OpenAI Robotics

PLUS: AGI will not make labor worthless

AI Daily

Jan 14, 2025

Howdy! Welcome! This is the “AI Daily” newsletter—your daily dose of AI news and resources.

In today’s edition:

OpenAI is building Robots again
US unveils new restrictions on exporting AI chips to counter China
Plus trending AI tools, posts, and resources

Ready, set, go…

OpenAI is Building Robots Again

OpenAI is returning to robotics, four years after shuttering its original program in 2020.

Here's what you need to know:

The company is looking to build a new team from scratch and is advertising for three key roles: an electronic sensing engineer to work on robot sensors, a robotics mechanics engineer to work on the nuts and bolts such as gearboxes and motors, and a technical project manager to oversee product development and operations.
Caitlin Kalinowski, former lead for Meta’s AR glasses, is leading the effort as OpenAI's hardware director, having joined in November.
The new team will focus on building advanced robots by combining hardware and software. Their goal is to create intelligent, adaptable robots that can learn and perform tasks effectively in real-world settings.
Their recent partnership with Figure AI could further accelerate these efforts by leveraging industrial-scale testing and insights.

Why it matters:

OpenAI's return to robotics signals a shift toward integrating AI models with physical systems, advancing their goal of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). This move suggests that OpenAI sees beyond the limitations of a software-only approach, potentially overcoming past challenges like data scarcity and unlocking new opportunities in combining generative AI with robotics.

US unveils new restrictions on exporting AI chips to counter China

With just one week remaining in office, President Joe Biden unveiled new export guidelines for U.S.-made AI chips. Announced by the Commerce Department on Monday, the rules classify countries into three groups based on their access to U.S. AI technology.

Here's what you need to know:

Tier 1: The first group, including 18 close allies like Japan, the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, will retain unrestricted access to U.S. AI technology.
Tier 2: The second group, covering 120 countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, will have a cap of 50,000 GPUs per country but may negotiate higher quotas under specific conditions.
Tier 3: The third group, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, will face stricter bans, with no access to advanced AI chips or most "closed" AI models.

Why it matters:

The new restrictions assert U.S. dominance in AI technology by limiting access to advanced chips. However, they could significantly impact companies like Nvidia, which depends on international markets for growth.

Nvidia has criticized the rules, calling them “unprecedented and misguided.” The company argues that the restrictions will harm innovation, economic growth, and U.S. leadership in AI while giving foreign competitors an advantage.

Side Updates

Google is testing Daily Listen

Google is testing "Daily Listen," a feature that creates a 5-minute personalized podcast based on your search and reading habits. Found in the Google app under the Search bar (for Search Labs users), it lets you play, pause, skip, and even like or dislike stories. It’s available in the U.S. on Android and iOS for users with Search Labs access.

AGI will not make labor worthless

Fears about human labor being replaced by machines go back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. These fears continue today with the rapid progress of AI in several previously secure human domains. Just like low-skilled workers thrived by specializing and trading, human-level AI will still need to collaborate with humans, relying on them for services it can’t provide.

NVIDIA unveils Sana for ultra HD image generation on laptops

NVIDIA’s new model, Sana, generates 4K images in seconds on laptops with just 16GB GPU memory. With 1.6 billion parameters, it’s smaller but faster than competitors like FLUX. The project is open-sourced and available on platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face.

Alibaba launches Qwen Chat for free AI model testing

Alibaba’s Qwen Chat is a free tool for experimenting with Qwen AI models. It includes models for conversation, image understanding, and reasoning. Future updates will add web search, voice interaction, and image generation capabilities.

OpenAI and Google buying unpublished videos for AI training

Tech giants OpenAI and Google are reportedly purchasing unused video content from creators for thousands of dollars to train their AI models. The companies are seeking exclusive videos, often intended for platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Prices range from $1 to $2 per minute, with higher rates for premium content like 4K or drone footage.

Adobe's new AI tool edits 10,000 images at once

Adobe’s new Firefly Bulk Create tool can edit up to 10,000 images in one click. It handles background changes, resizing, and preset dimensions for social platforms. Currently in private testing, it’s set to launch in early 2025.

Useful AI Links

Trending Tools

SuperHuman > AI-powered email for high-performing teams. (link)
Minduck Discovery > Search the world with your mind-map AI. (link)
Hugging Face SmolAgents > Create powerful AI agents with minimal effort. (link)
Betterwatch > The stock market watchlist with AI superpowers. Get AI-powered insights on why prices are moving in real time. (link)
Trellis > Swarm of agents that automate most of your manual PDF tasks. (link)
Anyvoice > Create hyper-realistic voice clones from just 3 seconds of audio. (link)
Astral > A marketing team in your browser. (link)

Resources / Guides

The best ChatGPT prompt I've ever created: I spent 2 months curating this prompt to write prompts. (link)
How companies are using AI agents internally. (link)
o1 isn’t a chat model and that’s the point. (link)
How Meta plans to crank the dopamine machine with infinite AI-generated content. (link)
Accenture dropped a wild prediction. AI agents, not humans, will be the main users of company software by 2030. (link)
Will AI steal your job? No. It will allegedly make 78 million more jobs than it steals by 2030. (link)
Two new resources for learning prompt engineering by Anthropic AI. (link)
AI founder's bitter lesson. (link)
What companies succeeding with AI do differently. (link)

AI Training

He Built a Startup using AI That Prints Money (Full Tutorial).

Daily Dose Of Contents

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta plans to automate the work of midlevel software engineers by 2025, with AI eventually taking over all coding for its apps.

This is the founder of Midjourney.

If you want to build for the future, read more Science-Fiction (Sci-fi) because Sci-fi authors live in the future.

A humanoid robot, Nadia, is remotely controlled for boxing training using a simple VR motion capture setup.

If a quantum computer will ever get closer to the 10 minutes mark to derive a private key from its public key, then the Bitcoin blockchain will be inherently broken.