Here’s a rundown of the AI-powered productivity features announced this week by Google for Workspace and Microsoft for Office 365.
Microsoft wasn’t a name you’d have come to associate with innovation. But the company’s newfound love for AI and its pouring billions into the tech is changing that. The company’s search engine Bing recently shot into the limelight after being limited to a single-digit market share for over a decade, thanks to the new AI chatbot integration.
Microsoft has undoubtedly won the AI-boosted search engine race, pulling ahead of Google at it. And now the focus has shifted toward integrating AI into office productivity apps.
Earlier this week, Google announced a suite of upcoming generative AI features for its various Workspace apps, including Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Only a couple of days later, Microsoft announced 365 Copilot – similar generative AI capabilities for its own office productivity apps. Neither of the two additions has been rolled out to the general public as of yet, but enough information has been provided nevertheless to differentiate between the two. Read More
Daily Archives: March 17, 2023
The Future of Work With AI
Lightning AI CEO slams OpenAI’s GPT-4 paper as ‘masquerading as research’
Shortly after OpenAI’s surprise release of its long-awaited GPT-4 model yesterday, there was a raft of online criticism about what accompanied the announcement: a 98-page technical report about the “development of GPT-4.”
Many said the report was notable mostly for what it did not include. In a section called Scope and Limitations of this Technical Report, it says: “Given both the competitive landscape and the safety implications of large-scale models like GPT-4, this report contains no further details about the architecture (including model size), hardware, training compute, dataset construction, training method, or similar.”
“I think we can call it shut on ‘Open’ AI: the 98 page paper introducing GPT-4 proudly declares that they’re disclosing *nothing* about the contents of their training set,” tweeted Ben Schmidt, VP of information design at Nomic AI. Read More
OpenAI’s GPT-4 Just Smoked Basically Every Test and Exam Anyone’s Ever Taken
OpenAI’s GPT-4 is officially here — and the numbers speak for themselves.
Hot on the heels of its announcement, OpenAI has released a bunch of stats about its even-more-powerful new large language model — and reader, we’re both spooked and skeptical in equal measures.
According to a new white paper, the algorithm got incredibly good scores on a number of exams including the Bar, the LSATs, the SAT’s Reading and Math tests, and the GRE. Read More
The semiautomated social network is coming
It makes sense that LinkedIn would be the first major social network to push AI-generated content on its users. The Microsoft-owned company is weird. It’s corporate. It’s full of workfluencer posts and engagement bait that ranges in tone from management consultant bland to cheerfully psychotic. Happily, this is the same emotional spectrum on which AI tends to operate.
LinkedIn isn’t populating its feed with AI chatbots just yet, but last week began sharing “AI-powered conversation starters” with the express purpose of provoking discussion among users. These posts are “developed” with the help of LinkedIn’s editorial team and matched with human experts who can then offer their thoughts on topics like “how to create a consistent brand voice on social media” and “how to monitor the online reach of your writing.” So far, so anodyne — like the contents of an r/askmckinsey subreddit.
But this project is a milestone nevertheless, and may herald the start of a wider revolution for the web. It’s the first time — I know of — that a major social media platform has directly served users AI-generated content to keep them engaged. And in a time of social media stagnation, from Twitter’s manifold struggles to Meta’s desperate-looking pitch for paid subscriptions, it could point to the industry’s future: to the semiautomated social network. Read More
A new era for AI and Google Workspace
For nearly 25 years, Google has built helpful products that people use every day — from Search and Maps, to Gmail and Docs in Google Workspace. AI has been transformational in building products that have earned a valued place in people’s lives. Across our productivity suite, advances in AI are already helping 3 billion users save more time with Smart Compose and Smart Reply, generate summaries for Docs, look more professional in meetings, and stay safe against malware and phishing attacks.
We’re now making it possible for Workspace users to harness the power of generative AI to create, connect, and collaborate like never before. To start, we’re introducing a first set of AI-powered writing features in Docs and Gmail to trusted testers. Read More
China’s answer to ChatGPT? Baidu shares tumble as Ernie Bot disappoints
China’s Baidu unveiled its much-awaited artificial intelligence-powered chatbot known as Ernie Bot on Thursday, but disappointed investors with its use of pre-recorded videos and the lack of a public launch, sending its shares tumbling.
The just over an hour-long presentation, which came two days after Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google unveiled a flurry of AI tools for its email, collaboration and cloud software, gave the world a glimpse of what could be China’s strongest rival to U.S. research lab OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Read More
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