Open AI, Google I/O Announcements, Glue (David Sacks) & Other AI Focus News
First up: OpenAI (not really open) releases GPT-4o, Google going all AI-First, Slack got a new competitor in town and change of my weekly newsletter.
Okay! So, before you begin reading, I'm planning to change the format of 'What I've Read This Week' to make it more interesting and focused on becoming a news recommender.
People tend to enjoy reading my take more than yet another news outlet 🤘
New Voice Synthesis Capabilities + GPT 4o
Earlier this week, they announced a new model 4o – I personally believe it's an optimized version (which they tested before as GPT Optimized) but with 4o they also made it faster response times, a larger context window (128K tokens, which is equivalent to a book of 300 pages), added multilingual support, native multimodal capabilities, and affordable pricing (50% cheaper than GPT-4 on the API), making it more accessible.
I'd say the biggest and coolest "Wow" factor was the voice-enabled function. It almost felt like the next big frontier for AI is to incorporate voice – enabling natural conversations with AI as if you were talking to a normal person. The greatest part is that with this release, the voice assistant does have a personality in its voice and during conversations. I was pretty stoked about it, and I feel that many frontiers such as customer support, interviews, and anything requiring large-scale screening or low-tier human effort could be replaced or disrupted with these new voice synthesis capabilities.
AI. AI. AI. AI. Google said AI 126 Times At Their Yearly Conference.
Google has the scale and power to make Gemini widely adopted, but they face the challenge of the "innovator's dilemma." Their cash cow, the ads business, could be at stake if they fully embrace what "Perplexity" offers.
Now that you've mentioned it, Google is indeed serious about its AI ambitions, extending them to every possible front. Let's start with Search – they're introducing contextual answers powered by the new PaLM 2 language model. Features like "Perspectives" in Search will leverage Perplexity-style features to source answers from platforms like Reddit, Stack Overflow, and personal blogs, providing human perspectives. Additionally, they've introduced Duet AI – a companion for individual users across their G Suite Workspace.
Google has also launched the Vertex AI Agent Builder, allowing developers to quickly build and deploy agents using NLP. The best part is that it's a no-code console, making it a language-first experience. All this indicates that Google might not be slow in rolling out AI capabilities powered by Gemini; rather, they seem ready to scale and incorporate AI across as many product offerings as possible.
Personally, I feel optimistic about where Google is heading with AI now. I wouldn't be surprised if they aggressively evolve Google Search and other answer engines, figuring out ways to monetize them. Remember, this is the same company that launched and discovered 'AdWords' and 'AdSense' when they wanted to aggressively monetize the business.
David Sacks Taking On SalesForce’s Slack
This week if you happened to listen to All-In Podcast or watched the VC Spotlight on Bloomberg, you know what’s up. He just announced Glue – AI first chat application for work. Unlike traditional AI assistants that operate in isolation, GlueAI has access to the full context of each conversation thread, shared documents, and linked data sources. This contextual awareness allows GlueAI to provide highly relevant and insightful responses, iterating on ideas, summarizing information, and answering questions with precision.
Team members can collectively benefit from and build upon GlueAI's contributions in real-time, fostering a truly collaborative and intelligent work environment. By leveraging cutting-edge large language models like GPT-4o and Claude 3, GlueAI delivers a level of intelligence and natural language understanding that is unmatched in the collaboration space.
In light of these advancements, Slack needs to reinvent itself and build its own version of Glean, a Microsoft AI-powered knowledge management tool. Slack's core value proposition revolves around collaboration and productivity, and integrating a Glean-like capability would enhance its offerings significantly. By bringing a centralized internal knowledge base directly into the Slack interface, users could quickly access and leverage their organization's collective knowledge without leaving the platform.
Slack's strength lies in its ability to facilitate seamless communication and teamwork, but with GlueAI raising the bar for intelligent collaboration, Slack risks falling behind if it fails to adapt. Building a Glean-like feature would not only streamline knowledge sharing and retrieval but also solidify Slack's position as the central hub for organizational productivity. By empowering users with AI-powered knowledge synthesis and natural language querying, Slack can drive increased adoption, improve workflows, and maintain its competitive edge in the team collaboration software market.
Other AI News:
OpenAI resignations are reaching an alarming level. Here are 11 key people who have left
OpenAI vs Google’s Gemini: All the major AI updates to know about this week
Senators Unveil "Roadmap" for AI Regulation and Research Funding