AIR#17 - March 21, 2024

Good morning, AI enthusiasts! Today's AIR: The AI Recon brew is a concoction of upheaval, innovation, and a dash of controversy, ready to accompany your morning caffeine ritual. We're leading with a story that's rippling through the business and AI communities alike: Stability AI, the powerhouse behind Stable Diffusion, is facing a crisis as key researchers exit the stage. This drama unfolds amidst a backdrop of financial woes and legal battles, signaling turbulent times ahead for what was once a beacon of AI innovation. It's a tale of ambition, struggle, and the harsh realities of pioneering in the tech frontier.

On a brighter note, Nvidia is once again proving why it's the titan of the tech world with its Blackwell GPU, a marvel of AI performance and energy efficiency. This leap forward promises to revolutionize AI capabilities, offering a glimpse into a future where our digital dreams are powered by unparalleled computational might. As Nvidia charts the course for AI infrastructure, we're reminded of the relentless pace of innovation and the boundless potential of technology to reshape our world.

But it's not all silicon and software; the AI community is facing its share of ethical quandaries and societal pushbacks. From the SXSW audience's vocal backlash against AI praise to OpenAI's Chatbot Store grappling with spam and copyright issues, it's clear that the road to AI utopia is fraught with challenges. These stories highlight the growing pains of an industry at the intersection of groundbreaking technology and complex human values, inviting us to ponder the balance between innovation and responsibility. So, grab your coffee and let's dive into the stories that are shaping our digital future – it's a journey through the highs and lows of AI that you won't want to miss.

Business

Stable Diffusion Team Exits as Stability AI Faces Crisis
Stable Diffusion creators exit Stability AI amid crisis, signaling trouble for the once-promising AI unicorn facing financial woes and lawsuits.

Inside Google's "Woke AI" Controversy: Former Employees Speak Out
Ex-Google employees reveal "Woke AI" debacle stems from DEI over excellence, impacting product quality and hiring practices.

Saudi Arabia in Talks with Andreessen Horowitz for $40B AI Fund
Saudi Arabia and Andreessen Horowitz discuss creating a $40B AI fund, aiming to diversify beyond oil and dominate global AI.

Nvidia Unleashes 1,200W Blackwell GPUs: A Liquid-Cooled Powerhouse for AI
Nvidia's new 1,200W Blackwell GPUs, 5x faster than predecessors, demand liquid cooling for peak AI performance. A leap in AI infrastructure dominance.

OpenAI to Unveil Superior GPT-5 for Chatbots by Mid-Year
OpenAI gears up to launch GPT-5 mid-year, promising a substantial leap in chatbot performance and capabilities.

Engineering

[Github] Micrograd-CUDA: Karpathy-Inspired GPU-Accelerated Autodiff Engine
Micrograd-CUDA launches: A GPU-accelerated autodiff engine, teaching the basics of CUDA with no dependencies beyond Python and CUDA.

🔥 OpenAI's Chatbot Marketplace Overrun by Spam and Legal Grey Areas
OpenAI's Chatbot Store struggles with spam, copyright issues, and promotes academic dishonesty, raising concerns over moderation and legal implications.

🔥 Private GitHub Repos Found in AI Dataset: A Breach of Trust by GitHub and Hugging Face
Private GitHub repos found in AI dataset "The Stack"; breach of trust by GitHub & Hugging Face. Consent issue raised.

Under the Hood: Exploring OpenAI's Sora Model's Technical Brilliance and Future GPU Demand
OpenAI's Sora model, a game-changer in realistic video generation, hints at a GPU demand surge, requiring thousands for training and inference.

Nvidia's Blackwell GPU Revolutionizes AI Performance and Energy Efficiency
Nvidia's Blackwell GPU leaps in AI performance & efficiency, offering 4x training, 30x inference speed, and 25x better energy use than predecessors.

[Banana 🍌] Convert Any Text to JSON with "Anything to JSON" Language Model
Turn any text into JSON with Banana's "Anything to JSON" model - just define your schema, and let the magic happen! 🍌🚀

[Github] Ragas: Evaluate Your RAG Pipelines with ExplodingGradients' Open-Source Library
ExplodingGradients' Ragas, the new open-source library, revolutionizes RAG pipeline evaluation for enhanced LLM performance.

AI Developers: Job Threat or Marketing Hype? - The Pragmatic Engineer Analysis
AI developers sparking job fears, but reality shows they're more helpers than replacements. Magic.dev & Cognition Labs hype vs. practicality.

[GitHub] George Hotz's Tenstorrent Kernel from Twitch: tt-twitch
George Hotz releases Tenstorrent's Twitch-inspired kernel on GitHub, boasting a 120-core Grayskull grid and advanced RISC-V processors.

[HuggingFace Release] Common Corpus: World's Largest Public Domain Dataset for LLM Training
HuggingFace unveils Common Corpus, the largest public domain dataset for LLMs, promoting open, diverse AI training without copyright issues.

Russian Coder Uses ChatGPT to Find Love and Launch a Job Referral Side Hustle on Tinder
Russian coder automates Tinder dating with ChatGPT, scores a wife and launches a job referral hustle, marrying tech with romance and profit.

Sentry Launches AI Autofix for Faster Debugging in Production Code
Sentry's AI Autofix aids developers in swiftly debugging production code by suggesting fixes, combining AI with human oversight for efficient problem-solving.

[GitHub] Roboflow's Supervision: Reusable Computer Vision Tools
Roboflow's Supervision on GitHub offers plug-and-play computer vision tools, making model integration and dataset management seamless for developers.

[Github] OpenDevin: An Open-Source AI Software Engineer Project
OpenDevin on GitHub: Revolutionizing software engineering with an AI that codes, enhancing collaboration and innovation. Join the open-source movement!

Academic

🔥 Inside the Creation of AI Transformers by Google Researchers
Google researchers revolutionized AI with "transformers", now powering ChatGPT & more. All 8 creators have since left, shaping the future elsewhere.

SXSW Audience Boos AI Praise: A Tech Backlash Unfolds
SXSW tech crowd boos AI praise, signaling a growing backlash against tech innovation and a shift from admiration to fear.

ChatGPT as a Reporting Assistant: A Cautionary Tale from Nieman Journalism Lab
Experimenting with ChatGPT for data journalism revealed limitations in sourcing and accuracy, though it excelled in coding tasks.

[Paper] Google DeepMind's TacticAI: Revolutionizing Football Tactics with AI
DeepMind's TacticAI revolutionizes football tactics, offering AI-driven insights on corner kicks, preferred by experts 90% of the time.

Evaluating LLMs with LLMs: Insights and Alternatives from Traceloop
Traceloop reveals using LLMs to evaluate other LLMs is flawed due to high variance in scores, suggesting established text metrics as a reliable alternative.