💎 Google's Universal AI Agent, 🤖 Neuromorphic Drones, and 🧠 Freezing Brains Without Damage
💎 Google's Universal AI Agent, 🤖 Neuromorphic Drones, and 🧠 Freezing Brains Without Damage
Thomas's Innovation Wrap #78
Greetings,
Here’s your weekly wrap of technology, innovation, and finance news.
💎 Artificial Intelligence
Google made a series of AI-related announcements at its annual I/O Developer Conference:
Search will include AI-generated answers by default, rolling out to over one billion users by the end of the year.
Gemini Nano (their small on-device AI model) will soon detect potential scammers by listening in on calls.
Gemini Pro (large AI model) will double its context window to two million tokens later this year, enough to process two hours of video or 1.4 million words.
Gemini 1.5 Flash was unveiled, a medium-sized model optimised for speed and efficiency.
Veo, a new AI-powered video synthesis model, can generate high-definition videos from text, image, or video prompts, bringing it into direct competition with OpenAI's Sora.
Project Astra, a powerful new multimodel AI assistant, offers real-time interaction via voice, text, and vision across various tasks. It promises advanced reasoning, planning, and memory capabilities that will enable it to execute complex tasks and engage in more natural conversations with users (see Google’s video). They also teased a pair of smart glasses with similar functionality.
"We've always wanted to build a universal agent that will be useful in everyday life," said Demis Hassabis, the CEO and cofounder of Google DeepMind. "Imagine agents that can see and hear what we do, better understand the context we're in, and respond quickly in conversation, making the pace and quality of interaction feel much more natural."
OpenAI announced GPT-4o, an improved version of its flagship GPT-4 AI model with faster response times and multimodal capabilities. (We updated our code to use GPT-4o the day it came out and found quality increased at half the price and twice the speed.)
They also showcased Omni, a new AI voice assistant that sounds remarkably human-like and interacts seamlessly with visuals in a friendly way, and by friendly, I mean really friendly…
Reddit stock jumped 10% after partnering with OpenAI, highlighting the value of data for training AI models. The deal gives Reddit AI-powered features and OpenAI access to train on Reddit content.
Sony Music sent warnings to over 700 companies, prohibiting unauthorised use of their music in AI training, underscoring the ongoing copyright debates surrounding AI.
Klarna says nearly 90% of its 5,000 employees are now using generative AI tools daily, with the company’s AI assistant Kiki handling 2,000 queries per day on average.
Klarna's lawyers are using ChatGPT Enterprise, the business-grade version of OpenAI's tech, to create first drafts of common types of contract, cutting the hours it takes to draft up a contract.
💻 Chips and Computing
CoreWeave has raised an additional $7.5 billion in debt funding to expand to 28 data centres by the end of the year, doubling their current footprint. This follows their $1.1 billion equity raise two weeks ago.
Google has announced the next generation of its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), promising a huge performance boost for its data centre AI chips. The new TPUs, dubbed Trillium, will offer a 4.7x performance improvement per chip compared to the previous generation.
In part, Google achieved this by expanding the chip's matrix multiply units (MXUs) and by pushing the overall clock speed. In addition, Google also doubled the memory bandwidth for the Trillium chips.
Arm is planning to develop AI chips. It plans to launch a prototype in the spring of 2025 and reach mass production later that year. This move would put Arm in direct competition with established players like Nvidia.
Arm, whose technology is found in smartphones and PCs, has already began to see "momentum and tailwinds from all things AI," the firm's CEO Rene Haas said in a call with analysts in February.
👓 Virtual and Augmented Reality
Apple is intensifying its global push to sell the pricey Vision Pro headset, with hundreds of international store employees, including those from Australia, flying to the company's Cupertino headquarters for training on demonstrating the device to customers.
Owlchemy Labs, the studio behind popular VR titles Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator, is excited about the headset's potential. The studio's founder calls it "one of the biggest steps towards mainstream adoption" and praises its low-friction user experience as a key factor in its potential success.
💊 Health
Researchers have developed a method to freeze and thaw human brain tissue without damage, potentially enabling better studies of neurological conditions. The technique worked on both lab-grown brain organoids and patient tissue, with implications for cryopreservation and space travel. 🧠
"Thinking decades or centuries ahead, we can imagine patients being cryopreserved when they have a terminal condition or astronauts being cryopreserved in order to travel to other star systems," he says. MEDY may represent "one small step" towards that goal, says Magalhães.
USask researchers have created "mini-brains" from human blood samples that could revolutionize Alzheimer's diagnosis and treatment. The early proof-of-concept work showed the "mini-brains" displaying Alzheimer's pathology when created from the stem cells of Alzheimer's patients.
AC Immune's new Alzheimer's vaccine, backed by a $2.2 billion deal with Takeda, could offer a cheaper and more convenient alternative to current treatments. The vaccine has shown promise in early trials and could potentially be used to prevent Alzheimer's in the future.
New research suggests that semaglutide, the active ingredient in weight-loss drugs like Wegovy, could reduce heart attack and stroke risk by 20%, even in people without significant obesity. Researchers in Copenhagen have also found a way to potentially double the efficacy of these drugs by smuggling molecules into the brain that change how it thinks about food.
"The effect of GLP-1 combined with these molecules is very strong," explained Clemmensen. "In some cases, the mice lose twice as much weight as mice treated with GLP-1 only."
Scientists have developed a new "Quartet Nanocage" vaccine that could protect against future coronavirus pandemics before they even emerge.
"We've created a vaccine that provides protection against a broad range of different coronaviruses – including ones we don't even know about yet."
Could vision implants soon be a reality? Researchers have developed a remarkably small vision implant with electrodes the size of a single neuron that could restore sight to the blind. The implant uses a unique mix of flexible, non-corrosive materials that allow it to remain stable in the brain over long periods of time.
"This image would not be the world as someone with full vision would be able to see it. The image created by electrical impulses would be like the matrix board on a highway, a dark space, and some spots that would light up depending on the information you are given. The more electrodes that 'feed' into it, the better the image would be," says Maria Asplund, who led the technology development part of the project and is Professor of Bioelectronics at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
Mass Eye and Ear researchers have used CRISPR gene editing to successfully treat patients with inherited blindness caused by CEP290 mutations. The phase 1/2 clinical trial results are very promising, with 11 out of 14 participants experiencing improvements in vision and quality of life.
💪 Augmented Humans
Neuralink is now accepting applications for a second participant to receive their "Telepathy" brain implant, which allows users to control their phone and computer with their mind. The first recipient, Noland Arbaugh, described the neural interface as "life-changing", despite some initial issues with the implant's tiny threads moving out of position.
A study from Nature Human Behaviour represents a significant breakthrough in decoding internal speech using brain-computer interfaces. While the technology is still in its early stages, with only a handful of words being tested, it shows great promise for future clinical applications, particularly for those with conditions like locked-in syndrome.
"This technology would be particularly useful for people that have no means of movement any more," says study co-author Sarah Wandelt, a neural engineer who was at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena at the time the research was done. "For instance, we can think about a condition like locked-in syndrome."
🌞 Clean Energy
A new thermal-trapping device developed by Swiss researchers has successfully concentrated solar energy to reach temperatures over 1,000°C (see the proof-of-concept study). This breakthrough could provide a clean energy alternative for carbon-intensive industries like glass, steel, cement, and ceramics manufacturing.
"To tackle climate change, we need to decarbonize energy in general," says corresponding author Emiliano Casati of ETH Zurich, Switzerland. "People tend to only think about electricity as energy, but in fact, about half of the energy is used in the form of heat."
SunDrive, an Australian solar panel start-up, argues that making panels locally can be competitive thanks to their world record-breaking copper electrode technology and Australia's wealth of raw materials. The company's founders believe this represents an opportunity for Australia to play a big part in the world's transition to net-zero emissions.
"If we take a longer view of, say, a decade from now – 2034 – the volume of solar that Australia could be and should be implementing is massive. It really puts us on a global scale in terms of a solar industry. And then we know that the drivers of cost for solar manufacture are falling and going in Australia's favour.
🤖 Drones and Robotics
The Delft University of Technology team has developed an impressive neuromorphic drone that flies autonomously, processing data up to 64 times faster and consuming three times less energy than traditional AI methods. This breakthrough brings us closer to the possibility of tiny, agile, and intelligent robots inspired by flying insects and birds.
Neuromorphic AI will enable all autonomous robots to be more intelligent," says Guido de Croon, Professor in bio-inspired drones, "but it is an absolute enabler for tiny autonomous robots. At Delft University of Technology's Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, we work on tiny autonomous drones which can be used for applications ranging from monitoring crops in greenhouses to keeping track of stock in warehouses.
China has reportedly built what appears to be the world's first fully dedicated drone carrier ship, a mini aircraft carrier designed specifically for launching and recovering unmanned aircraft.
"We are confident that this ship is the world's first dedicated fixed-wing drone carrier," it said. Other experts, however, cautioned that only time would tell its purpose.
⚛️ Quantum Cryptography
Researchers at Monash University have developed a new technique to implement quantum-safe digital signatures using GPUs that's 20 times faster than current state-of-the-art CPU implementations. The research focused on efficiently implementing the Falcon signature scheme, which is one of the leading quantum-secure schemes recently approved by NIST.
"Falcon and other quantum-safe signature schemes are quite detailed and time-consuming algorithms to implement for GPUs," Associate Professor Steinfeld said.
"Through this research, we have successfully developed new techniques to solve the unique challenges of efficiently implementing Falcon on GPUs, resulting in 20 times faster generation of quantum-secure digital signatures compared to current state-of-the-art CPU implementations."
⚙️ Mobility
Baidu's robotaxi division, Apollo Go, is expected to turn profitable by 2025 as it deploys its more affordable 6th generation vehicles in Wuhan. The company's autonomous ride-hailing platform has made significant progress, with nearly half of robotaxi rides in Wuhan being driverless in Q4 2023.
"Apollo Go has established a fully autonomous robotaxi operation network in Wuhan. The advanced network is now capable of managing the entire robotaxi operation, including vehicle activation, dispatch, battery swapping, cleaning control, and retrieval, all without human intervention. Upon completion, this innovative network is expected to significantly reduce operational costs."
💲 Finance
Shein plans to shift its IPO from New York to London, highlighting the ongoing tensions between the US and China, and the regulatory challenges faced by Chinese companies seeking to list abroad.
Political headwinds Shein faces in the US, its largest market by revenue, show no sign of diminishing. Republican Senator Marco Rubio in April asked Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to investigate Shein and Temu on claims that ultra-low prices on the two platforms are a result of "a combination of" intellectual property theft, trade exploitation, strong backing from the Chinese government, and alleged use of forced labor.
Rasan Information Technology, the operator of Saudi Arabia's largest insurance platform Tameeni, is launching one of the first fintech IPOs in the kingdom. The company aims to raise up to US$224 million.
⚡ Other Snippets
After more than a century of attempts, companies are getting closer to solving the challenge of creating a viable paper bottle that can keep drinks fresh without getting soggy.
"All materials have their pros and cons," said Simon Boas Hoffmeyer, head of sustainability at Carlsberg, which has tested paper bottles for beer. "Our impetus for looking at a fiber bottle was to offer consumers the choice of a low-carbon single-use packaging."
Elon Musk launched SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service in Indonesia, aiming to improve internet access in remote parts of the sprawling archipelago. Musk attended the launch ceremony at a community health centre in Bali.
Musk, wearing a green batik shirt, said the availability of the Starlink service in Indonesia would help millions in far-flung parts of the country to access the Internet. The country is home to more than 270 million people and three different time zones,
Google scientists have mapped a cubic millimetre of the human brain in astonishing detail, revealing new patterns of connections between neurons and unusual cell structures. The 3D map, which covers just one millionth of a whole brain, incorporates a colossal 1.4 petabytes of data.
Have a great week,
Thomas
About Thomas Rice
Thomas Rice co-founded Minotaur Capital, and is based in Sydney, Australia. He can be found on the platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter at @thomasrice_au.