Skynet, AI Software Engineers, Movie Trailers, and Twi... I mean X

Welcome back my Tech Curious People! This week started off with a bang, with no signs of slowing down. So here is part of this week’s news!

Table of Contents

• Happy Halving Day

• AI Software Engineer Lied in Their Interview?

• AI Creates the Trailer You Want

• Pay to Play…I mean Tweet…?

• Someone Didn’t Hear About Skynet

• Meta AI is Coming for OpenAI

• There’s a New Robot in Town

• The TikTok Banning…

Happy Halving Day

Happy “halving” day, a quadrennial (relating to a four-year event) event built into BitCoin designed to limit the supply of new coins and protect against inflation pressure.

While no one knows for sure what will happen, typically it increases the price of BitCoin, and with the current price sitting at just over $69,000, who knows where it will go? Based upon past performance, the price should double within about eight months.

Read more about it here.

The AI Software Engineer Lied in Their Interview?

Devin AI was supposed to be the first AI Software Engineer. Now, it’s not uncommon for sales/demo presentations to “Stage” their presentation. However, it seems that the video they put out goes beyond staging and into faking it. Especially when you consider the social media posts and comments the company made.

The product generated as part of the larger scope had bugs, didn’t fix other people’s bugs, didn’t do the work actually requested, and exaggerated its abilities… I don’t know. That sounds like a lot of software engineers I’ve met. So maybe the claim isn’t wrong… they never claimed it was a good software engineer after all.

Read more here…

AI Creates the Trailer You Want

With Daniel Craig bowing out as the titular role of Bond, James Bond, the world is putting forth who they want. And while a replacement has been selected, that hasn’t stopped an AI tool for generating a Bond Teaser trailer with Henry Cavill (Man of Steel, Witcher) and Margot Robbie (Barbie, Wolf of Wall St).

The fake trailer has over 2.7 million views in just five days! While it’s hard to say if it’s because people actually believe it, or they just want to believe, it’s still an impressive number. And let’s not forget to thank AI for this possibility, just like all these stylized retro trailers that are coming out recently.

Read more about it here. Or better yet, watch it here!

Pay to Play…I mean Tweet…?

Elon Musk has “suggested” that a “small fee” might be needed to curb the rise in fake accounts. AI tools, and troll farms can easily defeat Are You a Bot? styled preventative measures. Ideas floated have been an initial sign up fee, a fee to tweet/like, and a monthly subscription fee.

Some feel this is just a money grab, and will result in X not being used nearly as much, while others point out that fake accounts might still be worth it and the fee would just be a cost of doing business.

Others say that if Musk hadn’t cut so many positions, that the content moderators, and tools would be in place to give a better experience to users.

Read more here.

Someone Didn’t Hear About Skynet

The US Air Force (USAF) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are showing how AI software can fly a modified F-16 fighter jet, called the XA-62, in a dogfight against human pilots.

They are using forms of Machine Learning to improve on it’s ability to fly, both as a standalone, virtual co-pilot, and in a loyal wingman role. This might give new life to old aircraft, especially if they can roll out the program to other airframes.

While there are lots of tests that need to happen before it’s rolled out into more than just the testing phase, this puts us a step closer to sky net… I mean autonomous drone warfare. The fack that this program is called Sky Borg shouldn’t worry you at all.

Read about it here, or watch the video below.

Meta AI is Coming for OpenAI

Meta’s Llama 3 was just released at the end of the week, and it looks pretty amazing just from the basic stats. It has a couple of different models it uses. A larger one which gives better results, but takes longer to generate text, and a smaller/faster model.

The model is open source, if you desire to tweak it yourself.

Initially, image generation was not part of it, but I was able to easily generate an image. However, I had to login with my Facebook account to do so.

The limits on Llama 3 are supposed to have higher limits, for free, than OpenAI allows with Chat GPT, so clearly Meta is not lying around when it comes to taking on its competition. (Unlike our lucky llama up top.)

Another “feature” is that it is available directly inside Facebook, Instagram, and even What’s App, in addition to it’s own website https://meta.ai.

Read more here, or watch here

There’s a New Robot in Town

Boston Dynamics, one of the first companies doing R&D in humanoid robotics, has announced that they are retiring their old Atlas robot, and replacing it with a new (and somewhat creepier) robot, also named Atlas… no confusion there.

The new Atlas robot is all electric, which allows for more range of motion, stronger motors, and more.

You shouldn’t have any fears between this, and the USAF and DARPA training combat ready AI fighter pilots… no fears at all. I personally welcome our new AI Robotic Overlords.

Read more on their press release or watch this video.

The TikTok Banning…

The US government has looked at banning TikTok in various amounts before and currently is banned from government devices. However, an outright ban, or forced sale, is now more likely given that it was included in recent legislation.

I guess the old adage is try, try, try again some more.

While the users love it, there are a lot of people concerned about the security of the app, as well as social implications given its addictive nature.