TLDR 2023-10-23

Apple plans to start implementing generative AI technology in iOS in late 2024 at the earliest. The company will likely build hundreds of AI servers over the next two years. It will probably offer a combination of cloud-based and on-device AI. The time frame seems to line up with the release of iOS 18.

Reddit may block search crawlers if it can't reach deals with generative AI companies to pay for its data. More than 535 news organizations have opted to block their content from being scraped by AI companies. X's new reading limits are due to data scraping by AI startups.

IBM's NorthPole processor can efficiently execute inference-based neural networks. It can be up to 35 times more efficient than GPUs for tasks like image classification and audio transcription. While it isn't any more energy efficient than other processors, it could make AI processing on edge devices more accessible. This article examines and explains the technology used in the new processor.

A team of scientists has developed a technique for deflecting laser beams off nothing but air while still maintaining the beam's strength and integrity. The technique involves using sound waves to create an invisible grating made only of air that can reflect the beam like a mirror. Modern optics is almost exclusively based on the interaction of light with solid matter - this new approach opens up a completely new direction. The team is now seeking a patent for the process.

This book, written for startup CTOs, covers leadership, management, and technical topics. It aims to provide perspective on the common problems faced by every technical leader. The book provides frameworks for leaders to help make their own well-reasoned decisions. It offers best practices and provides reference materials for a better understanding of each topic.

GPUs were designed for massive levels of parallelism and high throughput at the cost of medium to high instruction latency. It's essential for every software engineer today to possess a basic understanding of how GPUs work because of their pervasive use in deep learning. This article aims to provide that knowledge. It delves into how graphics processors work at a very detailed level and provides resources for further learning.

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses comes in 150 style variations across two frame styles, seven colors, and multiple lens options. It features a 12MP camera with 3024x4032 resolution and can film videos at 1080p at 30 frames per second. The newest update includes AI features and livestream support for Facebook and Instagram. This article takes a look at the smart glasses in detail.

OpenAI's prompts reveal many quirks about prompt engineering. For example, the prompts use 'please' a lot and important instructions are often all capitalized. Capitalizing instructions likely works as the models were trained on huge numbers of examples where responses clearly paid more attention to capitalized sentences. This could result in a future where people shout at their computers to get them to work better.

Eureka is an open-ended agent that designs reward functions for robot dexterity at a super-human level - it can learn pen-spinning tricks, something that is difficult for CGI artists to animate frame by frame.

Apple retail employees have been invited to apply for a special Vision Pro Training event ahead of the device's launch.

Abstractions are nice and they generally improve quality of life, but they result in less understanding about the technology under the hood.

There isn't yet a clear way to measure AI alignment.

Amazon employees who do not comply with the three-times-a-week in-office mandate will have to attend two meetings with their managers regarding attendance, after which they will be given a reasonable timeframe to comply before being terminated.

Technological progress is all about tomorrow being better than today - the promise of a bright future is a major reason we struggle so hard to innovate and push the envelope today.