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- AI's 'Manhattan Project' is coming
AI's 'Manhattan Project' is coming
PLUS: OpenAI trains AI to explain itself better to humans
Rowan Cheung
July 18, 2024
Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump's allies are reportedly drafting AI orders that could rewrite the rulebook on regulation and military AI in a big way.
As the 2024 election looms, is this potential seismic shift in AI policy a recipe for innovation, or disaster? Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
Trump allies draft AI order
Microsoft’s AI Designer app goes mobile
Craft perfect AI prompts with Claude
Learn how to leverage AI for marketing
OpenAI trains AI to explain itself better
5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
AI & POLITICS
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s allies are reportedly drafting an AI executive order aimed at boosting military AI development, rolling back current regulations, and more — signaling a potential shift in the country’s AI policy if the party returns to the White House.
The details:
The doc obtained by the Washington Post includes a ‘Make America First in AI’ section, calling for “Manhattan Projects” to advance military AI capabilities.
It also proposes creating ‘industry-led’ agencies to evaluate models and protect systems from foreign threats.
The plan would immediately review and eliminate ‘burdensome regulations’ on AI development, and repeal Pres. Biden’s AI executive order.
Senator J.D. Vance was recently named as Trump’s running mate, who has previously indicated support for open-source AI and hands-off regulation.
Why it matters: Given how quickly AI is accelerating, it’s not surprising that it has become a political issue — and the views of Trump’s camp are a stark contrast to the current administration's slower, safety-focused approach. The upcoming 2024 election could mark a pivotal moment for the future of AI regulation in the U.S.
TOGETHER WITH WORKOS
The Rundown: WorkOS empowers AI startups to conquer B2B SaaS with solutions used by industry leaders like Perplexity and Jasper — allowing companies to focus on innovation, not integration.
With WorkOS, you can:
Leverage easy-to-use APIs for deploying integrations in minutes, not months
Deploy features like SSO and SCIM with just a few lines of code
Take advantage of free User Management up to 1M MAUs
Enjoy self-serve onboarding for customers and high-quality documentation for engineers
Click here to get started with WorkOS today.
MICROSOFT
Image source: Microsoft
The Rundown: Microsoft just announced its AI-powered Designer is out of preview and now available worldwide, bringing advanced image generation, editing, and design capabilities to users on mobile and Windows platforms.
The details:
Designer is available in over 80 languages on the web, on Android and iOS, and via Windows platforms.
The app uses AI to generate images and designs from text prompts, with the ability to create outputs like custom stickers, emojis, avatars, and more.
The free version offers 15 daily ‘boosts’ for AI creations, with 100 for Copilot Pro subscribers ($20/mo).
New features include ‘prompt templates’ for fast creation, ‘Restyle’ for remixing existing images, and ‘Frame’ for creating personalized frames and collages.
Why it matters: Microsoft is making a big push into the AI design space, but it isn’t alone — with major players like Canva and Adobe already leaning heavily into the tech to make creativity more accessible to everyday users. With no shortage of options, the AI boom is set to completely reshape how people approach design.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: Using this prompting method, you can train Claude 3.5 Sonnet to create optimal prompts for AI video and image generation tools, increasing your creative output with an endless supply of ideas.
Step-by-step:
Visit Claude AI.
Start your prompt with: "I'm using [AI Tool Name]. I want you to craft a perfect prompt for [your desired output] by following the prompting guide below."
Copy and paste the prompting guide for your chosen AI video or image tool (here is the Runway Gen-3 Guide)
Ask Claude to generate an optimized prompt based on your specific needs.
THE RUNDOWN AI UNIVERSITY
The Rundown: Tomorrow, we’re hosting a live workshop to show you how to automate your marketing strategy and cut research time from days to minutes — by using AI tools like Zapier and ChatGPT.
Join us on Friday at 1 PM PST to:
Get an overview of market research and the best AI marketing tools available to date.
Learn how to use ChatGPT to speed up your market research from days to minutes.
Automate tedious marketing tasks like collecting survey data using Zapier automation.
If you’re a member of The Rundown University you can RSVP in the Upcoming Workshops space.
If you’re not a member yet, you can still join the workshop with a 14-day free trial to The Rundown AI University.
OPENAI
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: OpenAI just published new research detailing a method to make large language models produce more understandable and verifiable outputs, using a game played between two AIs to make generations more ‘legible’ to humans.
The details:
The technique uses a "Prover-Verifier Game" where a stronger AI model (the prover) tries to convince a weaker model (the verifier) that its answers are correct.
Through multiple rounds of the game, the prover learns to generate solutions that are not only correct, but also easier to verify.
While the method only boosted accuracy by about 50% compared to optimizing solely for correctness, its solutions were easily checkable by humans.
OpenAI tested the approach on grade-school math problems, with plans to expand to more complex domains in the future.
Why it matters: AI will likely surpass humans in almost all capabilities in the future — so ensuring outputs remain interpretable to lesser intelligence is crucial for safety and trust. This research offers a scalable way to potentially keep systems ‘honest’, but the performance trade-off shows the challenge in balancing capability with explainability.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
🤖Paillor - Integrate apps, docs, and wikis for on-the-spot bot support
🎨Microsoft Designer Mobile App - Smartphone designer tool powered by AI
🎒Otio - AI research and writing partner for students
🧪Parea - Test and evaluate AI systems and bring your LLM app to production
🦶Bigfoot AI - Discover new experiences in your city with AI
💻 Fractional AI - Software Engineer (Founding Team)
📈Writer - Senior Product Marketing Manager
🤝Siena - Partnerships Manager
💼Harvey - Enterprise Sales Manager
QUICK HITS
Free workshop: 1 Hour to AI Proficiency. Master prompting, AI use cases, and choosing the right LLM in this free, 1-hour workshop from Section. Enroll here — seats are limited.*
Menlo Ventures unveiled its $100M Anthology Fund in partnership with Anthropic, aiming to back startups leveraging Anthropic’s tech across areas like infrastructure, new applications, and consumer experiences.
Hugging Face introduced SmolLM, a family of high-performing small language models with 135M, 360M, and 1.7B parameters — which outperform competitors in their size categories across benchmarks.
Salesforce announced Einstein Service Agent, an AI-powered autonomous customer service chatbot that leverages LLMs and company data to understand context, take action on issues, and provide personalized responses.
Tinder launched ‘Photo Selector’, an AI-powered feature that analyzes users’ camera rolls to curate profile pictures and streamline the photo selection process on the dating app.
Spotify expanded its AI DJ feature with a new Spanish-language voice, introducing “Livi” as an option for select Latin American and Spanish markets.
*Sponsored listing
THAT’S A WRAP
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