Tech & Society
Big AI Pursues Military Contracts: Meta and Anthropic open doors for AI in U.S. defense and national security
Two top AI companies changed their stances on military and intelligence applications.
Analytics DeepLearning.AI
Machine Learning Research
Mixture of Experts Pulls Ahead: Hunyuan-Large outshines open competitors with high benchmark scores
A new open source large language model outperforms competitors, including the open-weights Llama 3.1 405B, on a variety of benchmarks.
Data Points
Art team sells robot’s painting for $1.1 million: TSMC stops shipping advanced chips to China
FrontierMath’s hard math problems baffle models. Nvidia partners with Hugging Face’s robotics platform. Mistral offers multilingual text moderation. Grok teases free access for New Zealand’s X users.
Data Points
SWE-Kit helps developers build their own assistants: New Tencent open model outperforms Llama 3 405B
Oasis builds interactive Minecraft-style games in real-time. Microsoft releases system to coordinate AI agents. OpenAI’s new predicted outputs feature speeds up generation. GitHub launches Spark, a platform to build and host micro-apps.
Tech & Society
Robots On the Loading Dock: Tensions mount as automation transforms U.S. shipping ports
Shipping ports are the latest front in the rising tension between labor unions and AI-powered automation.
Letters
Social Media Bots and the Amplification Effect: Software bots that engage with certain social media posts likely play a role in manipulating public opinion. We need better algorithms to distinguish fake from real engagement.
Trump and the Republican party chalked up huge wins this week. Did manipulation of social media by generative AI play any role in this election?
The Batch Newsletter
AI Controls Desktops, Agents Train Algorithms, Does Anyone Comply With the EU’s AI Act?, Robots on the Loading Dock
The Batch AI News and Insights: Trump and the Republican party chalked up huge wins this week. Did manipulation of social media by generative AI play any role in this election?
Machine Learning Research
When Agents Train Algorithms: OpenAI’s MLE-bench tests AI coding agents
Coding agents are improving, but can they tackle machine learning tasks?
Tech & Society
Does Your Model Comply With the AI Act?: COMPL-AI study measures LLMs’ compliance with EU’s AI act
A new study suggests that leading AI models may meet the requirements of the European Union’s AI Act in some areas, but probably not in others.
Machine Learning Research
Claude Controls Computers: Anthropic empowers Claude Sonnet 3.5 to operate desktop apps, but cautions remain
API commands for Claude Sonnet 3.5 enable Anthropic’s large language model to operate desktop apps much like humans do. Be cautious, though: It’s a work in progress.
Data Points
Python overtakes JavaScript as top programming language on GitHub: Robots finally have enough training data to fold your laundry
ChatGPT now includes an AI search engine. Upgrading data centers leaves behind too much trash. OmniParser works with vision models to read computer screens. Gallup poll shows most big companies’ workforces haven’t embraced AI.
Data Points
What counts as an open source AI model?: Claude, Gemini, and o1 models added to GitHub Copilot
Researchers find hallucinations in Whisper transcriptions. White House directs how security agencies should use AI. Jailbreaking LLM-enabled robots could have devastating effects. Google’s synthetic podcast tool Illuminate specializes in research papers.