This week sees a slight change in the format of the newsletter. In addition to the top five news picks of the week, we have included a new section called “Thoughts” to replace Tools and Prompts. New GPT’s to review have proven thin on the ground and not terribly exciting, so I thought I’d kick off with a high level review of where AI has gone in the last 18 months. Let’s dive in…

News

Nurses protest AI in Healthcare: San Francisco this week saw protests by nurses at Kaiser Hospital, concerned as they are about the adoption of AI within the facility. Such disruption is likely inevitable as we evolve into a world where AI is embedded everywhere. Read all about it here.

Gene editing gets the AI treatment: A US based start up has created a generative AI technology that is trained on immense amounts of biological data to enable it to generate blueprints of microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, CRISPR style. Find out more here.

A coffee roastery in Finland launches AI-conic blend: Helsinki based Kaffa Roastery has used AI to come up with a unique four bean blend of coffee (plus the packaging and tasting notes) to some acclaim at this weeks Helsinki Coffee Festival. They spill the beans here!

AI controlled fighter jet in dog fight with human pilot: the US Air Force confirmed that an AI controlled fighter jet competed with a human pilot in a simulated aerial dog fight above the California desert. A human was in the AI jet with an AI kill switch but this was not used at any point. Read all about it here.

Emergency services benefit from new AI - created by a 17 year old kid: a Manhattan based youngster has created an algorithm that is astonishingly accurate at determining the resources required to give callers the optimum response from the emergency services. Find out more here.

Thoughts

Less than 18 months ago, AI - in the form of ChatGPT from OpenAI - burst on the scene. I got access over the Christmas holidays in 2022 and immediately felt the same rush that I did in the mid 1990’s when the internet became a thing. The whole notion that the world had flipped on its axis and things would never be the same again. So what can we reflect on 18 months into this and how does it compare with the mid 1990’s internet or the 2007 iphone?

Well, for one thing, there has been extraordinary hype around AI. From being practically unheard of 18 months ago there is now little part of lives that haven’t wither been touched or at least have the potential to be changed. Also, the pace of change has been profound. It is amazing to watch “exponential” in action! By any measure, AI is improving at a pace that has not been experienced in human history and it will only get quicker. The world of 2030 will be unrecognisable from the world today.

So what areas do I think AI will impact the most in the short term? Two really soring to mind as being low hanging fruit: healthcare and education. AI research seems to have been revolving around healthcare for much longer than 18 months. In many cases, the researchers have been dealing with machine learning and AI for over a decade. So the fundementals are in place and now its a case of taking the exponential gains and applying them as a force for good.

With education, giving children all over the world - which is happening now - access to cutting edge personalised tools can only be a positive. SImilarly, having a conversation with a generative AI model as an adult means that there is no subject that you can’t learn about and excel at.

The real force multiplier in all of this is when we marry AI to robotics. Super intelligent humanoid robots will be able to perform most of the tasks humans do, better, for longer and cheaper. Where does that leave us? Thats for next time…