What we have this week:

• Impending Doom can Go Bust! A.I. Optimism?!

• Ideogram AI just breezed in!

• AI Adoption overview

• Meta loves Open Sauce!

• Pi - A Friendly Advisor/Mentor/Sounding Board

• Cheap Humanoid Robots

A.I. Optimism?! A Brief Case for love in the face of fear 😘🤖 

Dr Strangelove: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1964 is a satirical play on the concept of embracing something as destructive as the nuclear bomb. Although it doesn’t actually portray the author or anyone else "loving" the bomb in a sincere or genuine sense, but rather as a commentary on the absurd lengths to which the logic of the arms race could be taken to its ultimate conclusion, mutually assured destruction.

So a little tongue in cheek here, but naturally it reminded me of the current state of commentary around AI.

Are we in an AI arms race?

There is a lot of doom predictions out there. The world apparently is fast approaching the ‘singularity’, a point at which super intelligences will far exceed ours and we won’t be able to predict what happens next.

Like the Atom Bomb, is the advancement of AI like Pandora’s Box a threat to humanities existence? I’d say the answer is yes, BUT… (it’s a big but!)

Having spent the last few years contemplating this and seeing the explosive developments that LLM’s like Chat GPT have instigated, I’ve found myself wondering, is it possible to have some optimism and even love for this new technology?

I think besides the disruption and threat from omniscient AI’s there are many reasons to be hopeful about the integration of AI into our society.

Here are a few short form points that stand out for me:

• AI won’t just take jobs it will create better jobs

• AI agents will effectively be the greatest personal assistants enhancing every aspect of lives, health, wealth and relationships.

• AI will also be the superhero’s who solve major problems at an exponential rate never seen before. Medical to Mental Health, Individual Economic opportunities, Education, Global Climate Change, Resource management, Energy, Space exploration and even Conflict Resolution itself.

• The culmination of many will make us safe. Rapid acceleration of AI agents that assist millions of people will result in a far safer outcome. See e/acc or Effective Acceleration theory.

Below, some compelling cases and perspectives about AI optimism:

Marc Andreessen - Why AI will save the world lays out an articulate case for why AI will change the world in more positive ways than not.

Lex Friedman - George Hotz The podcast which inspired me to write about the subject.

If you are interested in the satire of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb I urge you to check it out!

The AI Adoption Stack : Just Warming Up

Note: The word ‘stack’ may not be relevant here, but I hear it all the time in this space and now I can’t stop using it 🤣

Generation Easy Breezy 🍃

A quick note: Ideogram.ai just made ai generative art easier than ever to use. It’s a welcome addition to the space that’s dominated by the likes of Midjourney, Dalle-2 and Stable Diffusion. Unlike it’s predecessors, Ideogram has simple free sign-up and user friendly website. Comparisons are mixed, but it’s certainly a worthy contender with what looks like more reliable text generation.

Tomorrow’s Ape, has been enjoying creating the title images for the last couple of newsletters 😄 

Sauce Code 🥫

Meta Releases an Open Source Version of Llama 2 model and democratises LLM’s

Couldn’t help but tie in [Source][Sauce] and somehow make a connection to the ‘democratisation of art’ in Andy Warhol’s Campbells Soup .

Llama 2 is a chat bot like Chat GPT, but is open source. That means access to the code and therefore the ability to fine tune it to your own needs. Unlike Chat GPT which is closed, Open AI control it’s function as well as hold its best features and performance behind a pay wall.

There has been a lot of debate about Open Source and AI safety concerns. Some have accused large companies such as Open AI (Chat GPT) of seeking regulatory capture by calling for tight safety restraints that might close the door to new competition by start-ups.

Mark Zuckerberg has thrown his hat in the ring by potentially taking the wind out of the sales of these large corporations. Who would have thought!

Check out this article here if you want to know more.

Meet Pi

Assistant/Mentor/Sounding Board

An encouraging and conversational chat bot that even has a level of emotional intelligence built in [disclaimer: I said a level].

If you’re feeling stuck on a personal problem and can’t get resolution. Inflection’s friendly AI will listen, respond encouragingly, even insightfully and help you process your problem with meaningful questions.

I know this may sound weird for some, especially those of you lucky enough to have an emotionally intelligent pose around you, but even if you do or if you find it hard to talk to the humans around you with their fickle moods, this kind of AI interaction may be beneficial.

Besides, we’re not talking life changing or traumatic quandaries that you might be grappling with here, but simply an open ear at some time in your day/week when you need it.

Give it a try!

Robots for <$90K!

And a robot dog for $2.7k 🐕‍🦺

p.s. we need to stop kicking these robots !! 😳

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