Amazon Releases World's Most Capable Gen AI assistant
Plus: Google's Med-Gemini outperforms doctors, Apple has a secretive AI lab in Switzerland.
Hello Engineering Leaders and AI Enthusiasts!
Welcome to the 265th edition of The AI Edge newsletter. This edition brings you Amazon Q, world’s most capable generative AI assistant.
And a huge shoutout to our amazing readers. We appreciate you😊
In today’s edition:
🏆 Amazon has launched Amazon Q, a Gen AI assistant for businesses and developers
🏥 Google’s Med-Gemini models outperforms doctors
🕵️♂️ Apple has set up a secretive AI lab in Switzerland
📚 Knowledge Nugget: Fear and Loathing of A.I. by
Let’s go!
Amazon has launched Amazon Q, a Gen AI assistant for businesses and developers
Amazon has launched Amazon Q, a generative AI assistant designed for developers and businesses. It comes in three distinct offerings:
Amazon Q Developer frees up precious time by handling tedious tasks like testing, debugging, and optimizing AWS resources so developers can focus on core coding and innovation.
Amazon Q Business connects to 40+ enterprise data sources and equips employees with a data-driven digital assistant to answer questions, create reports, and provide insights based on enterprise data repositories.
Amazon Q Apps allows non-technical employees to build generative AI applications using natural language prompts.
Amazon is driving real-world impact by offering a free tier for Q Developer and reporting early customer productivity gains of over 80%. Amazon Q Developer Pro is available for $19/user/month and Amazon Q Business Pro for $20/user/month. A free trial of both Pro tiers is available until June 30, 2024.
Why does it matter?
By introducing a free tier for Q Developer and the user-friendly nature of Q Apps, Amazon could accelerate innovation across the software development lifecycle and business workflows. This could empower domain experts and business leaders to use AI to solve their specific challenges directly, leading to more tailored AI applications across various industries.
Google’s Med-Gemini models outperforms doctors
Researchers from Google and DeepMind have introduced Med-Gemini, a family of highly capable multimodal AI models specialized in medicine. Based on the strengths of the Gemini models, Med-Gemini shows significant improvements in clinical reasoning, multimodal understanding, and long-context understanding. Models can be customized to fit novel medical modalities through specialized encoders, and web searches can be used for up-to-date information.
Med-Gemini has shown state-of-the-art performance on 10 of 14 medical benchmarks, including text, multimodal, and long-context applications. Moreover, the models achieved 91.1% accuracy on the MedQA (USMLE) benchmark, exceeding the previous best models by 4.6%. Its strong performance in summarizing medical notes, generating clinical referral letters, and answering electronic health record questions confirms Med-Gemini's potential real-world use.
Why does it matter?
These models can reduce the administrative burden on healthcare professionals by outperforming human experts in tasks like medical text summarization and referral letter generation. Moreover, Med-Gemini's ability to engage in multimodal medical dialogues and explain its reasoning can lead to more personalized and transparent care, reduce misdiagnosis due to lack of physician knowledge, and save lives and money.
Apple has set up a secretive AI lab in Switzerland
Since 2018, the company has quietly hired 36 AI experts from Google, including notable figures like Bengio and Ruoming Pang, for its secretive "Vision Lab." The lab focuses on building advanced AI models and products, and it is particularly interested in text and visual-based AI systems akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Apple has also acquired AI startups FaceShift and Fashwall, which are likely contributing to the establishment of the new lab.
Why does it matter?
Apple may have been fashionably late to AI development, but quietly setting up the Zurich lab and primary AI development centers in California and Seattle signifies the company's AI ambitions.
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Knowledge Nugget: Fear and Loathing of A.I.
In a thought-provoking article,
tackles the fear and loathing surrounding AI head-on. He argues against various common criticisms, such as AI being theft, immoral, irrelevant, or a threat to jobs and the climate. Evans believes many of these concerns are misguided or overblown and attributes the "evil tech bro" narrative to journalism's bias against the tech industry due to its disruption of the journalism field.Evans affirms that AI is already transforming industries like engineering and will only continue to improve, making it a technology that will define the future. He highlights the need for new laws and licensing frameworks to address AI's legal status and certain outputs, like derivative works of individual living creators. Ultimately, Evans believes being an AI optimist is the better choice, as the potential upsides outweigh the downsides.
Why does it matter?
Evans' thought-provoking piece challenges us to confront our biases and preconceptions surrounding generative AI. By addressing common concerns head-on, Evans makes a compelling case for an optimistic, forward-looking stance recognizing generative AI's potential to advance creativity, efficiency, and human potential.
What Else Is Happening❗
💰 Google to pay News Corp $5-6 million per year to develop AI content and products
While News Corp denies any specific AI licensing deal, the arrangement highlights a growing trend of tech giants licensing news archives for language model training. Similar deals were inked between OpenAI and the Financial Times, showing the importance of quality data. (Link)
💬 Yelp is launching an AI chatbot to help consumers connect with relevant businesses
The chatbot uses OpenAI's LLMs and Yelp's data to understand user problems and provide relevant professional suggestions. Yelp also introduces a "Project Ideas" section for personalized recommendations and checklists. Meanwhile, restaurants are getting a revamped guest management system for better staff utilization, real-time table status, and customer updates. (Link)
🍎 Apple is testing Safari 18 with new features: Intelligent Search and Web Eraser
Intelligent Search uses Apple's on-device AI to identify topics and key phrases for summarization. Web Eraser allows users to persistently remove unwanted content from web pages. Apple is also working on an AI Visual Lookup feature for 2025, allowing users to obtain product information from images. These AI enhancements will debut with iOS 18 and macOS 15 at WWDC in June. (Link)
⚖️ Eight US newspapers have sued Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement
These newspapers, owned by Alden Global Capital's MediaNews Group, allege that the companies misused their articles to train Copilot and ChatGPT without permission or payment. The New York Times, The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet have filed similar lawsuits. The newspapers claim that the AI systems reproduce their content verbatim and generate fake articles that damage their reputation. (Link)
🏥 A study of 16000 patients reveals that AI ECG alert systems significantly lower all-cause mortality
The AI was trained on over 450,000 ECG tests and survival data to predict a patient's risk of death. Physicians were alerted when a patient's ECG indicated they were in the top 5% risk category. The AI reduced overall deaths by 17% and cardiac deaths by 93% for high-risk patients. (Link)
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