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Deeper Learning

Written by Aaron O’Leary and Sarah Wright.

Hey folks! Before we get into today’s AI news, we wanted to invite you to our next event: An evening with three AI investors. Join us in SF on Thursday, May 30 for a panel discussion about investing in AI startups. There will also be pizza and demos.

Now, let’s go deeper.

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TALKING POINTS

💼 It’s all coming out: Remember when the OpenAI board suddenly fired Sam Altman late last year? It was a dramatic and totally unexpected turn of events which eventually led to Sam coming back with a ton of public support, and removing said board. Well, now an ex-OpenAI board member has gone public with the reasoning behind the firing.

🤖 AI Emojis: Ever since AI exploded onto the tech scene, one question has remained: Where is Apple? The tech giant has been decidedly quiet on the AI front but according to some inside sources, they might have something big under their sleeves. Drum roll please…. AI-generated emojis.

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHT

Chat to Google with this new feature from the Browser Company

Do you remember the “If Google was a guy” College Humour (now Dropout) skit? In it, the Google search we all know and love gets a human face, and would-be Googlers show up to ask this human Google to do their searches for them. It gets pretty wacky, fast.

The Browser Company’s latest launch feels like the company saw the video and said, “Hey, let’s make it a feature.”

Announced last week, Call Arc is a new feature in Arc Search, the company’s AI-powered mobile search companion. Picture this: You’re in your kitchen trying to remember a recipe to cook tonight. You pick up your phone, and instead of typing, you put it to your ear, and ask for an “authentic carbonara recipe.” From there, Arc Search will play some hold music before providing a verbal answer and standing by for another question. 

It even looks like a regular phone call. Pull it away from your ear, and you’ll see an iPhone-esque splash screen complete with a caller ID, hang-up button, loudspeaker option, and read more button. 

Arc Search first launched in January of this year and initially made waves because of its ‘browse for me’ option. This AI-powered function allows users to get a summarized version of their search instead of the more typical browsing experience they’re used to. Arc’s been working to add more personality to web surfing, and we think it’s safe to say they did it. 

Q&A

“How close are we to AGI, really?”

Ask Kitty is where we answer your questions about AI. Today’s question was voted on in a previous newsletter.

I can answer this question for you in four words: No one knows, really. 

That’s not fun or helpful, but it’s the truth. So let me try to be helpful. First off, I’ve identified that discrepancy across AGI estimates comes down to three things:

• How you define AGI 

• How you measure intelligence 

• How fast you think we’re moving on both of those things 

Let’s look look the first today. 

What AI tech leaders say about AGI

The biggest, brightest brains in AI have weighed in. The results: We’re anywhere from a year to 50 years away from AGI. 😹

The experts at the top of the chart get a lot of media attention. This is in part because they have a more narrow view of how intelligence is defined (i.e. “Can AI complete X task or test”), and in part because they’re more bullish on how quickly we’re moving on developing the tech to get machines to be able to replicate “intelligence.”

But let’s look at the bottom of the chart…

MORE TOOLS

For Work

• Frontly combines AI + a drag-and-drop no-code builder for creating apps.

• Helpmee is an AI tool for helping parents and grandparents achieve tech independence. 

For Life

• Outtloud is an AI reading assistant for summarizing text, turning it into audio, and more. 

• Jector kills the black hole of AI picture generation, giving you node-based creation flows instead.

• Supaclip automatically turns all of your videos into knowledge bases.

• Trip Tunes uses AI to generate Apple Music playlists for your next road trip.

For Developers

• TonicTextual is a data lakehouse for LLMs, preparing your unstructured data for generative AI.

• Scoopika lets you add personal AI assistants to your next app.

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