Introducing Stable Audio Open – An Open Source Model for Audio Samples and Sound Design — from stability.ai; via Rundown AI

Key Takeaways:

  • Stable Audio Open is an open source text-to-audio model for generating up to 47 seconds of samples and sound effects.
  • Users can create drum beats, instrument riffs, ambient sounds, foley and production elements.
  • The model enables audio variations and style transfer of audio samples.

Some comments from Rundown AI:

Why it matters: While the AI advances in text-to-image models have been the most visible (literally), both video and audio are about to take the same leap. Putting these tools in the hands of creatives will redefine traditional workflows — from musicians brainstorming new beats to directors crafting sound effects for film and TV.

 

Exclusive: AI isn’t a daily habit yet for teens, young adults — from axios.com by Scott Rosenberg

Young Americans are quickly embracing generative AI as a tool, but few have yet made it a part of their daily lives, according to new data shared exclusively with Axios from Common Sense Media, Hopelab and the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Center for Digital Thriving.

Why it matters: Since the rise of the web 30 years ago, young users have typically adopted and shaped each new dominant tech platform.

By the numbers: The survey of 1,274 U.S.-based teens and young adults, conducted in October and November 2023, found that only 4% of respondents, all aged 14-22, said they use AI tools daily or almost daily.

As cited in the above article, also see:

 

Can Microsoft Copilot Replace Popular AI Tools Like ChatGPT, Gamma AI, and Midjourney? — from flexos.work by Daan van Rossum
Can Microsoft Copilot win from popular AI tools like ChatGPT, Gamma AI, and Midjourney, and which AI best fits your business?

From DSC:
The article talks about the pros and cons of Microsoft Copilot. But I really appreciated the following table/information:


Also regarding Microsoft and AI, see:

Windows Recall stores all your history UNENCRYPTED. — from bensbites.beehiiv.com by Ben Tossell

Remember Microsoft’s shiny new AI tool, “Recall”? It’s like your personal time machine, answering questions about your browsing history and laptop activity by taking screenshots every 5 seconds. Sounds cool, right? Well, it gets problematic.

What’s going on here?
Security researchers have found a potential privacy nightmare lurking within this seemingly convenient tool.

What does this mean?
Recall stores all those screenshots in an unencrypted database on your laptop. This means anyone with access to your device could potentially see everything you’ve been doing. Cybersecurity experts are already comparing it to spyware, and one ethical hacker even built a tool called “TotalRecall” (yes, like the movie) that can pull all the information Recall saves. Yikes.

 

The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value — from mckinsey.com
As generative AI adoption accelerates, survey respondents report measurable benefits and increased mitigation of the risk of inaccuracy. A small group of high performers lead the way.

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI), 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year, with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.
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What’s the future of AI? — from mckinsey.com
AI is here to stay. To outcompete in the future, organizations and individuals alike need to get familiar fast. This series of McKinsey Explainers dives deep into the seven technologies that are already shaping the years to come.

We’re in the midst of a revolution. Just as steam power, mechanized engines, and coal supply chains transformed the world in the 18th century, AI technology is currently changing the face of work, our economies, and society as we know it. We don’t know exactly what the future will look like. But we do know that these seven technologies will play a big role.
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Generate an e-book in minutes with groqbook — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Plus new Canva workflow tools, Perplexity Pages, and more
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Introducing a whole new Canva, designed for work

The new Canva
Canva announced “a whole new Canva” to improve workplace collaborative creation and a revamped platform to simplify its tools for anyone to use.

At Canva Create, several AI features were announced that enhance the design and content creation process:

  1. Magic Design: Upload an image and select a style to get a curated selection of personalized templates.
  2. Magic Write: An AI-powered copywriting assistant that can generate written content from a text prompt, useful for presentations and website copy.
  3. Magic Eraser: This feature can remove unwanted objects or backgrounds from images.
  4. Magic Edit: Users can swap an object with something else entirely using generative AI.
  5. Beat Sync: Automatically matches video footage to a soundtrack of your choice.
  6. Translate: Automatically translates text in designs to over 100 different languages.

Tools are the next big thing in AI — from link.wired.com by Will Knight

Things might get more interesting in business settings as AI companies start deploying so-called “AI agents,” which can take action by operating other software on a computer or via the internet.

Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI, announced a major new product today that attempts to prove the thesis that tool use is needed for AI’s next leap in usefulness.

 

Microsoft teams with Khan Academy to make its AI tutor free for K-12 educators and will develop a Phi-3 math model — from venturebeat.com by Ken Yeung

Microsoft is partnering with Khan Academy in a multifaceted deal to demonstrate how AI can transform the way we learn. The cornerstone of today’s announcement centers on Khan Academy’s Khanmigo AI agent. Microsoft says it will migrate the bot to its Azure OpenAI Service, enabling the nonprofit educational organization to provide all U.S. K-12 educators free access to Khanmigo.

In addition, Microsoft plans to use its Phi-3 model to help Khan Academy improve math tutoring and collaborate to generate more high-quality learning content while making more courses available within Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Teams for Education.


One-Third of Teachers Have Already Tried AI, Survey Finds — from the74million.org by Kevin Mahnken
A RAND poll released last month finds English and social studies teachers embracing tools like ChatGPT.

One in three American teachers have used artificial intelligence tools in their teaching at least once, with English and social studies teachers leading the way, according to a RAND Corporation survey released last month. While the new technology isn’t yet transforming how kids learn, both teachers and district leaders expect that it will become an increasingly common feature of school life.


Professors Try ‘Restrained AI’ Approach to Help Teach Writing — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young
Can ChatGPT make human writing more efficient, or is writing an inherently time-consuming process best handled without AI tools?

This article is part of the guide: For Education, ChatGPT Holds Promise — and Creates Problems.

When ChatGPT emerged a year and half ago, many professors immediately worried that their students would use it as a substitute for doing their own written assignments — that they’d click a button on a chatbot instead of doing the thinking involved in responding to an essay prompt themselves.

But two English professors at Carnegie Mellon University had a different first reaction: They saw in this new technology a way to show students how to improve their writing skills.

“They start really polishing way too early,” Kaufer says. “And so what we’re trying to do is with AI, now you have a tool to rapidly prototype your language when you are prototyping the quality of your thinking.”

He says the concept is based on writing research from the 1980s that shows that experienced writers spend about 80 percent of their early writing time thinking about whole-text plans and organization and not about sentences.


On Building AI Models for Education — from aieducation.substack.com by Claire Zau
Google’s LearnLM, Khan Academy/MSFT’s Phi-3 Models, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu

This piece primarily breaks down how Google’s LearnLM was built, and takes a quick look at Microsoft/Khan Academy’s Phi-3 and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu as alternative approaches to building an “education model” (not necessarily a new model in the latter case, but we’ll explain). Thanks to the public release of their 86-page research paper, we have the most comprehensive view into LearnLM. Our understanding of Microsoft/Khan Academy small language models and ChatGPT Edu is limited to the information provided through announcements, leaving us with less “under the hood” visibility into their development.


AI tutors are quietly changing how kids in the US study, and the leading apps are from China — from techcrunch.com by Rita Liao

Answer AI is among a handful of popular apps that are leveraging the advent of ChatGPT and other large language models to help students with everything from writing history papers to solving physics problems. Of the top 20 education apps in the U.S. App Store, five are AI agents that help students with their school assignments, including Answer AI, according to data from Data.ai on May 21.


Is your school behind on AI? If so, there are practical steps you can take for the next 12 months — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard

If your school (district) or university has not yet made significant efforts to think about how you will prepare your students for a World of AI, I suggest the following steps:

July 24 – Administrator PD & AI Guidance
In July, administrators should receive professional development on AI, if they haven’t already. This should include…

August 24 –Professional Development for Teachers and Staff…
Fall 24 — Parents; Co-curricular; Classroom experiments…
December 24 — Revision to Policy…


New ChatGPT Version Aiming at Higher Ed — from insidehighered.com by Lauren Coffey
ChatGPT Edu, emerging after initial partnerships with several universities, is prompting both cautious optimism and worries.

OpenAI unveiled a new version of ChatGPT focused on universities on Thursday, building on work with a handful of higher education institutions that partnered with the tech giant.

The ChatGPT Edu product, expected to start rolling out this summer, is a platform for institutions intended to give students free access. OpenAI said the artificial intelligence (AI) toolset could be used for an array of education applications, including tutoring, writing grant applications and reviewing résumés.

 

Via The Rundown AI

The Rundown: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang just announced a series of new AI announcements during a keynote at the Computex conference, including next-gen ‘Rubin’ chips, a new AI gaming assistant, and AI tools for creating lifelike avatars.

The details:

  • Nvidia’s ‘Rubin’ platform is slated for 2026, with the ‘Rubin Ultra’ coming a year later as part of what Huang called a “new industrial revolution”.
  • Nvidia also showed off Project G-Assist, an AI gaming assistant that provides context-aware help and personalized responses for PC games.
  • The company also introduced ACE, a suite of AI services that simplify the creation of digital avatars for applications like customer service and healthcare.

More re: Nvidia:

  • Nvidia and AMD announced new next-generation AI chips — from qz.com by Britney Nguyen
    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced the company’s next AI platform, called Rubin
  • ‘Accelerate Everything,’ NVIDIA CEO Says Ahead of COMPUTEX — from blogs.nvidia.com by Brian Caulfield
    Emphasizing cost reduction and sustainability, Huang detailed new semiconductors, software and systems to power data centers, factories, consumer devices, robots and more, driving a new industrial revolution.
  • Nvidia Unveils Next-Generation Rubin AI Platform for 2026 — from bloomberg.com by Ian King and Vlad Savov
    CEO Jensen Huang reveals plans for annual upgrade cycle | Company details plans for Blackwell Ultra and subsequent chips
    Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said the company plans to upgrade its AI accelerators every year, announcing a Blackwell Ultra chip for 2025 and a next-generation platform in development called Rubin for 2026.
 

Introducing ChatGPT Edu — from openai.com
An affordable offering for universities to responsibly bring AI to campus.

We’re announcing ChatGPT Edu, a version of ChatGPT built for universities to responsibly deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations. Powered by GPT-4o, ChatGPT Edu can reason across text and vision and use advanced tools such as data analysis. This new offering includes enterprise-level security and controls and is affordable for educational institutions.

We built ChatGPT Edu because we saw the success universities like the University of Oxford, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania(opens in a new window), University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State University(opens in a new window), and Columbia University in the City of New York were having with ChatGPT Enterprise.

ChatGPT can help with various tasks across campus, such as providing personalized tutoring for students and reviewing their resumes, helping researchers write grant applications, and assisting faculty with grading and feedback. 


Claude can now use tools — from anthropic.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Tool use, which enables Claude to interact with external tools and APIs, is now generally available across the entire Claude 3 model family on the Anthropic Messages API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. With tool use, Claude can perform tasks, manipulate data, and provide more dynamic—and accurate—responses.

Define a toolset for Claude and specify your request in natural language. Claude will then select the appropriate tool to fulfill the task and, when appropriate, execute the corresponding action:

  • Extract structured data from unstructured text…
  • Convert natural language requests into structured API calls…
  • Answer questions by searching databases or using web APIs…
  • Automate simple tasks through software APIs…
  • Orchestrate multiple fast Claude subagents for granular tasks…

From DSC:
The above posting reminds me of this other posting…as AGENTS are likely going to become much more popular and part of our repertoire:

Forget Chatbots. AI Agents Are the Future — from wired.com by Will Knight
Startups and tech giants are trying to move from chatbots that offer help via text, to AI agents that can get stuff done. Recent demos include an AI coder called Devin and agents that play videogames.

Devin is just the latest, most polished example of a trend I’ve been tracking for a while—the emergence of AI agents that instead of just providing answers or advice about a problem presented by a human can take action to solve it. A few months back I test drove Auto-GPT, an open source program that attempts to do useful chores by taking actions on a person’s computer and on the web. Recently I tested another program called vimGPT to see how the visual skills of new AI models can help these agents browse the web more efficiently.

 


Looking Back on My AI Blog One Year In: AI Unfolding as Predicted — from stefanbauschard.substack.com Stefan Bauschard

On May 30, 2023, I’ve started blogging about AI, and, so far, I think things have been unfolding as predicted.

Topics included:

  • AGI
  • It’s not just another piece of Edtech
  • AI Literacy
  • Bot Teachers/tutors
  • AI Writing Detectors
  • AI Use in the Classroom is Uncontrollable
  • …and more

 

 
 

Nvidia Earnings: Stock Rallies As AI Giant Reports 600% Profit Explosion, 10-For-1 Stock Split — from forbes.com by Derek Saul

  • Nvidia reported $6.12 earnings per share and $26 billion of sales for the three-month period ending April 30, shattering mean analyst forecasts of $5.60 and $24.59 billion, according to FactSet.
  • Nvidia’s profits and revenues skyrocketed by 628% and 268% compared to 2023’s comparable period, respectively.
  • This was Nvidia’s most profitable and highest sales quarter ever, topping the quarter ending this January’s record $12.3 billion net income and $22.1 billion revenue.
  • Driving the numerous superlatives for Nvidia’s financial growth over the last year is unsurprisingly its AI-intensive datacenter division, which raked in $22.6 billion of revenue last quarter, a 427% year-over-year increase and a whopping 20 times higher than the $1.1 billion the segment brought in in 2020.

Per ChatPGT today:

NVIDIA is a prominent technology company known for its contributions to various fields, primarily focusing on graphics processing units (GPUs) and artificial intelligence (AI). Here’s an overview of NVIDIA’s main areas of activity:

1. **Graphics Processing Units (GPUs):**
– **Consumer GPUs:** NVIDIA is famous for its GeForce series of GPUs, which are widely used in gaming and personal computing for their high performance and visual capabilities.
– **Professional GPUs:** NVIDIA’s Quadro series is designed for professional applications like 3D modeling, CAD (Computer-Aided Design), and video editing.

2. **Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning:**
– NVIDIA GPUs are extensively used in AI research and development. They provide the computational power needed for training deep learning models.
– The company offers specialized hardware for AI, such as the NVIDIA Tesla and A100 GPUs, which are used in data centers and supercomputing environments.

3. **Data Centers:**
– NVIDIA develops high-performance computing solutions for data centers, including GPU-accelerated servers and AI platforms. These products are essential for tasks like big data analytics, scientific simulations, and AI workloads.

4. **Autonomous Vehicles:**
– Through its DRIVE platform, NVIDIA provides hardware and software solutions for developing autonomous vehicles. This includes AI-based systems for perception, navigation, and decision-making.

5. **Edge Computing:**
– NVIDIA’s Jetson platform caters to edge computing, enabling AI-powered devices and applications to process data locally rather than relying on centralized data centers.

6. **Gaming and Entertainment:**
– Beyond GPUs, NVIDIA offers technologies like G-SYNC (for smoother gaming experiences) and NVIDIA GameWorks (a suite of tools for game developers).

7. **Healthcare:**
– NVIDIA’s Clara platform utilizes AI and GPU computing to advance medical imaging, genomics, and other healthcare applications.

8. **Omniverse:**
– NVIDIA Omniverse is a real-time graphics collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines. It’s designed for industries like animation, simulation, and visualization.

9. **Crypto Mining:**
– NVIDIA GPUs are also popular in the cryptocurrency mining community, although the company has developed specific products like the NVIDIA CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) to cater to this market without impacting the availability of GPUs for gamers and other users.

Overall, NVIDIA’s influence spans a broad range of industries, driven by its innovations in GPU technology and AI advancements.

 

LearnLM is Google's new family of models fine-tuned for learning, and grounded in educational research to make teaching and learning experiences more active, personal and engaging.

LearnLM is our new family of models fine-tuned for learning, and grounded in educational research to make teaching and learning experiences more active, personal and engaging.

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AI in Education: Google’s LearnLM product has incredible potential — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer and Nick Potkalitsky
Google’s Ed Suite is giving Teachers new ideas for incorporating AI into the classroom.

We often talk about what Generative AI will do for coders, healthcare, science or even finance, but what about the benefits for the next generation? Permit me if you will, here I’m thinking about teachers and students.

It’s no secret that some of the most active users of ChatGPT in its heyday, were students. But how are other major tech firms thinking about this?

I actually think one of the best products with the highest ceiling from Google I/O 2024 is LearnLM. It has to be way more than a chatbot, it has to feel like a multimodal tutor. I can imagine frontier model agents (H) doing this fairly well.

What if everyone, everywhere could have their own personal AI tutor, on any topic?


ChatGPT4o Is the TikTok of AI Models — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by Nick Potkalitsky
In Search of Better Tools for AI Access in K-12 Classrooms

Nick makes the case that we should pause on the use of OpenAI in the classrooms:

In light of these observations, it’s clear that we must pause and rethink the use of OpenAI products in our classrooms, except for rare cases where accessibility needs demand it. The rapid consumerization of AI, epitomized by GPT4o’s transformation into an AI salesperson, calls for caution.


The Future of AI in Education: Google and OpenAI Strategies Unveiled — from edtechinsiders.substack.comby Ben Kornell

Google’s Strategy: AI Everywhere
Key Points

  • Google will win through seamless Gemini integration across all Google products
  • Enterprise approach in education to make Gemini the default at low/no additional cost
  • Functional use cases and model tuning demonstrate Google’s knowledge of educators

OpenAI’s Strategy: ChatGPT as the Front Door
Key Points

  • OpenAI taking a consumer-led freemium approach to education
  • API powers an app layer that delivers education-specific use cases
  • Betting on a large user base + app marketplace
 

Khan Academy and Microsoft partner to expand access to AI tools that personalize teaching and help make learning fun — from news.microsoft.com

[On 5/21/24] at Microsoft Build, Microsoft and Khan Academy announced a new partnership that aims to bring these time-saving and lesson-enhancing AI tools to millions of educators. By donating access to Azure AI-optimized infrastructure, Microsoft is enabling Khan Academy to offer all K-12 educators in the U.S. free access to the pilot of Khanmigo for Teachers, which will now be powered by Azure OpenAI Service.

The two companies will also collaborate to explore opportunities to improve AI tools for math tutoring in an affordable, scalable and adaptable way with a new version of Phi-3, a family of small language models (SLMs) developed by Microsoft.

 

Also see/referenced:

Khanmigo -- a free, AI-powered teaching assistant


Also relevant/see:

Khan Academy and Microsoft are teaming up to give teachers a free AI assistant — from fastcompany.com by Steven Melendez
AI assistant Khanmigo can help time-strapped teachers come up with lesson ideas and test questions, the companies say.

Khan Academy’s AI assistant, Khanmigo, has earned praise for helping students to understand and practice everything from math to English, but it can also help teachers devise lesson plans, formulate questions about assigned readings, and even generate reading passages appropriate for students at different levels. More than just a chatbot, the software offers specific AI-powered tools for generating quizzes and assignment instructions, drafting lesson plans, and formulating letters of recommendation.

Having a virtual teaching assistant is especially valuable in light of recent research from the RAND Corporation that found teachers work longer hours than most working adults, which includes administrative and prep work outside the classroom.

 

26 videos re: the new GPT-4o LLM

Per OpenAI:
“Say hello to GPT-4o, our new flagship model which can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time.”

 

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Grasp is the world’s first generative AI platform for finance professionals.

We build domain-specific AI systems that address the complex needs of investment bankers and management consultants.

By automating finance workflows, Grasp dramatically increases employee productivity and satisfaction.

 

Introducing Copilot+ PCs — from blogs.microsoft.com

[On May 20th], at a special event on our new Microsoft campus, we introduced the world to a new category of Windows PCs designed for AI, Copilot+ PCs.

Copilot+ PCs are the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built. With powerful new silicon capable of an incredible 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), all–day battery life and access to the most advanced AI models, Copilot+ PCs will enable you to do things you can’t on any other PC. Easily find and remember what you have seen in your PC with Recall, generate and refine AI images in near real-time directly on the device using Cocreator, and bridge language barriers with Live Captions, translating audio from 40+ languages into English.

From DSC:
As a first off-the-hip look, Recall could be fraught with possible security/privacy-related issues. But what do I know? The Neuron states “Microsoft assures that everything Recall sees remains private.” Ok…


From The Rundown AI concerning the above announcements:

The details:

  • A new system enables Copilot+ PCs to run AI workloads up to 20x faster and 100x more efficiently than traditional PCs.
    Windows 11 has been rearchitected specifically for AI, integrating the Copilot assistant directly into the OS.
  • New AI experiences include a new feature called Recall, which allows users to search for anything they’ve seen on their screen with natural language.
  • Copilot’s new screen-sharing feature allows AI to watch, hear, and understand what a user is doing on their computer and answer questions in real-time.
  • Copilot+ PCs will start at $999, and ship with OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o models.

Why it matters: Tony Stark’s all-powerful JARVIS AI assistant is getting closer to reality every day. Once Copilot, ChatGPT, Project Astra, or anyone else can not only respond but start executing tasks autonomously, things will start getting really exciting — and likely initiate a whole new era of tech work.


 

AI’s New Conversation Skills Eyed for Education — from insidehighered.com by Lauren Coffey
The latest ChatGPT’s more human-like verbal communication has professors pondering personalized learning, on-demand tutoring and more classroom applications.

ChatGPT’s newest version, GPT-4o ( the “o” standing for “omni,” meaning “all”), has a more realistic voice and quicker verbal response time, both aiming to sound more human. The version, which should be available to free ChatGPT users in coming weeks—a change also hailed by educators—allows people to interrupt it while it speaks, simulates more emotions with its voice and translates languages in real time. It also can understand instructions in text and images and has improved video capabilities.

Ajjan said she immediately thought the new vocal and video capabilities could allow GPT to serve as a personalized tutor. Personalized learning has been a focus for educators grappling with the looming enrollment cliff and for those pushing for student success.

There’s also the potential for role playing, according to Ajjan. She pointed to mock interviews students could do to prepare for job interviews, or, for example, using GPT to play the role of a buyer to help prepare students in an economics course.

 

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian