The Memo - 27/Jan/2023
ChatGPT achievements, DeepL Write, RWKV-4, Lensa AI making >$2M/day, and much more!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 27/Jan/2023
Welcome back to The Memo.
Given that a percentage of our readers are from government and large enterprise, I’m trying out a new section in this edition; called ‘Policy’ it brings together all the big guidelines proposed by governments, like NIST’s release yesterday, and new AI-generated Bills across the US.
In the Toys to play with section, we look at a new chatbot using an RNN model, a popular new Transformer-based writing assistant, a new book-writing script to GPT-3.5, web-scraping using GPT-3, and more…
The BIG Stuff
CEOs embracing GPT for productivity (19/Jan/2023)
This section is reserved for BIG stuff. There’s technology big stuff, and then there’s ‘general visibility, availability, and public embracing of technology’ big stuff.
When the 55-year-old CEO of a $2B education company (Coursera) starts using GPT to write emails and design presentations, you know we’re on a roll! Getting visibility for artificial intelligence—and especially integrated AI—has always been the key to my work, and this is a fantastic milestone.
Jeff Maggioncalda, the CEO of online learning provider Coursera, said that when he first tried ChatGPT, he was “dumbstruck.” Now, it’s part of his daily routine.
He uses the powerful new AI chatbot tool to bang out emails. He uses it to craft speeches “in a friendly, upbeat, authoritative tone with mixed cadence.” He even uses it to help break down big strategic questions — such as how Coursera should approach incorporating artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT into its platform.
“I use it as a writing assistant and as a thought partner… Anybody who doesn’t use this will shortly be at a severe disadvantage. Like, shortly. Like, very soon… I’m just thinking about my cognitive ability with this tool. Versus before, it’s a lot higher, and my efficiency and productivity is way higher.”
Read more via CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/19/tech/chatgpt-future-davos/index.html
30% of professionals using ChatGPT at work (20/Jan/2023)
Related, ChatGPT is used at work by 30% of professionals from companies including Amazon, Bank of America, Edelman, Google, IBM, JPMorgan, and Twitter. 4,500 employees were surveyed.
The Interesting Stuff
MusicLM by Google AI (26/Jan/2023)
MusicLM, a model generating high-fidelity music from text descriptions such as "a calming violin melody backed by a distorted guitar riff"… generates music at 24 kHz [standard is 44.1kHz for CD/Spotify, up to 192kHz for archival mastering] that remains consistent over several minutes… can transform whistled and hummed melodies according to the style described in a text caption… we publicly release MusicCaps, a dataset composed of 5.5k music-text pairs, with rich text descriptions provided by human experts.
The results are extraordinary.
Have a listen: https://google-research.github.io/seanet/musiclm/examples/
Read the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.11325
Academics + AI (18/Jan/2023)
Dr Ethan Mollick at Wharton has provided new AI rules for his students…
AI Policy
I expect you to use AI (ChatGPT and image generation tools, at a minimum), in this class. In fact, some assignments will require it. Learning to use AI is an emerging skill, and I provide tutorials in Canvas about how to use them. I am happy to meet and help with these tools during office hours or after class.
Be aware of the limits of ChatGPT:
If you provide minimum effort prompts, you will get low quality results. You will need to refine your prompts in order to get good outcomes. This will take work.
Don't trust anything it says. If it gives you a number or fact, assume it is wrong unless you either know the answer or can check in with another source. You will be responsible for any errors or omissions provided by the tool. It works best for topics you understand.
AI is a tool, but one that you need to acknowledge using. Please include a paragraph at the end of any assignment that uses AI explaining what you used the AI for and what prompts you used to get the results. Failure to do so is in violation of academic honesty policies.
Be thoughtful about when this tool is useful. Don't use it if it isn't appropriate for the case or circumstance.
Read: https://oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/all-my-classes-suddenly-became-ai
ChatGPT would pass a Wharton MBA unit exam (22/Jan/2023)
“Chat GPT3 would have received a B to B- grade on the exam.”
Read the paper: https://mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu/2023/would-chat-gpt3-get-a-wharton-mba-new-white-paper-by-christian-terwiesch/
ChatGPT’s achievements (22/Jan/2023)
I’ve consolidated a list of ChatGPT’s achievements to date, including IQ test results and the Wharton MBA exam above.
View the data in Google Sheets.
Watch my video:
Meta AI Chief Scientist Yann LeCun rages against ChatGPT (24/Jan/2023)
A lot of modern AI pioneers feel justifiably miffed by the extraordinary popularity of ChatGPT (one million new users in five days. My ChatGPT Prompt Book sees thousands of views per day).
Dr Yann LeCun created and then pulled the Galactica 120B model in Nov/2022, which had a great layout and solid citations (see The Memo 24/Nov/2022 or my Galactica 120B walkthrough video).
He and I are aligned in our views of the neutered ChatGPT model. He says:
In terms of underlying techniques, ChatGPT is not particularly innovative. It's nothing revolutionary, although that's the way it's perceived in the public. It's just that it's well put together, it's nicely done. OpenAI is not particularly an advance compared to the other labs, at all.
It's not only just Google and Meta, but there are half a dozen startups that basically have very similar technology to it. I don't want to say it's not rocket science, but it's really shared, there's no secret behind it…
You have to realize, ChatGPT uses Transformer architectures that are pre-trained in this self-supervised manner. Self-supervised-learning is something I've been advocating for a long time, even before OpenAI existed…
Why aren't there similar systems from, say, Google and Meta? The answer is, Google and Meta both have a lot to lose by putting out systems that make stuff up…
DuplexGPT based on Google Duplex (25/Jan/2023)
Do you remember back in 2018 when Google was demonstrating AI phonecalls to make reservations? Called Google Duplex (listen to call samples), the technology was interesting. This week, a user tried the same thing with modern tech. ‘Introducing DuplexGPT - automated phone calls using Whisper and GPT. Book restaurant reservations, barber shop appointments, and doctor consultations—without making the call.’