Airbnb Invests Heavily in AI, Acquires 12-Person Team for $200 Million

BMW Brilliance and ByteDance's Volcano Engine Partner to Drive AI-Powered Automotive Marketing

Recently, BMW Brilliance Lynk & Co Digital Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Lynk & Co) and ByteDance's Volcano Engine have partnered to innovate automotive marketing services with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. This collaboration leverages AI to achieve precise product matching and purchase recommendations, optimize content guidance, and enhance the user car-buying experience and dealer operational efficiency. BMW Group President and CEO in Greater China, Gao Xiang, stated that AI is key to BMW's creation of smarter and more considerate mobility solutions, and is being rapidly integrated into R&D, production, supply chain, product, service, and operations.

Gartner Report: Task-Specific AI to Outpace General-Purpose AI by 2027

A new Gartner report predicts that by 2027, enterprises will utilize task-specific AI models three times more frequently than general-purpose large language models. While acknowledging the strong language processing capabilities of general-purpose models, the report highlights their decreased accuracy in tasks requiring deep understanding of specific business domains. Consequently, businesses are increasingly focusing on customized AI models to meet their unique needs. Image note: Image generated by AI, image licensing provided by Midjourney.

Korean Startup RLWRLD Secures $14.8 Million to Develop Robotic Foundation Models

As robotics technology advances, industries are increasingly adopting robots to automate various strenuous tasks. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), over 540,000 new industrial robots were installed globally in 2023, bringing the total number of active industrial robots to over 4 million. While traditional industrial robots excel at repetitive tasks, they still face challenges in performing delicate tasks, handling fragile materials, and adapting to changing conditions. For example, robots in restaurant kitchens may cause more disruption than assistance.

Access to Future AI Models in the OpenAI API Will Implement Authentication to Ensure Secure AI Model Usage

Concerns Rise as AI Models Conceal Their Reasoning Processes: Study Finds Their 'Thinking' Often Unreliable

In education, we're taught to "show your work." Now, advanced AI models claim to do just that. However, new research reveals that these models sometimes obfuscate their true reasoning processes, fabricating elaborate explanations instead. A recent study from Anthropic's research team, investigating simulated reasoning (SR) models including their own Claude models and DeepSeek's R1, found these models often misrepresent their 'thinking' when

Massive Government Investment: New $82 Billion AI Fund to Boost Early-Stage Projects

China recently announced a 60 billion RMB (approximately $82 billion USD) national fund dedicated to investing in early-stage artificial intelligence (AI) projects. This move demonstrates Beijing's commitment to fostering the AI industry and aims to further elevate China's position in the global technology competition through government-led investment. According to Zhang Jianhua, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, speaking at a conference in Shenzhen, the "National AI Investment Fund" was established in January this year under the joint guidance of industrial and financial departments. The fund's...

Nate Founder, AI Shopping App CEO, Accused of Fraud: Claimed AI Technology Was Manual

According to a Department of Justice press release on Wednesday, Albert Saniger, founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI-powered shopping app claiming to offer a universal checkout experience, has been charged with defrauding investors. Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million in funding from firms including Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, including a $38 million Series A round led by Renegade Partners in 2021. The company claimed...

Google Releases 69-Page White Paper: Optimizing AI Models Through Prompt Engineering

Google Plans to Combine Gemini and Veo AI Models to Advance Smart Assistants

In a recent podcast, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, stated that Google plans to eventually integrate its Gemini AI model with the video generation model Veo to enhance Gemini's understanding of the physical world. He noted that Gemini was designed from the outset to be multimodal, aiming for a "universal digital assistant" that can genuinely help users in the real world. Hassabis mentioned...

Soaring Costs of Benchmarking Inference AI Models: Assessing One Can Cost Nearly $3000

According to Artificial Analysis, a third-party AI testing agency, evaluating OpenAI's o1 inference model across seven popular benchmarks costs $2,767.05, while its non-inference model GPT-4o costs only $108.85. This significant disparity sparks discussion regarding the sustainability and transparency of AI evaluation. Inference models, AI systems capable of step-by-step reasoning to solve problems, while excelling in specific domains, incur significantly higher benchmarking costs than traditional models. Arti...