AI helps Walmart 100x productivity

PLUS: How to turn Siri into Llama 3.1

Author

Rowan Cheung
August 16, 2024

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Walmart just reported that generative AI has helped the company update 850 million product catalog entries, 100x faster than humans.

As the retail giant plans to integrate AI across all operations, are we witnessing the future, or the beginning of widespread job displacement? Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

  • AI makes Walmart 100x more productive

  • SoftBank’s AI chip faces setback

  • Create a Siri-like voice AI with Llama 3.1

  • Hermes 3 is the newest open-source model

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

WALMART

Image source: Walmart

The Rundown: Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon just reported that the company is using generative AI to increase its productivity, updating 850 million product catalog entries 100 times faster than human-led methods.

The details:

  • The report came during the company’s Q2 financial earnings call, where McMillon also announced AI improvements to customer search and seller support.

  • Customers can now use AI-powered search and a new shopping assistant on Walmart’s app and website — it even provides advice for questions like “Which TV is best for watching sports?”.

  • Walmart is also testing a completely new AI-driven experience for U.S. based marketplace sellers, but the details are not yet available.

  • McMillon said the company plans to continue experimenting with AI globally across all parts of its business.

Why it matters: Another multibillion dollar company is using AI to increase productivity, but most notably, Walmart is exploring the tech in all areas of its business ops. Whether people should be excited about the endless possibilities ahead or concerned about the relevance of their jobs is a question that’s not going away any time soon.

TOGETHER WITH ANYSCALE

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  • Keynotes from Marc Andreessen, Mira Murati (OpenAI), and more

  • Real-world AI scaling strategies from Netflix, Instacart, and others

  • Expert-led workshops to master distributed AI computing

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SOFTBANK

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: SoftBank’s ambitious Project Izanagi initiative, aimed at developing AI processors to rival Nvidia, is reportedly facing a major setback after Intel failed to meet volume and speed requirements.

The details:

  • SoftBank had been working with Intel to develop AI processors for Project Izanagi because it lacks in-house chip design expertise, but Intel failed to meet SoftBank’s demands.

  • In an effort to keep Project Izanagi on track, SoftBank is considering a new partnership with TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker.

  • TSMC has its own issues, however, failing to meet its current chipmaking demands, which has stalled the negotiations.

  • Despite the complications, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son remains committed to the company’s ambitious plan and is seeking investments from Saudi Arabia, UAE, and major tech companies.

Why it matters: Nvidia is currently dominating the AI chip space, which propelled the company to its current $3 trillion dollar market capitalization. But with recent delays of Nvidia’s next-gen Blackwell AI chip, it could be time for competitors to strike.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: This new custom iPhone shortcut trick lets you create a lightning-fast, Siri-like voice assistant powered by Meta’s Llama 3.1 and Groq's API.

Step-by-step:

  1. Generate an API key in Groq’s website.

  2. Create a new shortcut in the iPhone Shortcuts app.

  3. Add actions to capture voice input, store your API key, and set the Groq API endpoint for Llama 3.1.

  4. Call the Llama 3.1 API using a "Get Contents of URL" action with the appropriate headers and request body.

  5. Extract the generated response.

Note: Members at The Rundown AI University can download this shortcut template directly into their phones.

PRESENTED BY ZAPIER

The Rundown: Give your computer the gift of gab with ZAP’s loudest flavor, Chatty Cherry Blast — an AI-powered energy drink that helps companies take their customer support to the next level.

With Chatty Cherry Blast, you can:

  • Build low-cost, automated support channels

  • Connect your platform to over 7,000+ apps

  • Handle customer queries around the clock

  • Enjoy seamless, efficient support operations

NOUS RESEARCH

Image source: Nous Research

The Rundown: Nous Research just released Hermes 3, a new open-source model with significant improvements in roleplaying, agentic tasks, function calling, multi-turn chats, and long context coherence.

The details:

  • Hermes 3 is available in three sizes (8B, 70B, and 405B) with the 405B parameter model achieving state-of-the-art performance relative to other open models.

  • The model is instruct tuned, or trained, to faithfully respond to user requests and closely follow provided system prompts, unlike base or foundation models.

  • It achieves similar or better performance to Meta’s Llama-3.1 405B in judgement, reward modeling, interpretable problem-solving, code generation, and tool use.

  • Hermes 3 is available now for free via Lambda Chat or in the Nous Research Discord server.

Why it matters: Meta has been the leader in open-source AI for awhile, but companies like Nous Research and Mistral are catching up with their latest Hermes 3 and Large 2 models. And the more free, customizable and state-of-the-art AIs available to the public, the more transparency the world has.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

  • 📈 minusx - AI data scientist integrated in your favorite analytics tools

  • 🎥 Neural Frame - Create audio reactive AI music videos

  • 📸 a1 Art - Instantly turn photos into GIFs and videos

  • 🐘 Tusk - Complete UI ticket and pull requests with AI

  • ✨ Sparkle - Automatically clean up and organize your files with AI

  • 🤖 Hedra Labs - Create AI avatars with lifelike animations

QUICK HITS

Elon Musk revealed that xAI is developing an in-house image generation system to replace the current Flux model in Grok 2 but it’s currently months away from release.

Google recently expanded its AI-generated search summaries to six new countries and added hyperlinks and quality improvements after initial issues.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau highlighted risks of AI in finance, saying existing laws apply and innovation requires consistent regulatory treatment.

Grammarly is reportedly rolling out a new AI content detector tool that can detect whether AI, a human, or a combination of the two created content.

CodeRabbit raised $16 million to automate code reviews using AI, which claims to provide actionable, human-like feedback to developers.

Apptronik, an automation company that makes humanoid robots, recently reported that the company is preparing for a commercial launch by the end of 2025.

THAT’S A WRAP

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