Nvidia debuts new A.I. agent for robots, China startup Zhipu raises major funding, and the Allen Institute for AI calls for more openness
Nvidia debuts new A.I. agent for robots, China startup Zhipu raises major funding, and the Allen Institute for AI calls for more openness
Here are the latest top stories about artificial intelligence
The Allen Institute for AI has begun an initiative to build a freely available A.I. alternative, according to an article from the New York Times. Ali Farhadi, a computer scientist at the University of Washington who previously ran a startup that was acquired by Apple, is leading the effort. Farhadi said that Meta’s A.I. model LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI) doesn’t go far enough in fostering openness. “Their approach is basically: I’ve done some magic. I’m not going to tell you what it is,” he told the Times.
Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox spoke with Wall Street Journal senior columnist Joanna Stern at the Tech Live conference, and outlined the company’s plans to wrap A.I. across its family of products. He described how users will be able to chat with A.I.-based celebrities in Whatsapp, Messenger, and Instagram, and spoke about the company’s partnership with Bing for search. His interview also gave more insight into efforts around developing LLaMa.
Nvidia Research announced on its blog that it has developed Eurkeka, a new A.I. agent that can autonomously teach robots complex skills. The company said that its agent has, for the first time, trained a robotic hand to perform rapid pen-spinning tricks as well as a human can. “It has also taught robots to open drawers and cabinets, toss and catch balls, and manipulate scissors, among nearly 30 tasks.”
Zhipu AI, a China-based startup, announced a recent funding round from Alibaba and Tencent. The startup was spun out of China’s prestigious Tsinghua University. This announcement followed on the heels of the Biden administration limiting the export of Nvidia AI chips to China. Zhipu recently open-sourced its bilingual (Chinese and English) conversational AI model ChatGLM-6B.