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- Google's AI secrets stolen
Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
A former Google engineer was just busted after stealing hundreds of AI secrets — while also discreetly operating for TWO Chinese AI startups.
The US-China AI rivalry has been simmering for years, but a shocking new case of espionage just brought the conflict right to Silicon Valley's doorstep. Let’s investigate…
In today’s AI rundown:
Google engineer steals AI secrets
Inflection upgrade nears GPT-4
Generate an AI song with just a prompt
Researchers create self-spreading AI malware
6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Image source: LinkedIn screenshot
The Rundown: Federal prosecutors just charged an ex-Google engineer with stealing over 500 confidential files related to AI infrastructure while secretly working for two Chinese AI startups.
The details:
Linwei Ding worked on Google’s AI supercomputing systems and reportedly uploaded 2-years worth of data to his personal Google Cloud account.
He was secretly hired as CTO of a Beijing AI startup and founded his own Shanghai-based AI firm, hiding it all from Google.
Ding had a Google colleague scan his badge at Google’s U.S. office to make it look like he was there when he was actually in China.
Google grew suspicious and alerted the FBI, with Ding now facing up to 10 years in prison.
Why it matters: An insider heist of Google’s sensitive AI assets is an alarming wake-up call about China’s relentless campaign to chase down the U.S. AI tech advantage. This case is also, unfortunately, just a preview of the high-stakes espionage ahead in the battle for AI supremacy.
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INFLECTION AI
Image source: Inflection
The Rundown: Inflection just launched Inflection-2.5, a major upgrade to the model powering its Pi personal AI assistant — now capable of delivering near GPT-4 level performance.
The details:
Inflection-2.5 achieves 94% of GPT-4's performance across tasks, despite using just 40% of the training compute.
The upgrade displays major increases from Inflection-1 across the board, particularly in coding and mathematics.
Inflection noted major gains in user engagement, boasting 6M monthly users and an average chat length of 33 minutes.
The chatbot also now incorporates real-time web search.
Why it matters: While Inflection’s unique value prop has always been the empathetic, personal nature of its chatbot — it now also gains capabilities to rival the top performers. With Claude 3’s release on Monday, and now Inflection 2.5, that marks two near GPT-4 models just this week!
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use AI to create a song for free in seconds by just describing it using Suno AI.
Step-by-step:
Visit Suno AI and click the button “Make a Song” in the top right corner.
Press “Create,” and sign up. You get 50 free credits (or 10 songs) that renew daily.
Describe your desired song where it says: “Song Description” and click “Create”. You can also toggle “Custom Mode” for other settings, such as lyrics or music style.
Wait a few seconds and enjoy your new AI-generated song!
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Cornell and Israel IT
The Rundown: Cybersecurity researchers just developed the first known computer ‘worm’ designed to target and spread through interconnected AI ecosystems.
The details:
Morris II uses adversarial prompts to trick AI models into replicating malicious inputs/actions and spreading them to other AI agents.
Researchers successfully used the worm in experiments to steal sensitive data and send spam via AI email assistants.
The malware worked against OpenAI, Google, and open-source AI models in experiments.
It can also embed malicious prompts inside images to infect AI systems.
Why it matters: The integration of AI across industries has dramatically expanded the attack surface for malware like the worm in this study. With centralized AI models serving many downstream products, a single compromise could have severe ripple effects across countless systems.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
📸 Lummi- The ultimate source for AI-generated stock photos
📊 Reporfy- Create & share insightful AI-powered reports
🤖 Aili- Web page summarization and collection
🎧 Read This AI- Transform text into high-quality audio effortlessly
🎥 Vmaker Video Editor- Turn raw video into publish-ready content
🔍 Content & SEO GPT- Assess website usefulness, relevance, and quality
⏰ Anthropic - Crisis, Safety and Resiliency Lead
🤖 Shield AI - Software Engineer, Embedded Avionics
💻 C3 AI - Lead Software Engineer, Full Stack
🤗 Hugging Face- Embodied Robotics Engineer
QUICK HITS
Midjourney is reportedly banning all Stability AI employees indefinitely from the platform after an outage due to bot activity linked to paid accounts from the competitor trying to scrape data.
Salesforce announced new AI tools to help healthcare workers automate administrative tasks, aiming to reduce physician burnout.
A former Tesla and Optimus researcher announced that he has joined Hugging Face, building a team to create an open-source robotics project.
HP introduced a new portfolio of AI PCs alongside an AI Creation Center and a Nvidia co-engineered AI workstation to speed data processing.
Midjourney also announced the launch of v6 turbo, allowing users to create images at 3.5x the speed.
Redfin launched a new AI chatbot that answers purchase questions about for-sale homes, providing details on amenities, market conditions, and more.
Adobe Express released a new mobile app in beta for Android and iOS, featuring Adobe Firefly generative AI models and enhanced mobile editing capabilities.
THAT’S A WRAP
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