xAI's New Grok App, Smaller Models, Hardware, and Time Allocation

AI Wanna Talk

Correction: The Bee device records all participants in a conversation while being able to identify and distinguish your voice from other speakers.
In this episode of "AI Wanna Talk," host Jacob Norgord dives into the latest developments in AI, covering new apps, models, hardware, and even some thought-provoking ideas about the future of work and human interaction.

AI App and Model Updates:

• xAI's Grok App: A detailed look at xAI's Grok app, including its web-searching capabilities and integration with Twitter, offering a real-time information experience. The app allows image uploads and generation and is currently available on iPhone, with a web app coming soon.
• Bytedance AI Video Upscaler: Discussion of Bytedance’s new AI video upscaler, which uses stable diffusion techniques to enhance video quality, potentially impacting platforms like TikTok.
• Cohere’s North Platform: An overview of Cohere’s North platform, an all-in-one AI workspace designed for enterprises. It integrates LLMs, search, and AI agents into workplace tools like Google Drive, Gmail, and GitHub.
• Meta's Byte-Latent Transformer: Explanation of Meta's new byte-latent transformer, which processes data at the byte level, improving performance, reducing computational resources and handling multiple languages better. This approach bypasses traditional tokenization.
• Microsoft's Phi Model: Introduction of Microsoft's smaller 14 billion parameter Phi model, noting its ability to run locally and achieve high performance on benchmarks like the MMLU.
• Kokoro 82M Model: Overview of the Kokoro 82M text-to-speech model, which can run locally with only 350MB of RAM, making it ideal for device integration.

AI Hardware and Wearables:

• OMI Device: An exploration of the OMI wearable, a necklace-like device that provides contextually relevant information based on conversations and aims to connect directly to the brain in the future.
• B Device: Discussion of the B wrist-worn device, which summarizes conversations, suggests to-dos, and creates daily memories while respecting privacy, priced at $50.

Future of AI and Society:

• AI-Driven Advertising: Insight into how advertising might shift to target AI agents rather than humans, as suggested by Perplexity's CEO.
• Changing Time Allocation: A discussion of Paul Graham's tweet about increased time spent at home since 2003, raising questions about the impact of AI on our lives and how we'll spend our time. The podcast also touches on the idea of intentional inconvenience in the future.

Links & Resources:

• Adobe TransPixar AI
• Aravind's Advertising Prediction
• Bytedance's STAR AI
• Cohere’s North
• Meta's Byte-Latent Transformer
• Time Spent at Home
• xAI

Small Models

• Microsoft Phi-4
• Kokoro-82M

Wearables

• omi
• Bee