The week's developments in AI, quantum, and biotech, explained | 29.05.24

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This week, Apple signed a deal with OpenAI to integrate their GPT model into iOS 18, but are still exploring a partnership with Google Gemini. Plus, Iyo is bringing out a range of genAI-integrated earbuds. Will they succeed where Rabbit and Humane failed? 

Meanwhile, Western pharma giants are benefiting from China’s biotech surge, sensors made from ‘electronic spider silk’ are being printed on human skin and invisible robot tweezers are the next breakthrough for health tech.

Keep reading for how to steer an LLMs moral compass and the European defensive drone wall, plus the AI-driven tools to convert, review and illustrate…

— Charlie and the Research & Intelligence Team 

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Innovation and Releases

🗞️ Apple signs deal with OpenAI for iOS, still wants Google as an 'option'. The deal will provide chatbot functionality in iPhones. Despite this, Apple is still working on a deal with Google to offer Gemini as an additional option, though it won't be highlighted next month.

🛡️ Countries bordering Russia to build defensive ‘drone wall’: Finland, Norway, Poland, and the three Baltic states are teaming up to monitor the long border with active drones and deploy anti-drone tech. The project is in early stages, with no concrete timeline yet.

🎧 Can genAI earbuds succeed where Rabbit and Humane failed? Startup Iyo certainly thinks so, with plans to launch this winter. Their earbuds’ genAI can transcribe conversations, translate languages in real-time, and provide contextual assistance.

🧬 Western companies drive Chinese biotech deal surge, with pharmaceutical giants like Merck, GSK, and AstraZeneca actively signing agreements to tap into China’s growing biotech industry, highlighting increased collaboration between the two.

🌐 AI translation unicorn DeepL reaches $2B valuation with $300M investment led by Index Ventures. The round has put the company, which supports 32 languages and has 100,000 business users, in competition with giants like Google Translate.

AI Tools of the Week

🧠 Convert: Brainy Docs uses AI to convert PDFs into explainer videos. Features include customizable humour, and upcoming translation into 29 languages. 

💻 Review: Trag automates code reviews. It allows custom rules in natural language, identifies bugs, and suggests AI fixes without committing to the codebase. 

🎨 Illustrate: Ilus AI generates beautiful, consistent illustrations quickly using AI. Choose from pre-made models or train custom models by uploading your own illustrations.

Latest Research

🕸️ Sensors made of 'electronic spider silk' printed on human skin? These ultra-lightweight, imperceptible sensors can be printed on delicate structures like dandelion seed heads, enhancing health monitoring, VR, and environmental sensing without discomfort.

⚡ Charge your laptop in a minute, or your EV in 10? Supercapacitors, which charge faster and longer than batteries, can help, as new research that discovered how ions move within tiny pores paves the way for more efficient energy storage.

🛠️ Invisible tweezers use robotics and acoustic energy to move small targets like cells and medicine within the body, to reach where human hands cannot. Using 3D acoustic vortex fields, they capture and move particles without making incisions. 

🧭 Steering the moral compass of LLMs. This study found proprietary LLMs are mostly utilitarian, while open models align with values-based ethics. Most models, except Llama 2, display a liberal bias. This can be changed though with ‘similarity-specific activation steering

In case you missed it

Will generative AI one day generate biology? Expert Geoff von Maltzahn shares his thoughts at Tedx MIT.

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