Happy Sunday!

“AI Weekly Insights” here with its 19th edition! This week we're diving into Microsoft's strategic AI alliances, Windows 11's Copilot enhancements, a legal tangle involving Elon Musk and OpenAI, and a study comparing AI's creative prowess to human ingenuity.

Let's unpack these stories and understand their implications on the AI frontier.

The Insights

For the Week of 02/25/24 - 03/02/24 (P.S. Click the story’s title for more information 😊):

Microsoft Invests in Multi-Year Partnership With Mistral AI

• What’s New: Microsoft and Mistral AI have embarked on a multi-million investment journey, aiming to propel AI innovation forward.

• 3 Core Areas:

  • Supercomputer Infrastructure: Microsoft's Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure will bolster Mistral AI's models, ensuring high performance for AI training and inference.

  • Market Scaling: Mistral AI's advanced models will be integrated into the Models as a Service catalog, providing a platform for global distribution and promotion to Microsoft customers.

  • Research and Development: The partnership will foster the development of specialized models, with a focus on serving the European public sector's unique needs.

• Why It Matters: Located in Paris, Mistral AI stands at the forefront of the European Union's upcoming AI Act implications. The company also serves as an alternative to OpenAI’s GPT and ChatGPT with its newly released flagship model, Mistral Large, and chat assistant, Le Chat. Microsoft’s investment in both Mistral AI and OpenAI shows their willingness to heavily invest in the future of AI development, though their investment in OpenAI has come under the scrunity of the EU.

Microsoft Enhancing Windows 11 Copilot With New Skills And Plugins

• What's New: Upcoming upgrades to Copilot on Windows 11 are set to enhance user experience with a suite of new skills and plugins.

• Skills and Plugins: From activating battery saver mode to emptying the recycling bin, the new skills will streamline and add to computer interactions. The integration of third-party services like Shopify and Kayak through plugins will expand Copilot's utility beyond basic tasks.

• Why It Matters: These enhancements signal Microsoft's commitment to evolving Copilot into a versatile assistant, poised to redefine productivity on Windows devices. The focus on a contextual understanding of personal user data is key to unlocking the full potential of this technology. Stay tuned to Copilot’s evolution.

Elon Musk Is Suing OpenAI For Allegedly Breaching Nonprofit’s Mission

• What's New: Elon Musk has initiated legal action against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of deviating from their founding ethos.

• Breach of Contract: OpenAI was started as a nonprofit that wanted to work towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) with a point of being open-source and beneficial to all. With Microsoft investing heavily in the OpenAI last year, Musk states that GPT-4 was essentially released as a Microsoft product and the company is more focused on profits than its original mission.

• Why It Matters: This lawsuit throws a spotlight on the dynamics within AI development, especially against the backdrop of investments from giants like Microsoft. The scrutiny from the EU adds another layer of complexity to the narrative.

Gen AI Is More Creative Than Humans In Divergent Thinking Tasks

• What's New: A recent study challenges the traditional view of creativity, suggesting that AI may outperform humans in tasks requiring divergent thinking.

• Divergent Thinking Tasks: The study's comparison between 151 human participants and ChatGPT across various creative tasks revealed AI's superior potential in generating unique and numerous solutions:

  • Alternative Uses Task: This task required participants to think of as many uses as possible for a common object, like a brick or paper clip. The focus is on the quantity and uniqueness of the ideas.

  • Consequences Task: Participants were asked to consider the consequences of an imaginary scenario. This measured the ability to generate multiple outcomes from a hypothetical situation.

  • Divergent Associations Task: This task evaluated the ability to identify the least common associations between a given set of words. For example, if the words were "apple," "book," and "chair," a participant needed to think of concepts that were unrelated as possible to the given words.

• Why It Matters: According to the study, “the present findings suggest that the current state of AI language models demonstrate higher creative potential than human respondents.” The technology is still only reflecting patterns in the large amounts of data that it’s trained on. It's crucial to remember that true innovation still demands human-like insight and intentionality. This exploration into AI's creative prospects opens new discussions on the future interplay between human and artificial creativity.

Your curiosity is the engine driving our exploration of the AI landscape's continuous evolution. Spread the word among AI aficionados 🔄. Thoughts? Questions? Feel free to comment or reply. See you next Sunday!

Warm regards,

- Kharee