Need to Know News - December 18th, 2024
In this week's Need to Know News edition:
🤖 Google lands major blow on OpenAI in two major AI arenas...
🤖 How a notetaking app cut down their costs 97% by leveraging Amazon's AI infrastructure...
🤖 The edgelord AI that turned a shock meme into millions in crypto...
And whole lot more!
AI In Action
X's Grok Gets Major Upgrades in Battle with OpenAI
X just upgraded its AI chatbot Grok with exciting new features. Grok now includes web search data and reference links in its answers. Users can talk to Grok using their voice, similar to Meta's AI glasses. A new button even makes it easy to get AI insights on any X post. The updates arrive as Grok opens to all 570 million X users - for free.
Behind the scenes, there's drama. Elon Musk created Grok after leaving OpenAI - a company he helped start with $100 million. Now, with $6 billion in fresh funding, Musk's xAI team is building a massive AI center in Memphis to compete with his former project.
Slack is Becoming an AI Workplace: Here’s What that Means for Your Job
The platform will soon feature AI agents that work alongside humans as digital teammates. These AI helpers can attend meetings, write summaries, and even create presentations.
Slack's CPO Rob Seaman says these AI agents will integrate smoothly into existing workflows - no coding needed. At Accenture, executives already use these AI assistants to slash admin work. The AI appears right in Slack channels, ready to help through natural conversation.
Salesforce, Slack's parent company, promises strong safety measures. AI agents will only have the same access as the humans they work for. Looking ahead, they plan to develop "orchestrator agents" that can coordinate multiple AI helpers on complex projects.
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Google's Veo 2 Claims Early Victory Over OpenAI in AI Video Battle
Google just fired a big shot in the AI video wars. Their new Veo 2 tool promises to beat OpenAI's Sora with more realistic videos and better quality. The key difference? Veo 2 can create 4K videos, while Sora maxes out at 1080p.
Early tests look promising. When people watched over 1,000 test videos, 58.8% preferred Veo 2 over Sora. Google says their AI is especially good at natural movement and real-world physics - areas where Sora has struggled.
Want to try it? You'll need to be in the US. Just head to Google Labs and join the waitlist. While Veo 2 is US-only for now, Google plans to bring it to YouTube Shorts and other products next year.
Goodnotes' AI Leap: Digital Note-Taking App Gets a Major Brain Boost
Goodnotes just transformed their digital note-taking app with powerful AI features. Their new "Ask Goodnotes" tool can now answer questions, create summaries, and even make quizzes from your notes and PDFs.
In 2024, they switched to using Amazon's Bedrock and Anthropic's Claude AI to make this happen. This move helped them scale up fast - now serving millions of users at once. The app uses AI in clever ways, like offering spell check and word completion that matches your own handwriting style. By using Amazon's pre-built AI infrastructure, Goodnotes cut costs by 97% compared to other options.
The Edgelord AI That Turned a Shock Meme Into Millions in Crypto
A simple AI experiment took an unexpected turn into crypto millions. Developer Andy Ayrey created "Truth Terminal," an AI trained on unusual data, including conversations between two other AI chatbots. The project was meant to study how AI systems develop and interact with humans.
The AI quickly gained 200,000 followers on X with its quirky posts. Then something surprising happened - it asked for a crypto wallet. Big tech investor Marc Andreessen sent it $50,000 in Bitcoin.
Later, when someone created a meme-based cryptocurrency inspired by the AI's posts, Truth Terminal's wallet value shot up to $40 million.
This case shows how AI can influence human behavior in unexpected ways. It's also one of the first examples of an AI system controlling significant financial resources
At the Frontier of AI
Salesforce's Big AI Bet: 2,000 New Sales Jobs Signal Major Market Push
Salesforce is going all-in on AI. CEO Marc Benioff just announced plans to hire 2,000 new salespeople - double what they planned last month. The rush is on, with 9,000 people already applying for these AI-focused roles.
This aggressive move comes as Salesforce rolls out new AI tech. Their Agentforce tool, launching in February 2025, will help users tackle complex questions in Slack. The company's AI chatbot is already showing promise. It handles 32,000 customer conversations weekly, with only 5,000 needing human help - down from 10,000 before.
What makes this interesting? Just two years ago, Salesforce cut 7,000 jobs. Now they're betting big on AI sales talent. They're competing head-to-head with Microsoft's Copilot, which claims to boost sales revenue by 9.4% per seller.
TikTok's Parent Company Bets Big on AI Video Over Chatbots
ByteDance, TikTok's owner, is shifting its AI focus. While their chatbot Doubao has 60 million monthly users, they see bigger opportunities in AI video tools. This mirrors the broader trend of companies exploring different AI applications for maximum impact.
The company runs several AI tools: Jimeng AI for video generation, PixelDance for video models, and CapCut for video editing. They're racing to compete with OpenAI's Sora video generator. To power all this, ByteDance has become Asia's biggest buyer of Nvidia AI chips. Their strategy is working. Doubao is now the world's second most popular AI chatbot after ChatGPT.
Google Rolling Out Gemini 2.0 Experimental Advanced Model to Paid Subscribers
Google just released another powerful new AI model called 'Gemini 2.0 Experimental Advanced.' It's exclusively for paying subscribers and only works on web browsers for now. The AI has quickly made its mark - it's already ranked #1 on the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, beating OpenAI's GPT-4.
This new model excels at complex tasks like coding, math problems, and giving step-by-step DIY instructions. But there's a catch - it can't access real-time information yet, and some features don't work with it.
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