🎭 Laughing matters

🧵 In today's edition:

• 🤖 One small step for Grok, a giant leap for xAI

• 🎭 Laughing matters

• 📱 AI-powered Android

• 🛠️ AI Tools to Check Out

• 🤑 AI Fundraising News

• 🐦 Tweet Post of the Day

🤖 One small step for Grok, a giant leap for xAI

xAI announced the beta release of Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini, the latest iterations of their advanced language models. These new versions showcase significant improvements in reasoning, chat, and coding capabilities.

Key highlights:

1. Performance: Grok-2 outperforms Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4-Turbo on the LMSYS leaderboard.

2. Benchmarks: Both models show substantial improvements across various academic benchmarks, including science knowledge, general knowledge, and math problems.

3. Visual capabilities: Grok-2 excels in vision-based tasks, achieving state-of-the-art performance in visual math reasoning and document-based question answering.

4. Twitter Integration: Premium and Premium+ users on 𝕏 (formerly Twitter) can access Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini through a redesigned interface, offering real-time information integration.

5. Enterprise API: xAI will soon release both models through its enterprise API platform, which features enhanced security, multi-region deployment, and advanced management tools.

6. Future developments: The company plans to introduce multimodal understanding capabilities and is focusing on advancing core reasoning abilities with its new compute cluster.

Overall: xAI emphasizes the rapid progress made since Grok-1's release in November 2023, positioning itself at the forefront of AI development. The company is actively recruiting talent to join its small, focused team dedicated to impactful AI innovations.

Read more: xAI Blog

🎭 Laughing matters

When AI first became mainstream (circa 2022, post-ChatGPT), there was a general sense of fear—fear that jobs would become obsolete, fear that AI would be indistinguishable from reality, and fear that it would take over creative tasks. 

But now, it turns out that AI is making its way into the comedy world, albeit with mixed reactions from performers and audiences alike. Some comedians are embracing AI as a tool for brainstorming and script development, while others remain skeptical of its place in the creative process.

• Canadian comedian Anesti Danelis recently experimented with ChatGPT to write a show for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He found AI helpful in generating ideas and structuring his performance, though only about 20% of his final show was purely AI-generated content.

• Similarly, US comedian Viv Ford uses AI to test her material, finding that jokes ChatGPT deems "offensive" often resonate well with audiences. She sees AI as a powerful tool when used correctly.

However, not all comedians are on board. James Roque, a Kiwi-Filipino comedian, believes the best comedy comes from human vulnerability and authenticity, something AI can't replicate.

A recent study from the University of Southern California suggests that AI-generated jokes can outperform those crafted by humans. Yet, many audience members feel they can detect when content lacks a human touch.

Overall: The stand-up comedy market is booming, with US ticket sales reaching $900M in 2023 and the UK comedy industry valued at over £1B annually. As AI continues to evolve, its role in this lucrative field remains to be seen.

Read more: BBC

📱 AI-powered Android

Google unveiled its latest Android software update, bringing the power of its Gemini AI assistant to supported devices. 

The update introduces several key features:

• A completely rebuilt assistant experience powered by Gemini

• Natural language interaction for seamless, complex task completion

• Context-aware queries through a new screen overlay function

• Deep integration with Google apps for personalized assistance

• AI-generated image creation capabilities within apps

While the update will roll out to hundreds of phone models from various manufacturers, some advanced features like Gemini "Live" - which enables human-like conversations - will be exclusive to select devices and Gemini Advanced subscribers.

Overall: This push to bring AI directly to Android phones enhances user experience and opens up potential new revenue streams for Google through its Gemini AI subscription program. 

As tech giants race to offer the most advanced and user-friendly AI experiences on consumer devices, Google's latest update positions them strongly in this competitive landscape.

Read more: CNBC

👀 Unleash your digital creativity

What becomes possible when we combine the power of technology with the potential of the human mind?

Set for October 3-4, 2024, in Los Angeles, the Second Brain Summit is a first-of-its-kind gathering of fans and practitioners of knowledge management, digital creativity, and the concept of a "second brain." 

The Summit offers a chance to learn directly from leading online creators, authors, and experts in a “pop-up university.”

They will focus on leveraging technology to enhance your creativity and unlock your potential while creating relationships and a community that lasts far beyond the official agenda.

The venue, a historic 1920s loft in LA's fashion district, is designed to facilitate immersive learning and serendipitous interactions, making it the ultimate learning experience for anyone passionate about harnessing the power of technology to achieve the career and life they want.

🛠️ AI Tools to Check Out

• Inkeep: Turn your content into an AI copilot you can trust. Check it out!

• Midship: AI that reads and understands complex documents, extracts key information, and organizes it into your preferred spreadsheet format. Check it out!

• Spreadsite: Use Al to transform your data into beautiful, interactive web dashboards - no coding required. Check it out!

🤑 AI Fundraising News

• Boosted.ai raises $10M in growth capital to help institutional investors and wealth managers save time, make data-driven decisions and maintain always-on monitoring by allowing them to train AI agents to work for them.

• Guardoc Health raises $3M in Seed funding to develop an AI-powered SaaS solution that integrates with electronic healthcare records to identify errors, discrepancies, and gaps in real-time clinical charting.

🐦 Tweet Post of the Day

The world’s first AI scientist is here 🧑‍🔬