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Happy Monday from The Alignmen ! If you haven't already, you should listen to Lex Fridman's conversation with Sam Altman. It's a glimpse into how the leading organisation building AGI works from both a technological and philosophical perspective.
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Here’s what we have lined up for you today -
Microsoft is clamping down on Bing competitors
The humble text box is the new user interface
Generative storytelling is taking a whole new meaning
Lex Fridman interviews Sam Altman
Bing is not the market leader when it comes to search engines. However the Microsoft led search engine has been at the forefront of deploying large language models (GPT-4) into its product.
Naturally, there are a bunch of companies that leverage Bing’s API to crawl data from the internet including the likes of DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and upstarts like You.com and Neeva.
In an interesting development, Microsoft is now warning companies that use its search index to develop AI tools. At least two (unnamed) companies have been warned regarding their usage of Bing’s search index.
As the competitive landscape heats up, Microsoft wants to ensure that its search data remains exclusive to Bing instead of enabling competitors. We are also yet to see how Google integrates Bard into its core search product. So this move by Microsoft makes complete sense.
An under-discussed phenomena is the rise of text based interfaces since the launch of ChatGPT. The graphical user interface (GUI) has been central to software applications for as long as we can remember. However, there has been a resurgence of text based interfaces in the past couple of months.
Don’t believe it ? Bing, Khanmigo, Bard, Runway and literally every other AI company in all sorts of domains are investing heavily in text based chatbot like interfaces. The reason for this is simple :
Humans feel most comfortable when navigating something in natural language.
ChatGPT was the strongest proof point that AI systems are advanced enough such that chatbots can now provide powerful experiences using natural language.
Navigating an app with clicks and buttons has a learning curve, conversing with an AI system seems intuitive.
The textbox is now the most powerful component in design and technology !
Not long ago we showcased Tome. The generative storytelling platform directly competing with Powerpoint. The company came out of stealth with a $43 million Series B and close to a million users.
In a world where the big names are taking all the headlines it’s impressive to see smaller upstarts taking the challenge head on. Tome’s basic product is pretty impressive, users can essentially create visually stunning presentations with text inputs. With this new release, it seems as though Tome has launched the first document-to-presentation AI tool.
Simply take any document, upload it to Tome and Tome will generate a presentation for you. Built using GPT-4 the presentation which is generated from the document follows a coherent flow and narrative. It’s not perfect but it gives a glimpse of what is possible.
Around the industry -
Can LLMs like GPT learn from their mistakes ?
GPT-4 saved a dog’s life
After Vogue Singapore cover, will AI models put human ones out of jobs? Experts are divided
Bing’s showing ‘AI-generated stories’ in some search results
Watch the award winning films from Runway’s AI film festival
ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers” !
Product Corner -
Captions: The all-in-one AI powered creator studio
Consensus: Ask a scientific research question, let GPT-4 answer
Waveline : The fastest way to integrate AI into your business
EzDubs : Real-time AI dubbing for livestreams and publishing platforms
Outerbase : The interface for your database.
TypeAI : The AI-powered document editor that helps you write remarkably fast.
Play.ht : Generate or clone voices and turn any text into human-like speech
2.5 hours of in depth conversation about the future of AI, AI Safety, Politics, AGI and lot more. We'll look back and remember this for a long-long time.