Last Week in AI podcast | Listen online for free

Available Episodes

5 of 239

#200 - ChatGPT Roadmap, Musk OpenAI Bid, Model Tampering
Our 200th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 02/14/2025 Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris. Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/. In this episode: OpenAI announces plans to unify their model offerings, moving away from multiple separate models (GPT-4, Claude, etc.) toward a single unified intelligence system, with free users getting "standard intelligence" and Plus subscribers accessing "higher intelligence" levels. Adobe launches their Sora-rivaling AI video generator with 1080p output and 5-second clips, emphasizing production-ready content for films and introducing new pricing tiers through Firefly subscriptions at $10-30 per month. Elon Musk and a consortium offer $97.4 billion to acquire OpenAI's nonprofit entity, potentially complicating the company's transition to a for-profit structure, though Sam Altman quickly dismissed the offer's viability. TSMC implements stricter chip sales restrictions to China, requiring government-approved third-party packaging houses for chips using 16nm and below processes, aligning with US export control measures and affecting major tech companies like Nvidia and AMD. Timestamps + Links: (00:00:00) Intro / Banter (00:01:25) Response to listener comments (00:02:41) News Preview Tools & Apps (00:03:58) Adobe’s Sora rivalling AI video generator is now available for everyone (00:09:45) OpenAI lays out plans for GPT-5 (00:16:42) OpenAI is rethinking how AI models handle controversial topics (00:21:28) Perplexity AI launches new ultra-fast AI search model Sonar (00:23:45) YouTube AI updates include auto dubbing expansion, age ID tech, and more Applications & Business (00:24:37) Musk-led group makes $97.4 billion bid for control of OpenAI (00:34:32) Anthropic’s next major AI model could arrive within weeks (00:39:09) AI chip startup Groq secures $1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia (00:42:15) OpenAI reportedly planning to build its first AI chip in 2026 Projects & Open Source (00:45:01) Zyphra Introduces the Beta Release of Zonos: A Highly Expressive TTS Model with High Fidelity Voice Cloning (00:51:11) Gemstones: A Model Suite for Multi-Faceted Scaling Laws (00:57:15) Hephaestus: Improving Fundamental Agent Capabilities of Large Language Models through Continual Pre-Training Research & Advancements (00:58:24) Model Tampering Attacks Enable More Rigorous Evaluations of LLM Capabilities (01:04:24) Distillation Scaling Laws (01:10:06) Matryoshka Quantization (01:17:47) How much AI compute exists globally? How rapidly is it growing? Policy & Safety (01:21:29) US and UK refuse to sign summit declaration on AI safety (01:25:43) Utility Engineering: Analyzing and Controlling Emergent Value Systems in AIs (01:34:40) xAI Risk Management Framework (Draft) (01:39:59) TSMC bans more chip sales to China due to stricter U.S. export sanctions (01:42:38) Listener requested topic Synthetic Media & Art (01:43:48) Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case in the US (01:44:46) Scarlett Johansson calls for deepfake ban after AI video goes viral (01:45:55) Outro
--------
1:48:09
#199 - OpenAI's 03-mini, Gemini Thinking, Deep Research, s1
Our 199th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 02/09/2025 Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris. Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/. In this episode: - OpenAI's deep research feature capability launched, allowing models to generate detailed reports after prolonged inference periods, competing directly with Google's Gemini 2.0 reasoning models. - France and UAE jointly announce plans to build a massive AI data center in France, aiming to become a competitive player within the AI infrastructure landscape. - Mistral introduces a mobile app, broadening its consumer AI lineup amidst market skepticism about its ability to compete against larger firms like OpenAI and Google. - Anthropic unveils 'Constitutional Classifiers,' a method showing strong defenses against universal jailbreaks; they also launched a $20K challenge to find weaknesses. Timestamps + Links: (00:00:00) Intro / Banter (00:02:27) News Preview (00:03:28) Response to listener comments Tools & Apps (00:08:01) OpenAI now reveals more of its o3-mini model’s thought process (00:16:03) Google’s Gemini app adds access to ‘thinking’ AI models (00:21:04) OpenAI Unveils A.I. Tool That Can Do Research Online (00:31:09) Mistral releases its AI assistant on iOS and Android (00:36:17) AI music startup Riffusion launches its service in public beta (00:39:11) Pikadditions by Pika Labs lets users seamlessly insert objects into videos Applications & Business (00:41:19) Softbank set to invest $40 billion in OpenAI at $260 billion valuation, sources say (00:47:36) UAE to invest billions in France AI data centre (00:50:34) Report: Ilya Sutskever’s startup in talks to fundraise at roughly $20B valuation (00:52:03) ASML to Ship First Second-Gen High-NA EUV Machine in the Coming Months, Aiming for 2026 Production (00:54:38) NVIDIA’s GB200 NVL 72 Shipments Not Under Threat From DeepSeek As Hyperscalers Maintain CapEx; Meanwhile, Trump Tariffs Play Havoc With TSMC’s Pricing Strategy Projects & Open Source (00:56:49) The Allen Institute for AI (AI2) Releases Tülu 3 405B: Scaling Open-Weight... (01:00:06) SmolLM2: When Smol Goes Big -- Data-Centric Training of a Small Language Model (01:03:56) PhD Knowledge Not Required: A Reasoning Challenge for Large Language Models (01:08:26) OpenEuroLLM: Europe’s New Initiative for Open-Source AI Development Research & Advancements (01:10:34) LIMO: Less is More for Reasoning (01:16:39) s1: Simple test-time scaling (01:19:17) ZebraLogic: On the Scaling Limits of LLMs for Logical Reasoning (01:23:55) Streaming DiLoCo with overlapping communication: Towards a Distributed Free Lunch Policy & Safety (01:26:50) US sets AI safety aside in favor of 'AI dominance' (01:29:39) Almost Surely Safe Alignment of Large Language Models at Inference-Time (01:32:02) Constitutional Classifiers: Defending against Universal Jailbreaks across Thousands of Hours of Red Teaming (01:33:16) Anthropic offers $20,000 to whoever can jailbreak its new AI safety system
--------
1:37:46
#198 - DeepSeek R1 & Janus, Qwen2.5, OpenAI Agents
Our 198th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 01/31/2024 Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris. Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected] Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/. In this episode: - DeepSeek releases R1, a competitive AI model comparable to OpenAI’s O1, leading to market unrest and significant drops in tech stocks, including a 17% plunge in NVIDIA's stock. - OpenAI launches Operator to facilitate agentic computer use, while facing competition from new releases by DeepSeek and Quen, with applications seeing rapid adoption. - President Trump revokes the Biden administration's executive order on AI, signaling a shift in AI policy and deregulation efforts. - Taiwanese government clears TSMC to produce advanced 2-nanometer chip technology abroad, aiming to strengthen global semiconductor supply amidst geopolitical tensions. If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form. Timestamps + Links: (00:00:00) Intro / Banter (00:03:01) Response to listener comments Projects & Open Source (00:06:26) DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning (00:30:25) Viral AI company DeepSeek releases new image model family (00:34:07) Qwen2.5-1M Technical Report (00:38:32) Alibaba’s Qwen team releases AI models that can control PCs and phones Tools & Apps (00:42:09) OpenAI launches Operator, an AI agent that performs tasks autonomously (00:47:37) DeepSeek reaches No. 1 on US Play Store (00:52:17) Alibaba rolled out Qwen Chat v0.2 and Qwen2.5-1M model (00:53:50) Perplexity launches US-hosted DeepSeek R1, hints at EU hosting soon (00:55:31) Apple is pulling its AI-generated notifications for news after generating fake headlines (00:59:00) French AI ‘Lucie’ looks très chic, but keeps getting answers wrong Applications & Business (01:02:09) DeepSeek’s New AI Model Sparks Shock, Awe, and Questions From US Competitors (01:07:49) Microsoft loses OpenAI exclusive cloud provider status to $500 billion Stargate project (01:13:00) OpenAI adds BlackRock exec Adebayo Ogunlesi to board of directors (01:15:00) ElevenLabs has raised a new round at $3B+ valuation led by ICONIQ Growth, sources say Policy & Safety (01:16:00) Donald Trump unveils $500 billion Stargate Project to build AI infrastructure in the US, promising over 100K jobs (01:20:36) Trump Revokes Biden AI Policy, Signs Executive Order to Strengthen AI Leadership (01:23:20) Anthropic CEO doesn’t see DeepSeek as ‘adversaries,’ but says export controls are critical (01:30:26) Taiwanese govt clears TSMC to make 2nm chips abroad — country lowers its 'Silicon Shield' (01:33:01) Outro
--------
1:37:26
AI Computing Hardware - Past, Present, and Future
A special one-off episode with a deep dive into the past, present, and future of how computer hardware makes AI possible. Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/. Sponsors: The Generator - An interdisciplinary AI lab empowering innovators from all fields to bring visionary ideas to life by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence. In this episode: - Google and Mistral sign deals with AP and AFP, respectively, to deliver up-to-date news through their AI platforms. - ChatGPT introduces a tasks feature for reminders and to-dos, positioning itself more as a personal assistant. - Synthesia raises $180 million to enhance its AI video platform for generating videos of human avatars. - New U.S. guidelines restrict exporting AI chips to various countries, impacting Nvidia and other tech firms. If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form. Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:08 Historical Recap: Early AI and Hardware 00:11:51 The Rise of GPUs and Deep Learning 00:15:39 Scaling Laws and the Evolution of AI Models 00:24:05 The Bitter Lesson and the Future of AI Compute 00:25:58 Moore's Law and Huang's Law 00:30:12 Memory and Logic in AI Hardware 00:34:53 Challenges in AI Hardware: The Memory Wall 00:37:08 The Role of GPUs in Modern AI 00:42:27 Fitting Neural Nets in GPUs 00:48:04 Batch Sizes and GPU Utilization 00:52:47 Parallelism in AI Models 00:55:53 Matrix Multiplications and GPUs 00:59:57 Understanding B200 and GB200 01:05:41 Data Center Hierarchy 01:13:42 High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) 01:16:45 Fabrication and Packaging 01:20:17 The Complexity of Semiconductor Fabrication 01:24:34 Understanding Process Nodes 01:28:26 The Art of Fabrication 01:33:17 The Role of Yield in Fabrication 01:35:47 The Photolithography Process 01:40:38 Deep Ultraviolet Lithography (DUV) 01:43:58 Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) 01:51:46 Export Controls and Their Impact 01:54:22 The Rise of Custom AI Hardware 02:00:10 The Future of AI and Hardware
--------
2:04:24
#197 - AI in Gmail+Docs, MiniMax-01, Titans, Transformer^2
Our 197th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 01/17/2024 Join our brand new Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and guest-hosted by the folks from Latent Space Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/. Sponsors: The Generator - An interdisciplinary AI lab empowering innovators from all fields to bring visionary ideas to life by harnessing the capabilities of artificial intelligence. In this episode: - Google and Mistral sign deals with AP and AFP, respectively, to deliver up-to-date news through their AI platforms. - ChatGPT introduces a tasks feature for reminders and to-dos, positioning itself more as a personal assistant. - Synthesia raises $180 million to enhance its AI video platform for generating videos of human avatars. - New U.S. guidelines restrict exporting AI chips to various countries, impacting Nvidia and other tech firms. If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form. Timestamps + Links: (00:00:00) Intro / Banter (00:04:29) News Preview (00:05:09) Response to listener comments (00:05:58) Sponsor Break Tools & Apps (00:07:01) Google is making AI in Gmail and Docs free — but raising the price of Workspace (00:07:52) Microsoft relaunches Copilot for business with free AI chat and pay-as-you-go agents (00:12:36) Google signs deal with AP to deliver up-to-date news through its Gemini AI chatbot (00:18:08) Mistral signs deal with AFP to offer up-to-date answers in Le Chat (00:18:45) ChatGPT can now handle reminders and to-dos Applications & Business (00:22:53) Palmer Luckey’s AI Defense Company Anduril Is Building a $1 Billion Plant in Ohio (00:28:36) OpenAI is bankrolling Axios’ expansion into four new markets (00:29:39) AI researcher François Chollet founds a new AI lab focused on AGI (00:32:18) Nvidia-backed AI video platform Synthesia doubles valuation to $2.1 billion (00:34:46) Anysphere Raises $105M in Series B (00:40:14) Harvey Valuation of 3 Billion Projects & Open Source (00:46:12) MiniMax-01: Scaling Foundation Models with Lightning Attention (00:51:16) MinMo: A Multimodal Large Language Model with Approximately 8B Parameters for Seamless Voice Interaction (00:53:01) HALoGEN: Fantastic LLM Hallucinations and Where to Find Them Research & Advancements (00:57:03) Titans: Learning to Memorize at Test Time (01:04:38) Transformer2: Self-adaptive LLMs (01:08:15) Inference-Time Scaling for Diffusion Models beyond Scaling Denoising Steps Policy & Safety (01:11:23) Biden administration proposes sweeping new restrictions on exporting AI chips (01:13:56) Biden orders Energy, Defense departments to lease sites for AI data centers, clean energy generation (01:15:00) OpenAI presents its preferred version of AI regulation in a new ‘blueprint’ (01:16:15) More teens report using ChatGPT for schoolwork, despite the tech’s faults Synthetic Media & Art (01:17:55) In AI copyright case, Zuckerberg turns to YouTube for his defense (01:19:53) Outro
--------
1:23:52