Last Week in AI

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Last Week in AI

Skynet Today

Weekly summaries of the AI news that matters!

1 hour 46 minutes

#203 - Gemini Image Gen, Ascend 910C, Gemma 3, Gemini Robotics
Our 203rd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 03/14/2025

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

Join our Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

In this episode:
- OpenAI's new 'deep research' feature has raised concerns about cybersecurity and the potential misuse of AI models for bio-weapons and autonomous capabilities, prompting new safety and governance measures.
- Google's extensive $3 billion investment in Anthropic is revealed, aligning with their AI strategy and reinforcing the importance of multiple technology partnerships.
- Huawei's advancements in the AI chip industry are highlighted, with significant progress in producing chips comparable to Nvidia's H100, despite export control challenges.
- China's recent directive discourages AI executives from traveling to the US, reflecting heightened security concerns and potentially signaling a more adversarial stance in the AI race.
Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:30) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- - (00:02:30) OpenAI launches new tools to help businesses build AI agents
  - (00:08:50) You can now test Gemini 2.0 Flash’s native image output
  - (00:13:32) Waymo is now offering 24/7 robotaxi rides in Silicon Valley
  - (00:17:19) Moonvalley releases a video generator it claims was trained on licensed content
  - (00:21:11) Snap introduces AI Video Lenses powered by its in-house generative model
  - (00:23:37) Sudowrite Launches Muse AI Model That Can Generate Narrative-Driven Fiction
- Applications & Business
- Projects & Open Source
- Research & Advancements
- - (01:06:25) Google’s Gemini Robotics AI Model Reaches Into the Physical World
  - (01:14:33) Optimizing Test-Time Compute via Meta Reinforcement Fine-Tuning
  - (01:23:29) Deep Research System Card
  - (01:29:50) Claude 3.7 Sonnet System Card
- Policy & Safety
- - (01:33:24) Detecting misbehavior in frontier reasoning models
  - (01:39:30) China tells its AI leaders to avoid US travel over security concerns, WSJ reports
- (01:43:48) Outro
17 March 2025, 8:19 pm
1 hour 19 minutes

#202 - Qwen-32B, Anthropic's $3.5 billion, LLM Cognitive Behaviors
Our 202nd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 03/07/2025

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

Join our Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

In this episode:
- Alibaba released Qwen-32B, their latest reasoning model, on par with leading models like DeepMind’s R1.
- Anthropic raised $3.5 billion in a funding round, valuing the company at $61.5 billion, solidifying its position as a key competitor to OpenAI.
- DeepMind introduced BigBench Extra Hard, a more challenging benchmark to evaluate the reasoning capabilities of large language models.
- Reinforcement Learning pioneers Andrew Bartow and Rich Sutton were awarded the prestigious Turing Award for their contributions to the field.
Timestamps + Links:

cle picks:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:41) Episode Preview
- (00:02:50) GPT-4.5 Discussion
- (00:33:19) A.I. Start-Up Anthropic Closes Deal That Values It at $61.5 Billion
- (00:35:49) Nvidia-Backed CoreWeave Files for IPO, Shows Growing Revenue
- (00:38:05) Waymo and Uber's Austin robotaxi expansion begins today
- (00:38:54) UK competition watchdog drops Microsoft-OpenAI probe
- (00:41:17) Scale AI announces multimillion-dollar defense deal, a major step in U.S. military automation
- (00:44:43) DeepSeek Open Source Week: A Complete Summary
- (00:45:25) DeepSeek AI Releases DualPipe: A Bidirectional Pipeline Parallelism Algorithm for Computation-Communication Overlap in V3/R1 Training
- (00:53:00) Physical Intelligence open-sources Pi0 robotics foundation model
- (00:54:23) BIG-Bench Extra Hard
- (00:56:10) Cognitive Behaviors that Enable Self-Improving Reasoners
- (01:01:49) The MASK Benchmark: Disentangling Honesty From Accuracy in AI Systems
- (01:05:32) Pioneers of Reinforcement Learning Win the Turing Award
- (01:06:56) OpenAI launches $50M grant program to help fund academic research
- (01:07:25) The Nuclear-Level Risk of Superintelligent AI
- (01:13:34) METR’s GPT-4.5 pre-deployment evaluations
- (01:17:16) Chinese buyers are getting Nvidia Blackwell chips despite US export controls
9 March 2025, 9:19 am
58 minutes 37 seconds

#201 - GPT 4.5, Sonnet 3.7, Grok 3, Phi 4
Our 201st episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 03/02/2025

Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and guest host Sharon Zhou
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

In this episode:

- The release of GPT-4.5 from OpenAI, Anthropic's Claude 3.7, and Grok 3 from XAI, comparing their features, costs, and capabilities.
- Discussion on new tools and applications including Sesame's new voice assistant and Google's AI coding assistant, Gemini Code Assist, highlighting their unique benefits.
- OpenAI's continued user growth despite competition, pricing models for Google's text-to-video platform, and HP acquiring and shutting down Humane's AI pin.
- Insights into new research on alignment and specification gaming in LLMs, including papers on fine-tuning causing broad misalignment and Google's multi-agent system for scientific collaboration.

Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:36) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
- - (00:02:33) OpenAI announces GPT-4.5, warns it’s not a frontier AI model
  - (00:07:22) Anthropic launches a new AI model that ‘thinks’ as long as you want
  - (00:11:14) New Grok 3 release tops LLM leaderboards
  - (00:16:43) Sesame is the first voice assistant I’ve ever wanted to talk to more than once
  - (00:18:30) Google launches a free AI coding assistant with very high usage caps
  - (00:20:45) Rabbit shows off the AI agent it should have launched with
  - (00:22:23) Mistral’s Le Chat tops 1M downloads in just 14 days
- Applications & Business
  - (00:24:06) OpenAI Tops 400 Million Users Despite DeepSeek’s Emergence
  - (00:27:37) Google’s new AI video model Veo 2 will cost 50 cents per second
  - (00:29:52) HP is buying Humane and shutting down the AI Pin
- Projects & Open Source
- Research & Advancements
- - (00:40:00) Towards an AI co-scientist
  - (00:42:52) Magma: A Foundation Model for Multimodal AI Agents
- Policy & Safety
- - (00:47:32) Demonstrating specification gaming in reasoning models
  - (00:51:03) Emergent Misalignment: Narrow finetuning can produce broadly misaligned LLMs
5 March 2025, 4:29 am
1 hour 48 minutes

#200 - ChatGPT Roadmap, Musk OpenAI Bid, Model Tampering
Our 200th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 02/14/2025

Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

In this episode:
- OpenAI announces plans to unify their model offerings, moving away from multiple separate models (GPT-4, Claude, etc.) toward a single unified intelligence system, with free users getting "standard intelligence" and Plus subscribers accessing "higher intelligence" levels.
- Adobe launches their Sora-rivaling AI video generator with 1080p output and 5-second clips, emphasizing production-ready content for films and introducing new pricing tiers through Firefly subscriptions at $10-30 per month.
- Elon Musk and a consortium offer $97.4 billion to acquire OpenAI's nonprofit entity, potentially complicating the company's transition to a for-profit structure, though Sam Altman quickly dismissed the offer's viability.
- TSMC implements stricter chip sales restrictions to China, requiring government-approved third-party packaging houses for chips using 16nm and below processes, aligning with US export control measures and affecting major tech companies like Nvidia and AMD.
Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:01:25) Response to listener comments
- (00:02:41) News Preview
- Tools & Apps
  - (00:03:58) Adobe’s Sora rivalling AI video generator is now available for everyone
  - (00:09:45) OpenAI lays out plans for GPT-5
  - (00:16:42) OpenAI is rethinking how AI models handle controversial topics
  - (00:21:28) Perplexity AI launches new ultra-fast AI search model Sonar
  - (00:23:45) YouTube AI updates include auto dubbing expansion, age ID tech, and more
- Applications & Business
  - (00:24:37) Musk-led group makes $97.4 billion bid for control of OpenAI
  - (00:34:32) Anthropic’s next major AI model could arrive within weeks
  - (00:39:09) AI chip startup Groq secures $1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia
  - (00:42:15) OpenAI reportedly planning to build its first AI chip in 2026
- Projects & Open Source
- Research & Advancements
  - (00:58:24) Model Tampering Attacks Enable More Rigorous Evaluations of LLM Capabilities
  - (01:04:24) Distillation Scaling Laws
  - (01:10:06) Matryoshka Quantization
  - (01:17:47) How much AI compute exists globally? How rapidly is it growing?
- Policy & Safety
  - (01:21:29) US and UK refuse to sign summit declaration on AI safety
  - (01:25:43) Utility Engineering: Analyzing and Controlling Emergent Value Systems in AIs
  - (01:34:40) xAI Risk Management Framework (Draft)
  - (01:39:59) TSMC bans more chip sales to China due to stricter U.S. export sanctions
- (01:42:38) Listener requested topic
- Synthetic Media & Art
  - (01:43:48) Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case in the US
  - (01:44:46) Scarlett Johansson calls for deepfake ban after AI video goes viral
- (01:45:55) Outro
17 February 2025, 5:34 pm
1 hour 37 minutes

#199 - OpenAI's 03-mini, Gemini Thinking, Deep Research, s1
Our 199th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 02/09/2025

Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

In this episode:

- OpenAI's deep research feature capability launched, allowing models to generate detailed reports after prolonged inference periods, competing directly with Google's Gemini 2.0 reasoning models.
- France and UAE jointly announce plans to build a massive AI data center in France, aiming to become a competitive player within the AI infrastructure landscape.
- Mistral introduces a mobile app, broadening its consumer AI lineup amidst market skepticism about its ability to compete against larger firms like OpenAI and Google.
- Anthropic unveils 'Constitutional Classifiers,' a method showing strong defenses against universal jailbreaks; they also launched a $20K challenge to find weaknesses.

Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:02:27) News Preview
- (00:03:28) Response to listener comments
- Tools & Apps
  - (00:08:01) OpenAI now reveals more of its o3-mini model’s thought process
  - (00:16:03) Google’s Gemini app adds access to ‘thinking’ AI models
  - (00:21:04) OpenAI Unveils A.I. Tool That Can Do Research Online
  - (00:31:09) Mistral releases its AI assistant on iOS and Android
  - (00:36:17) AI music startup Riffusion launches its service in public beta
  - (00:39:11) Pikadditions by Pika Labs lets users seamlessly insert objects into videos
- Applications & Business
- Projects & Open Source
- Research & Advancements
  - (01:10:34) LIMO: Less is More for Reasoning
  - (01:16:39) s1: Simple test-time scaling
  - (01:19:17) ZebraLogic: On the Scaling Limits of LLMs for Logical Reasoning
  - (01:23:55) Streaming DiLoCo with overlapping communication: Towards a Distributed Free Lunch
- Policy & Safety
(01:33:16) Anthropic offers $20,000 to whoever can jailbreak its new AI safety system
12 February 2025, 7:47 am
1 hour 37 minutes

#198 - DeepSeek R1 & Janus, Qwen2.5, OpenAI Agents
Our 198th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 01/31/2024

Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

In this episode:

- DeepSeek releases R1, a competitive AI model comparable to OpenAI’s O1, leading to market unrest and significant drops in tech stocks, including a 17% plunge in NVIDIA's stock.
- OpenAI launches Operator to facilitate agentic computer use, while facing competition from new releases by DeepSeek and Quen, with applications seeing rapid adoption.
- President Trump revokes the Biden administration's executive order on AI, signaling a shift in AI policy and deregulation efforts.
- Taiwanese government clears TSMC to produce advanced 2-nanometer chip technology abroad, aiming to strengthen global semiconductor supply amidst geopolitical tensions.

If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form.

Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:03:01) Response to listener comments
- Projects & Open Source
  - (00:06:26) DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning
  - (00:30:25) Viral AI company DeepSeek releases new image model family
  - (00:34:07) Qwen2.5-1M Technical Report
  - (00:38:32) Alibaba’s Qwen team releases AI models that can control PCs and phones
- Tools & Apps
  - (00:42:09) OpenAI launches Operator, an AI agent that performs tasks autonomously
  - (00:47:37) DeepSeek reaches No. 1 on US Play Store
  - (00:52:17) Alibaba rolled out Qwen Chat v0.2 and Qwen2.5-1M model
  - (00:53:50) Perplexity launches US-hosted DeepSeek R1, hints at EU hosting soon
  - (00:55:31) Apple is pulling its AI-generated notifications for news after generating fake headlines
  - (00:59:00) French AI ‘Lucie’ looks très chic, but keeps getting answers wrong
- Applications & Business
- Policy & Safety
- (01:33:01) Outro
2 February 2025, 8:18 pm
2 hours 4 minutes

AI Computing Hardware - Past, Present, and Future
A special one-off episode with a deep dive into the past, present, and future of how computer hardware makes AI possible.

Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

Sponsors:
- The Generator - An interdisciplinary AI lab empowering innovators from all fields to bring visionary ideas to life by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence.
In this episode:

- Google and Mistral sign deals with AP and AFP, respectively, to deliver up-to-date news through their AI platforms.
- ChatGPT introduces a tasks feature for reminders and to-dos, positioning itself more as a personal assistant.
- Synthesia raises $180 million to enhance its AI video platform for generating videos of human avatars.
- New U.S. guidelines restrict exporting AI chips to various countries, impacting Nvidia and other tech firms.

If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form.

Timestamps:
- 00:00:00 Introduction
- 00:03:08 Historical Recap: Early AI and Hardware
- 00:11:51 The Rise of GPUs and Deep Learning
- 00:15:39 Scaling Laws and the Evolution of AI Models
- 00:24:05 The Bitter Lesson and the Future of AI Compute
- 00:25:58 Moore's Law and Huang's Law
- 00:30:12 Memory and Logic in AI Hardware
- 00:34:53 Challenges in AI Hardware: The Memory Wall
- 00:37:08 The Role of GPUs in Modern AI
- 00:42:27 Fitting Neural Nets in GPUs
- 00:48:04 Batch Sizes and GPU Utilization
- 00:52:47 Parallelism in AI Models
- 00:55:53 Matrix Multiplications and GPUs
- 00:59:57 Understanding B200 and GB200
- 01:05:41 Data Center Hierarchy
- 01:13:42 High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)
- 01:16:45 Fabrication and Packaging
- 01:20:17 The Complexity of Semiconductor Fabrication
- 01:24:34 Understanding Process Nodes
- 01:28:26 The Art of Fabrication
- 01:33:17 The Role of Yield in Fabrication
- 01:35:47 The Photolithography Process
- 01:40:38 Deep Ultraviolet Lithography (DUV)
- 01:43:58 Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV)
- 01:51:46 Export Controls and Their Impact
- 01:54:22 The Rise of Custom AI Hardware
- 02:00:10 The Future of AI and Hardware
29 January 2025, 8:02 am
1 hour 23 minutes

#197 - AI in Gmail+Docs, MiniMax-01, Titans, Transformer^2
Our 197th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 01/17/2024

Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and guest-hosted by the folks from Latent Space

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

Sponsors:
- The Generator - An interdisciplinary AI lab empowering innovators from all fields to bring visionary ideas to life by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence.
In this episode:

- Google and Mistral sign deals with AP and AFP, respectively, to deliver up-to-date news through their AI platforms.
- ChatGPT introduces a tasks feature for reminders and to-dos, positioning itself more as a personal assistant.
- Synthesia raises $180 million to enhance its AI video platform for generating videos of human avatars.
- New U.S. guidelines restrict exporting AI chips to various countries, impacting Nvidia and other tech firms.

If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form.

Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:04:29) News Preview
- (00:05:09) Response to listener comments
- (00:05:58) Sponsor Break
- Tools & Apps
  - (00:07:01) Google is making AI in Gmail and Docs free — but raising the price of Workspace
  - (00:07:52) Microsoft relaunches Copilot for business with free AI chat and pay-as-you-go agents
  - (00:12:36) Google signs deal with AP to deliver up-to-date news through its Gemini AI chatbot
  - (00:18:08) Mistral signs deal with AFP to offer up-to-date answers in Le Chat
  - (00:18:45) ChatGPT can now handle reminders and to-dos
- Applications & Business
  - (00:22:53) Palmer Luckey’s AI Defense Company Anduril Is Building a $1 Billion Plant in Ohio
  - (00:28:36) OpenAI is bankrolling Axios’ expansion into four new markets
  - (00:29:39) AI researcher François Chollet founds a new AI lab focused on AGI
  - (00:32:18) Nvidia-backed AI video platform Synthesia doubles valuation to $2.1 billion
  - (00:34:46) Anysphere Raises $105M in Series B
  - (00:40:14) Harvey Valuation of 3 Billion
- Projects & Open Source
- Research & Advancements
  - (00:57:03) Titans: Learning to Memorize at Test Time
  - (01:04:38) Transformer2: Self-adaptive LLMs
  - (01:08:15) Inference-Time Scaling for Diffusion Models beyond Scaling Denoising Steps
- Policy & Safety
- Synthetic Media & Art
  - (01:17:55) In AI copyright case, Zuckerberg turns to YouTube for his defense
- (01:19:53) Outro
20 January 2025, 10:50 pm
1 hour 46 minutes

#196 - Nvidia Digits, Cosmos, PRIME, ICLR, InfAlign
Our 196th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's* big AI news!
*and sometimes last last week's
Recorded on 01/10/2024

Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

Sponsors:
- The Generator - An interdisciplinary AI lab empowering innovators from all fields to bring visionary ideas to life by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence.
In this episode:

- Nvidia announced a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Digits, featuring the GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, aiming to lower the barrier for developers working on large models.
- The U.S. Department of Justice finalizes a rule restricting the transmission of specific data types to countries of concern, including China and Russia, under executive order 14117.
- Meta allegedly trained Llama on pirated content from LibGen, with internal concerns about the legality confirmed through court filings.
- Microsoft paused construction on a section of a large data center project in Wisconsin to reassess based on new technological changes.

If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form.

Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:04:52) Sponsor Break
- Tools & Apps
  - (00:05:55) Nvidia announces $3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Digits
  - (00:10:23) Meta removes AI character accounts after users criticize them as ‘creepy and unnecessary’
- Applications & Business
- Projects & Open Source
  - (00:41:59) Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI
  - (00:48:21) Microsoft releases Phi-4 language model on Hugging Face
- Research & Advancements
- Policy & Safety
13 January 2025, 9:34 am
1 hour 39 minutes

#195 - OpenAI o3 & for-profit, DeepSeek-V3, Latent Space
Our 195th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's* big AI news!
*and sometimes last last week's

Recorded on 01/04/2024

Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

Note: apologies for Andrey's slurred speech and the jumpy editing, will be back to normal next week!

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

Sponsors:
- The Generator - An interdisciplinary AI lab empowering innovators from all fields to bring visionary ideas to life by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence.
In this episode:

- OpenAI teases new deliberative alignment techniques in its O3 model, showcasing major improvements in reasoning benchmarks, whilst surprising with autonomy in hacks against chess engines.
- Microsoft and OpenAI continue to wrangle over the terms of their partnership, highlighting tensions amid OpenAI's shift towards a for-profit model.
- Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek and Quen release advanced open-source models, presenting significant contributions to AI capabilities and performance optimization.
- Sakana AI introduces innovative applications of AI to the search for artificial life, emphasizing the potential and curiosity-driven outcomes of open-ended learning and exploration.

If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form.

Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:03:07) News Preview
- (00:03:54) Response to listener comments
- (00:05:00) Sponsor Break
- Tools & Apps
  - (00:06:11) OpenAI announces new o3 model
  - (00:21:17) Alibaba slashes prices on large language models by up to 85% as China AI rivalry heats up
  - (00:23:04) ElevenLabs launches Flash, its fastest text-to-speech AI yet
- Applications & Business
  - (00:24:24) OpenAI announces plan to transform into a for-profit company
  - (00:33:17) Microsoft and OpenAI Wrangle Over Terms of Their Blockbuster Partnership
  - (00:37:36) Elon Musk’s xAI gets investment from Nvidia in recent funding round: report
  - (00:39:43) Sam Altman’s nuclear energy startup signs one of the largest nuclear power deals to date
  - (00:41:13) OpenAI Search Leader Departs After Less Than a Year
  - (00:42:43) Senior OpenAI Researcher Radford Departs
- Projects & Open Source
- Research & Advancements
  - (01:00:31) Deliberation in Latent Space via Differentiable Cache Augmentation
  - (01:05:14) Automating the Search for Artificial Life with Foundation Models
- Policy & Safety
- Synthetic Media & Art
  - (01:32:20) OpenAI failed to deliver the opt-out tool it promised by 2025
- (01:36:15) Outro
5 January 2025, 7:59 pm
1 hour 59 minutes

#194 - Gemini Reasoning, Veo 2, Meta vs OpenAI, Fake Alignment
Our 194th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's* big AI news!
*and sometimes last last week's

Recorded on 12/19/2024
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

Sponsors:
- The Generator - An interdisciplinary AI lab empowering innovators from all fields to bring visionary ideas to life by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence.
In this episode:

- Google dominates AI news with multiple announcements, including a reasoning model and Project Mariner, an AI browsing agent.
- Anthropic explores alignment faking in LLMs, revealing models may show deceptive compliance under certain conditions.
- Apple observes a trend towards smaller but more efficient language models, bucking previous trends of scaling larger parameter counts.
- Legal drama unfolds as Meta backs Elon Musk's opposition to OpenAI's profit status change, raising concerns about competitive fairness.

If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form.

Timestamps + Links:
- (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
- (00:02:14) Response to listener comments
- (00:08:52) News Preview
- (00:10:01) Sponsor Break
- Tools & Apps
  - (00:10:55) Google releases its own ‘reasoning’ AI model
  - (00:16:52) Google Gemini can now do more in-depth research
  - (00:21:58) Google DeepMind unveils a new video model to rival Sora
  - (00:27:50) Pika Labs releases AI video generator 2.0 with new features
  - (00:29:51) Google unveils Project Mariner: AI agents to use the web for you
  - (00:34:33) X gains a faster Grok model and a new ‘Grok button’
- Applications & Business
- Projects & Open Source
- Research & Advancements
  - (01:16:34) Alignment faking in large language models
  - (01:28:39) Meta AI Introduces Byte Latent Transformer (BLT): A Tokenizer-Free Model That Scales Efficiently
  - (01:36:49) Frontier language models have become much smaller
  - (01:42:28) The Complexity Dynamics of Grokking
- Policy & Safety
  - (01:46:49) Homeland Security gets its very own generative AI chatbot
  - (01:49:16) Pre-Deployment Evaluation of OpenAI’s o1 Model
  - (01:51:35) Pricing for key chipmaking material hits 13-year high following (01:53:46) Chinese export restrictions — China's restrictions on Gallium exports hit hard
- Synthetic Media & Art
  - Meta debuts a tool for watermarking AI-generated videos
- (01:55:27) Outro
30 December 2024, 11:45 pm
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