Amazon Takes a Chatbot-Sized Leap!
Plus: Figma gets an AI feature update, Qwen 72-B dominates the Hugging Face leaderboard!
Hello Engineering Leaders and AI Enthusiasts!
Welcome to the 306th edition of The AI Edge newsletter. This edition features Amazon preparing to launch its AI chatbot.
And a huge shoutout to our amazing readers. We appreciate you😊
In today’s edition:
🏁 Amazon steps into the chatbot race
🎨 Figma’s new AI features stir competition with Adobe
🥇 Alibaba’s Qwen-72B tops the Hugging Face leaderboard
🧠 Knowledge Nugget: What Makes a Good Chatbot by
Let’s go!
Amazon steps into the chatbot race
Amazon is reportedly working on a new consumer-focused chatbot codenamed “Metis.” It is planned to be released somewhere around September. Here’s what we know about it:
The chatbot is powered by a new model, Olympus, and can be accessed via a web browser.
It uses a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technique to provide up-to-date information and automate tasks.
The model conversationally provides text and image-based outputs, suggesting follow-ups to queries. It also shares links to sources and supports image generation.
It uses an infrastructure similar to Amazon’s upcoming voice assistant, Remarkable Alexa.
Why does it matter?
The AI assistant market is already too crowded, making Metis’ release seem a bit too late. Its rivals, OpenAI and Google, have already launched their models in 2023 and will give tough competition to Amazon. If Amazon wishes to win this AI race, Metis must showcase exceptional capabilities.
Figma’s new AI features stir competition with Adobe
Figma announced a range of new features at the 2024 Config conference. Significant ones include a UI redesign, generative AI tools, new icons and toolbar, AI-enhanced asset search, and auto-generated texts in designs.
For instance, by typing a simple prompt into the textbox, users can create an entire app design mock-up for a restaurant. Figma will connect the design pages and even write suggested content!
Figma has also added a few designer-specific features to allow users to tweak designs in real-time. It features a developer mode with a “ready-for-dev” task list. The upgrade also boasts Figma slides, a Google slides-like tool for building and sharing presentations.
Why does it matter?
Figma’s AI tools will enable newer users on the platform to test out ideas easily. At the same time, tools like “ready-for-dev” will offer quick iterations to users who are more familiar with the platform.
With Adobe abandoning its plans to acquire Figma, the company’s recent upgrade might pose a challenge to the former.
Alibaba’s Qwen-72B tops the Hugging Face leaderboard
Hugging Face’s latest open large language model leaderboard ranks and evaluates open LLMs based on benchmarks like MMLU-pro and tests them on high-school and college-level problems.
The platform used 300 NVIDIA H100 GPUs to re-evaluate major open LLMs to obtain updated rankings. Chinese company Alibaba’s Qwen-72B dominated the leaderboard, becoming a top performer overall.
Not just that, the leaderboard was mainly dominated by Chinese companies, highlighting their headway into the open LLM space.
Why does it matter?
The open LLM leaderboard is essential for transparent and comprehensive LLM evaluation. It also proves that a model's size doesn’t guarantee its superior performance. As Chinese models deliver exceptional performance, will well-known models from the USA, like Meta’s Llama, be replaced in the coming years?
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Knowledge Nugget: What Makes a Good Chatbot
In this informative piece,
breaks down the three pillars of building effective chatbots: usefulness, context, and interactivity. He argues that:Utility is king - if your bot isn't solving real problems, it's better not to have one at all.
Context is crucial, with bots needing to understand user intent and maintain conversation history.
Interactivity comes into play through smart prompts and suggested actions, but it shouldn't feel overly scripted.
Why does it matter?
Ineffective AI integration could homogenize music and reduce artists' incomes. Focusing on transparency, artist collaboration, and using AI as a tool rather than a replacement will protect music's artistic integrity and sustain its economic viability.
What Else Is Happening❗
🏛️ Anthropic extends Claude's access to government
Anthropic is making Claude 3 Haiku and Claude 3 Sonnet available for government use through the AWS marketplace. This will improve citizen services, streamline document reviews, support data-based policymaking, and generate realistic training scenarios. (Link)
🌐 Opera announces new themes and features for One R2
Major features include AI-based image and voice generation, image understanding capabilities, floating windows, new themes, design elements, and split window tabs.
(Link)
🎙️ NBC to use AI voice for Olympics recaps!
The AI will offer daily, personalized coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics on the Peacock app in the voice of the famous sports commentator, AI Michael. According to NBC, the voice AI is trained on data from Michael’s appearances on the show. (Link)
📹 Caption’s new feature can auto-edit videos!
The feature adds custom graphics, zooms, music, sound effects, transitions, and motion backgrounds to an unedited video. Users can also use Caption’s AI avatars to create videos and fully edit them with the AI edit feature. (Link)
💡 Sonia’s ‘AI Therapist’ sparks debate
The personalized AI therapist can deal with depression, stress, anxiety, poor sleep, and more by analyzing what users say during therapy sessions. The release has sparked a debate around user data privacy, its susceptibility to bias, and the accuracy of its diagnosis. (Link)
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