AI is all in the news this week from Google, OpenAI, Amazon, and more

Welcome back my Tech Curious friend. I’m so glad you’re here. Below you can find information about the most recent tech news.

This week was nuts, with two major events occurring early this week. So let’s get started.

Table of Contents

• OpenAI’s Big Announcement

• Google IO 2024

• High Profile Execs Leave OpenAI

• How Safe are Self Driving Taxis?

• Google Becoming Less Important

OpenAI’s Big Announcement

When OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT announced they had a big announcement, everyone got to wondering what it was. Many believed it would be an AI powered search tool to take on Google.

Alas, it wasn’t that, however, it might be even bigger. They announced a new model, called GPT-4o. The letter o, is for “omni” meaning it will easily take on inputs and outputs such as audio, image, as well as text. The demo showcases reading images, translating audio, and more.

The two biggest parts you should know about is that it is faster than their GPT-4 model, allowing for near real time results, and it will be available to both the paid and free users.

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Google IO 2024

The Google IO event, where they showcase all their cool new features, just closed on Tuesday, the day after OpenAI’s event. As expected, it was AI heavy in their demonstrations.

This includes:

• A new model for Gemini 1.5, their AI tool,

• Google Lens letting you search video as well as still images,

• Veo, a video creation tool,

• Project Astra, a personal assistant,

• Android improves its use of AI, including to auto-detect likely scam calls, and much, much more.

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High Profile Execs Leave OpenAI

The day after OpenAI’s big announcement, followed a couple of more announcements. However this was from two execs who announced resignations one right after the other.

Details are slim as to why two leading safety researchers have resigned from OpenAI in quick succession. Jan Leike, head of the Superalignment team, followed co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, who announced he was leaving to work on an undisclosed "personally meaningful" new project. While Leike posted simply, "I resigned."

Does this mean there is trouble brewing in OpenAI similar to when the CEO was abruptly fired and rehired last year? No one knows at this time, but it’s worth watching given how important these two individuals are, as well as the timing.

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How Safe are Self Driving Taxis?

Taxis are always a bit of a gamble, if you ask me. I mean, just because they drive all day doesn’t mean they’re going to get you there without making you have a heart attack.

You’d think a self-driving one would be safer. However, the US federal government is now investigating several services based upon reports of traffic violations as well as possible preventable accidents.

A general guideline is self driving cars just need to be safer than the average driver. But are they better or worse, and how much is being hidden from the public? That’s what the investigation is really looking into.

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Google Becoming Less Important

I recently told of how it was announced that Google had intentionally been tanking search results.

Well, this may be effecting their market share. While initial reports earlier this week were lower, and have been revised upward, it still seems that Google is slowly losing market share and Bing, of all places.

This also doesn’t account for lost market share to people using AI to find answers, only for those searching. To counter that risk, Google is scheduled to release their AI powered search tool soon, which has some people concerned as well.

Could this be some well-deserved backlash? Or is it just a momentary blip in the reports? Only time will tell.

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