AI pioneers turn whistleblowers and demand safeguards

OpenAI is facing a wave of internal strife and external criticism over its practices and the potential risks posed by its technology. 

In May, several high-profile employees departed from the company, including Jan Leike, the former head of OpenAI's "super alignment" efforts to ensure advanced AI systems remain aligned with human values. Leike's exit came shortly after OpenAI unveiled its new flagship GPT-4o model, which it touted as "magical" at its Spring Update...

6 June 2024 | Artificial Intelligence

Google launches Gemini 1.5 with ‘experimental’ 1M token context

Google has unveiled its latest AI model, Gemini 1.5, which features what the company calls an "experimental" one million token context window. 

The new capability allows Gemini 1.5 to process extremely long text passages – up to one million characters – to understand context and meaning. This dwarfs previous AI systems like Claude 2.1 and GPT-4 Turbo, which max out at 200,000 and 128,000 tokens respectively:

“Gemini 1.5 Pro achieves near-perfect recall on...

16 February 2024 | Artificial Intelligence

DeepMind framework offers breakthrough in LLMs’ reasoning

A breakthrough approach in enhancing the reasoning abilities of large language models (LLMs) has been unveiled by researchers from Google DeepMind and the University of Southern California.

Their new 'SELF-DISCOVER' prompting framework – published this week on arXiV and Hugging Face – represents a significant leap beyond existing techniques, potentially revolutionising the performance of leading models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s PaLM 2.

The framework...

8 February 2024 | Artificial Intelligence

DeepMind AlphaGeometry solves complex geometry problems

DeepMind, the UK-based AI lab owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, has developed an AI system called AlphaGeometry that can solve complex geometry problems close to human Olympiad gold medalists. 

In a new paper in Nature, DeepMind revealed that AlphaGeometry was able to solve 25 out of 30 benchmark geometry problems from past International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) competitions within the standard time limits. This nearly matches the average score of 26 problems solved...

18 January 2024 | Applications

Google Cloud announces Imagen 2 text-to-image generator

Google Cloud has introduced Imagen 2, the latest upgrade to its text-to-image capabilities.

Available for Vertex AI customers on the allowlist, Imagen 2 enables users to craft and deploy photorealistic images using intuitive tooling and fully-managed infrastructure. 

Developed with Google DeepMind technology, Imagen 2 offers improved image quality and a range of functionalities tailored for specific use cases.

Key features of Imagen 2...

14 December 2023 | Applications

Google’s next-gen AI model Gemini outperforms GPT-4

Google has unveiled Gemini, a cutting-edge AI model that stands as the company's most capable and versatile to date.

Demis Hassabis, CEO and Co-Founder of Google DeepMind, introduced Gemini as a multimodal model that is capable of seamlessly understanding and combining various types of information, including text, code, audio, image, and video.

https://youtu.be/jV1vkHv4zq8

Gemini comes in three optimised versions: Ultra, Pro, and Nano. The Ultra model boasts...

6 December 2023 | Applications

Google creates new AI division to challenge OpenAI

Google has consolidated its AI research labs, Google Brain and DeepMind, into a new unit named Google DeepMind.

The move is seen as a strategic way for Google to maintain its edge in the competitive AI industry and compete with OpenAI. By combining the talent and resources of both entities, Google DeepMind aims to accelerate AI advancements while maintaining ethical standards.

The new unit will be responsible for spearheading groundbreaking AI products and advancements,...

21 April 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

Apple’s former ML director reportedly joins Google DeepMind

A machine learning exec who left Apple due to its return-to-office policy has reportedly joined Google DeepMind. 

Ian Goodfellow is a renowned machine learning researcher. Goodfellow invented generative adversarial networks (GANs), developed a system for Google Maps that transcribes addresses from Street View car photos, and more.

In a departure note to his team at Apple, Goodfellow cited the company’s much-criticised lack of flexibility in its work...

18 May 2022 | Apple

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman launches new AI venture

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman has joined two other high-profile industry figures in launching a new venture called Inflection AI.

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is joining Suleyman on the venture.

“Reid and I are excited to announce that we are co-founding a new company, Inflection AI,” wrote Suleyman in a statement.

“Inflection will be an AI-first consumer products company, incubated at Greylock, with all the advantages and expertise that come...

9 March 2022 | Artificial Intelligence

DeepMind AlphaCode rivals the abilities of human programmers

DeepMind’s AI coder AlphaCode has proven capable of rivalling the abilities of a standard human programmer.

The company selected 10 contests that were hosted on Codeforces – a programming competition platform with thousands of participants – to evaluate the performance of AlphaCode.

Below is an example of a problem #AlphaCode can successfully solve, using the exact information seen on @codeforces, & the program that #AlphaCode writes.By...

3 February 2022 | Artificial Intelligence