🤝 AidfulAI Newsletter #2: Save Memorable Podcast Moments With a Fingertip
Dear curious minds,
Welcome to the ultimate newsletter for those interested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Personal Knowledge Management (PKM).
Major AI News
🧑🤖 Meet Pi: Your New Personal Intelligence Assistant Designed to Be Helpful, Friendly, and Fun
Inflection AI, a Silicon Valley startup founded by Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Alphabets DeepMind, and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, has recently secured funding of $225 million. Their vision is to develop AI software that will make it easier for humans to communicate with computers.
The company has launched Pi, a chatbot that aims to provide users with a personalized, conversational experience. Pi is designed to help users talk through problems or questions, providing an active listener who remembers prior dialogue to get to know its user over time. While Pi can provide fact-based answers, it is differentiated from other chatbots as it is intended to be more personal. Inflection's goal is to develop Pi into a personal assistant that helps users with tasks such as scheduling, meeting preparation, and learning new skills. Pi is available for free, with no restrictions on usage, and can be accessed on heypi.com.
I believe that in the future, everyone will have its personal AI assistance. However, the current version of Pi does not have access to any personal information except what you provide via chat and is therefore of limited use. However, it is a nice starting point and with activated voice output, it already feels way more natural than a conversation with ChatGPT. But to be honest, I would prefer a local model for my personal AI assistant.
Privacy-Friendly AI
⚖🦙 StableVicuna: An open-source ChatGPT competitor
Following the release of the StableLM base model last week, Stability AI has now released StableVicuna, an open-source RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) model. However, by building upon previous research-only releases like LLaMA and Alpaca also StableVicuna is not allowed to be used commercially.
Stabilit AI claims that StableVicuna is the first large-scale open-source chatbot trained via reinforced learning from human feedback (RLHF). However, the in the first issue of this newsletter covered OpenAssistant as well as Dolly 2.0 from Databricks are both open-source models which were trained with the RLHF approach.
Nevertheless, it is good to see that there is a lot of momentum in releasing open-source Large Language Models (LLMs).
More, including the announcement of the upcoming chat interface, in the release article from Stability AI.
🖼📜 DeepFloyd IF: The New AI Art Model that Generates Images with Realistic Text
Stability AI has announced the release of DeepFloyd IF, a text-to-image AI that generates coherent and clear text alongside objects in the generated images. Until now, text inside AI-generated images was in most cases not well done.
The model is available under an open-source research license, and it is intended to add a fully open release which also allows commercial usage in the future. DeepFloyd IF was trained on a custom high-quality dataset containing one billion image-text pairs. The model and code are available on GitHub, and a HuggingFace demo is available for testing. More, including other example images, in the official release article from Stability AI.
PKM and AI
📝🤖 Revolutionary Note-Taking App Tana Introduces AI Integration and iOS Capture App
Tana is an innovative note-taking app that seamlessly blends the features of an outliner (organize your notes in indented bullet points, which you most likely know from Microsoft PowerPoint) with databases. You can start to use Tana in its current beta and get off the waitlist by introducing yourself in Tana's Slack community. One of the most talked-about features in Tana is the introduction of supertags. These tags add structure and context to your notes, making them more efficient and easy to navigate.
The new release integrates cutting-edge AI features powered by the OpenAI API. Unlike chatbots like ChatGPT, Tana's AI integration allows users to create and modify content directly in their workspace. Current core capabilities include audio transcription (with Whisper), image creation (with DALL-E) and text generation (with GPT). To get started or for a first glimpse of the possibilities, you can watch the introduction video from Ev.
Furthermore, Tana has recently expanded its offerings with the release of an iOS app, designed for quick and easy data capture. Users can effortlessly input text, transcribe voice memos, and share links, images, and videos, ensuring that no thought gets lost. Learn more about Tana's mobile app in this insightful blog article by Ed (not Ev as above 😅).
However, it's worth noting that Tana relies on cloud-based storage for notes, which may not be suitable for users with strict privacy requirements. Companies may have policies against the usage of cloud storage, and individuals should carefully consider if it's the right choice for their personal data.
🎧📝 Effortlessly Save Memorable Podcast Moments with Snipd
Podcasts have revolutionized how we consume information by offering an incredible level of flexibility and convenience, allowing us to multitask while listening. However, most podcast enthusiasts face difficulties by making notes from podcasts since our hands are often occupied with other tasks.
Luckily, Snipd offers an innovative solution available on the mobile platforms Android and iOS, making it easier for you to keep track of important information discovered while listening to a podcast. With just one tap in the app, you can create a bookmark, making it easier to revisit those passages later on. And better yet, this functionality can be mapped to the back button on your headphones and car entertainment system, making it more accessible on the go. The latest version supports Android Auto in addition to Apple CarPlay, which is even more convenient to use while driving.
To make the user experience even better, the passages you bookmark are transcribed in a really high-quality by an AI called Whisper, which is a software released as open-source from OpenAI, the company known for ChatGPT. Moreover, the marked passages are summarized and represented by key insights, which might help you to recap quickly why you saved passages. You can export your highlights in various formats to work with them in your note-making app. All of the above makes Snipd the perfect app to extract value from the podcasts you listen to.
Not long ago, Snipd has created a community feature that allows you to share your podcast highlights with others and explore insights captured by other users. If you want to take your podcast listening to the next level, consider trying out Snipd and on top you might have a look at my highlights and insights shared in the Snipd community.
Podcasts
📈🤖 How AI Marketing Strategies Can Skyrocket Companies in 2023
Episode #114 of the Marketing Against The Grain podcast shares practical tips on how to leverage AI to enhance companies. The episode delves into different approaches to integrating AI into an existing marketing strategy.
The hosts highlight Zillow, a real estate marketplace company that has invested heavily in AI. They focus on how they can provide value with AI by transforming internal business processes (inside-out) and reinvent the customer experience (outside-in).
Additionally, the episode touches on how companies can host their version of ChatGPT on their intranet, leveraging an OpenAI API key to control the conversations and data.
Overall, the episode provides an informative and engaging introduction to AI and its applications in companies.
🤖🐕 Giving AI a Body: An Interview with the CEO of Robotics Company Boston Dynamics
In episode #374 of the Lex Fridman podcast, the CEO of Boston Dynamics, Robert Playter, had an insightful conversation with Lex about the exciting developments in robotics.
Playter talked about a variety of topics regarding Boston Dynamics' innovative robots, including their dog-like robot, Spot, and their human-like robot, Atlas. From the interview, you learn how Boston Dynamics' robots have evolved over time, becoming more advanced to perform complex tasks such as package delivery, inspection, monitoring, and even entertainment.
The conversation also delved into the future of robotics, exploring the potential collaborations between robots and humans in various industries and the ethical considerations of integrating robots into our daily lives. Throughout the podcast, Playter's passion for robotics shines through as he shares his vision of a world where humans and robots work collaboratively to solve complex problems and improve our quality of life.