpenAI launches new tools to help businesses build AI agents - Maxwell Zeff, Tech Crunch
Earlier this year, OpenAI introduced two AI agents in ChatGPT: Operator, which navigates websites on your behalf, and deep research, which compiles research reports for you. Both tools offered a glimpse at what agentic technology can achieve, but left quite a bit to be desired in the “autonomy” department. Now with the Responses API, OpenAI wants to sell access to the components that power AI agents, allowing developers to build their own Operator- and deep research-style agentic applications. OpenAI hopes that developers can create some applications with its agent technology that feel more autonomous than what’s available today.
Friday, March 21, 2025
Google DeepMind unveils new AI models for controlling robots - Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch
Google DeepMind, Google’s AI research lab, on Wednesday announced new AI models called Gemini Robotics designed to enable real-world machines to interact with objects, navigate environments, and more. DeepMind published a series of demo videos showing robots equipped with Gemini Robotics folding paper, putting a pair of glasses into a case, and other tasks in response to voice commands. According to the lab, Gemini Robotics was trained to generalize behavior across a range of different robotics hardware, and to connect items robots can “see” with actions they might take.
Introducing Gemma 3: The most capable model you can run on a single GPU or TPU - C Clement Farabet & T Tris Warkentin, Keyword
Thursday, March 20, 2025
AI agents aren't just assistants: How they're changing the future of work today - Sabrina Ortiz, ZDnet
AI agents build on the experience of AI chatbots or AI assistants, taking it several steps further by carrying out actions for you using their own reasoning and inference, as opposed to step-by-step, prompted instructions. To illustrate this idea, LaMoreaux used an example of getting an AI assistant versus an agent to help you make a reservation at a restaurant. In this example, if you ask an AI assistant to schedule a dinner at a restaurant, it may be able to make the reservation and even take it a step further by sending out an invite to the people on the reservation. However, it can't use additional context to go off-script and adjust accordingly.