CNN
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It was undoubtedly the most significant week for artificial intelligence since the launch of ChatGPT last year.
OpenAI has revealed the latest version of the technology behind its viral chatbot ChatGPT. Elon Musk announced a sarcastic ChatGPT rival called AI Grok coming to its platform, X, formerly known as Twitter. A Senate subcommittee heard about Regulation of AI in healthcarehastargeted attack against OpenAI and the first wearable AI device who plans to one day replace the smartphone.
“These important announcements are indicative of the speed at which the AI market is evolving,” said Reece Hayden, analyst at ABI Research.
Hayden noted that the week’s development illustrated what is happening in the industry. The AI community continues to balance the risk of unintended consequences from evolving too quickly while moving forward as quickly as possible to remain competitive and innovative.
“Overall it was a huge week,” Hayden added.
Here’s a closer look at everything you need to know about the week in AI:
OpenAI held its first developers conference about a year after ChatGPT launched, which helped reignite an arms race among tech companies to develop and deploy similar AI tools in their products.
The company unveiled a series of updates to AI tools, including the ability for developers to create custom versions of ChatGPT called GPT. Similar to plugins, GPTs can connect to databases, be used in emails, or facilitate e-commerce orders. CEO Sam Altman demonstrated in just a few minutes how easy it is for anyone to create a GPT without any prior coding experience.
The company is also rolling out a GPT store, starting later this month, to allow GPTs to become searchable. Similar to other app stores, they will be listed in a leaderboard and the company will highlight useful tools in categories such as productivity, education, and “just for fun.”
Hayden said these announcements, along with the Apple-style Keynote structure and focus on developers, signaled their intent to “solve their strategic business challenges,” which include high costs and limited revenue streams, by creating a strong developer ecosystem.
Altman also introduced GPT-4 Turbo, the latest version of the technology that powers ChatGPT. It said it can now support an entry equivalent to about 300 pages of a standard book, about 16 times longer than the previous iteration.
Altman also shared more about the platform’s growth: around 2 million developers now use the platform and around 90% of Fortune 500 companies use the tools internally. It currently has 100 million active users.
Humane, a startup founded by former Apple employees, introduced its first AI-enabled wearable device called the Ai’s Pin, a small flashing gadget that attaches to clothing. It intends to eventually replace smartphones by projecting information onto the user’s hands, providing the ability to answer phone calls and perform various tasks without holding a smartphone.
The company said it also offers a handful of AI-powered tools, including the ability to search, send messages, and manage email clutter. The Ai pin, which runs on a Snapdragon processor and features a Qualcomm AI engine, features depth and motion sensors, an ultra-wide camera, and a laser-ink display.
Arun Chandrasekaran, an analyst at Gartner, said the unveiling marked a “milestone in designing futuristic hardware for generative technologies and exploring a potentially new way of human-machine interaction.”
Still, it’s unclear what adoption might look like. Although the company promises a battery that will last all day, Hayden said the biggest challenge in deploying AI on the device is battery life. “Since this device is so small and claims to offer several different behaviors and use cases and can detect data to inform the model, it will be interesting to see if the battery life is adequate.”
Other concerns exist as well: “An always-on AI that collects and processes data is really going to take a leap of faith from society that is unlikely to happen as at this point in time, most people do it,” Hayden said.
The Ai Pin, which starts at $699, goes on sale in the United States on Thursday, November 16.
xAI said in a blog post he was inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction comedy by British author Douglas Adams. “Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious side, so don’t use him if you hate humor!” xAI said in the post.
Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI has unveiled a chatbot called Grok for some X users, which he says has a sarcastic sense of humor similar to his own. Musk, who has owned X – formerly known as Twitter – for a year, said Grok is trained by having “real-time access” to information on the platform.
Musk said Grok was still in the early stages of testing, but would soon join X’s Premium+ service in the United States, which includes features such as the blue checkmark for $16 a month.
Musk is a co-founder of OpenAI, but resigned as president five years ago, in part because of disagreements over the company’s direction.
Two days after the developer conference, OpenAI experienced large-scale service outages, which it later attributed to potential targeted attacks on its servers. The company wrote on his website As of Wednesday evening, it “experienced periodic outages due to abnormal traffic reflecting a DDoS attack.”
A DDoS attack, or distributed denial of service, generally refers to an attacker flooding an Internet server to disrupt normal traffic.
On Wednesday, users were unable to access all of OpenAI’s tools and services and received a message that the platform was at capacity.
The company told CNN that no user information was compromised.
Big tech companies also continue to double down on AI. Reuters reported Amazon is investing millions of dollars in training an AI called “Olympus,” which is expected to contain double the “parameters” or building blocks that make the AI smarter than OpenAI’s GPT-4 model.
Additionally, YouTube is test AI tools who answers questions about content, makes recommendations, and summarizes topics in the video comments sections.
Chandrasekaran said that while not all companies will build huge AI models, many will continue to build smaller, specific ones to improve their products, automate tasks and gain a competitive advantage.
– CNN’s Anna Coobin contributed to this report
