GM Readers! ☀️

Welcome to the 16 issue of Evolving Internet Insights.

Quote we’ve been thinking about: We’ve never had as many animators as we have today, and we still need more. Motion capture really became part of their workflow as an additional tool … I think with generative AI, it’s essentially the same thing.” (Alexis Rolland, Ubisoft R&D, Source)

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Liang and Dan 🙌

🌰 In a Nutshell

• Apple is playing catch up in generative (gen) AI, investing $1B per year on gen AI initiatives

• Nvidia's Eureka AI can teach other robots how to do things

• Gaming could become hyper personalized with gen AI

• US leads in AI research, driven by Big Tech companies

💾 Byte-sized Stories

This week’s top stories with our insights on top.

1. Apple Doubles Down on Gen AI 🃏

⚡️ TL;DR: With the gen AI boom already underway, Apple finds itself playing catch up. The company wants to invest $1B a year to pursue initiatives in gen AI and double on implementing gen AI across the company and its products. Some of its current initiatives include:

• Built Ajax, a large language model (LLM) for internal use.

• Bringing gen AI to Siri and iOS.

• Integrating gen AI tools into development tools (similar to Microsoft’s Copilot).

⚡️ So What: Many of the major Big Tech companies invested ahead of the generative AI boom and have since doubled down on the sector. Some of the early winners include Microsoft with $13B in cumulative investment in OpenAI, and Nvidia with their highly sought after GPU technology. Other Big Tech competitors like Google and Meta have also made strides to cement their position in the gen AI space – both companies have built their own next generation LLMs to compete with OpenAI.

⚡️ Zoom Out: While Apple is behind in the AI race, Apple has consistently proved its second mover advantage. For example, it was second to the smartphone market (behind Blackberry). Most recently, it announced its Apple Vision Pro (behind other VR goggles like Meta’s Quest). Apple excels on design and making products that consumers love, a feeling that gen AI tools have not been able to reproduce. Plain and simple, Apple understands the consumer technology mindset. Also, let’s not forget that Apple has deep pockets and consumer mindshare. Remember the story of “The Tortoise and the Hare.”

🏁🐢🐇

Read More Here, Here

2. Nvidia’s Robots Teaching Other Robots 🧑‍🏫

⚡️ TL;DR: Nvidia announced Eureka, a new AI agent that can teach robots human skills that robots often find “complex.” This Nvidia video highlights hand dexterity that is relatively easy for humans but hard for robots, like spinning a pen in one’s hand. For the record, we cannot do this 😅. All the more impressive is that Eureka uses gen AI models like GPT-4 to write reward algorithms that help robots learn via trial-and-error reinforcement learning (think: mechanical arms picking things up in factories).

⚡️ So What: According to Nvidia's own research paper, Eureka’s reward algorithms, which enable trial-and-error learning for robots, outperform algorithms written by human experts on more than 80% of tasks. This equates to an average performance improvement of more than 50% when compared to human-written reward functions.

⚡️ Zoom Out: While many think gen AI only disrupts knowledge work, Nvidia’s Eureka is an example of the disruption potential of physical work as well, especially as the technology becomes more proficient at training robots to augment physical labor.

Read More Here, Here, Here 

P.S. Our next Brainfood Issue will cover Navigating the Jagged Frontier and why experimentation is key in discovering AI use cases.

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3. Generative AI and Gaming 🎮

⚡️ TL;DR: AI tools are being developed to help supercharge the industry — everything from the development of games to empowering users to create more user generated content (UGC). For example, La Forge, gaming giant Ubisoft’s research and development arm, launched its Ghostwriter AI tool (earlier this year) to help writers create more rich dialogue for NPCs (non-playable characters) in video games.

⚡️ So What: Gaming is one of the largest forms of entertainment. To put it into perspective, in 2020, the gaming industry was valued at ~$160B, ~4x the size of the movie industry. With gen AI, games are expected to enter an era of hyper personalization. We already see this behavior with UGC being a critical component of games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox.

⚡️ Zoom Out: There is a lot of talk about how gen AI can disrupt knowledge and creative work. But for the gaming industry, gen AI might just help augment some of the more tedious parts of the creative process. When this happens, we think workers shift their role to focus on more creative activities. Alexis Rolland, the director of La Forge at Ubisoft, highlighted that what is happening in gaming (as it relates to new disruptive technologies) happened in animation:

“We’ve never had as many animators as we have today, and we still need more. Motion capture really became part of their workflow as an additional tool … I think with generative AI, it’s essentially the same thing.”

Read More Here, Here

📊 Let’s Get Graphic

One visual we couldn’t stop thinking about.

US Leads in AI Research, Driven by Big Tech Companies

⚡️ Takeaway: Air Street Capital’s State of AI in 2023 report highlighted that more than 70% of AI Papers cited over the last 3 years have come from the US. The top three organizations leading this research are Google, Meta, and Microsoft. AI technologies have the potential to impact the entire world but it’s interesting to see the organizations leading in research are Big Tech companies (read: the profit motives behind AI).

🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole

Some deeper dives to help you get smarter on emerging tech.

1. Future of AI Chips: Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO, on the future of the AI chips industry.

2. What Luddies Can Teach Us About AI: an essay highlighting how Luddites fought technology adoption in the context of technology used to exploit workers.

3. List of Open Source LLMs: a detailed list of open sourced LLMs along with their defining characteristics.

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