Wednesday, March 26, 2025

ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is ‘good at creative writing’ - Dan Milmo, the Guardian

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.”


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

The proposal, a submission for the Trump administration’s “AI Action Plan” initiative, claims that DeepSeek’s models, including its R1 “reasoning” model, are insecure because DeepSeek faces requirements under Chinese law to comply with demands for user data. Banning the use of “PRC-produced” models in all countries considered “Tier 1” under the Biden administration’s export rules would prevent privacy and “security risks,” OpenAI says, including the “risk of IP theft.” It’s unclear whether OpenAI’s references to “models” are meant to refer to DeepSeek’s API, the lab’s open models, or both. DeepSeek’s open models don’t contain mechanisms that would allow the Chinese government to siphon user data; companies including Microsoft, Perplexity, and Amazon host them on their infrastructure.

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

OpenAI is rolling out a new suite of APIs and tools designed to help developers and enterprises build AI-powered agents more efficiently. These are delivered atop some of the very same technology powering its own first-party AI agents Deep Research (which scours the internet independently to develop richly researched, well organized and cited reports) and Operator (its tool for controlling a web browser cursor autonomously based on a user’s text instructions and performing actions like finding sports tickets or making reservations). Now, with access to the building blocks behind these powerful first-party OpenAI agents, developers can build their own third-party rivals or more domain-specialized products and services specific to their use case and audience.

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

The Gemma family of open models is foundational to our commitment to making useful AI technology accessible. Last month, we celebrated Gemma's first birthday, a milestone marked by incredible adoption — over 100 million downloads — and a vibrant community that has created more than 60,000 Gemma variants. This Gemmaverse continues to inspire us. Today, we're introducing Gemma 3, a collection of lightweight, state-of-the-art open models built from the same research and technology that powers our Gemini 2.0 models. These are our most advanced, portable and responsibly developed open models yet. They are designed to run fast, directly on devices — from phones and laptops to workstations — helping developers create AI applications, wherever people need them. Gemma 3 comes in a range of sizes (1B, 4B, 12B and 27B), allowing you to choose the best model for your specific hardware and performance needs. In this post, we'll explore Gemma 3's capabilities, introduce ShieldGemma 2, and share how you can join the expanding Gemmaverse.

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.

New tools for building agents - OpenAI

Today, we’re releasing the first set of building blocks that will help developers and enterprises build useful and reliable agents. We view agents as systems that independently accomplish tasks on behalf of users. Over the past year, we’ve introduced new model capabilities—such as advanced reasoning, multimodal interactions, and new safety techniques—that have laid the foundation for our models to handle the complex, multi-step tasks required to build agents. However, customers have shared that turning these capabilities into production-ready agents can be challenging, often requiring extensive prompt iteration and custom orchestration logic without sufficient visibility or built-in support.