Our 204th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 03/21/2025
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Join our Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP
In this episode:
Baidu launched two new multimodal models, Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1, boasting competitive pricing and capabilities compared to Western counterparts like GPT-4.5 and DeepSeek R1.
OpenAI introduced new audio models, including impressive speech-to-text and text-to-speech systems, and added O1 Pro to their developer API at high costs, reflecting efforts for more profitability.
Nvidia and Apple announced significant hardware advancements, including Nvidia's future GPU plans and Apple's new Mac Studio offering that can run DeepSeek R1.
DeepSeek employees are facing travel restrictions, suggesting China is treating its AI development with increased secrecy and urgency, emphasizing a wartime footing in AI competition.
Timestamps + Links:
(00:00:00) Intro / Banter
(00:01:36) News Preview
Tools & Apps
(00:02:50) Baidu launches two new versions of its AI model Ernie
(00:10:46) OpenAI Unveils New Audio Models to Make AI Agents Sound More Human Than Ever
(00:16:41) OpenAI’s o1-pro is the company’s most expensive AI model yet
(00:20:53) Google brings a ‘canvas’ feature to Gemini, plus Audio Overview
(00:23:55) xAI launches an API for generating images
Applications & Business
(00:26:28) Nvidia announces Rubin GPUs in 2026, Rubin Ultra in 2027, Feynman also added to roadmap
(00:40:07) Intel reaches 'exciting milestone' for 18A 1.8nm-class wafers with first run at Arizona fab
(00:42:45) Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, acquires a generative AI video startup
(00:44:44) Tencent Reportedly Makes Massive NVIDIA H20 Chip Purchase for WeChat’s DeepSeek Integration
Projects & Open Source
(00:46:32) Anthropic’s Not-So-Secret Weapon That’s Giving Agents a Boost
(00:50:50) Mistral AI drops new open-source model that outperforms GPT-4o Mini with fraction of parameters
Research & Advancements
(00:55:58) Sample, Scrutinize and Scale: Effective Inference-Time Search by Scaling Verification
(01:07:44) Block Diffusion: Interpolating Between Autoregressive and Diffusion Language Models
(01:18:46) Transformers without Normalization
(01:19:52) Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks
Policy & Safety
(01:26:45) Announcing Zochi, an Intology Project
(01:32:46) DeepSeek, a National Treasure in China, is Now Being Closely Guarded
(01:37:02) Claude Sonnet 3.7 (often) knows when it’s in alignment evaluations
Synthetic Media & Art