OpenAI co-founder John Schu=
lman says he will leave and join rival Anthropic (2 minute read)
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman recentl=
y announced that he will leave OpenAI to join Anthropic to deepen his focus=
on AI alignment. The move comes less than three months after OpenAI disban=
ded a superalignment team that focused on ensuring that AI systems can be c=
ontrolled. Schulman has worked at OpenAI since receiving a Ph.D. from the U=
niversity of California, Berkeley in 2016. Greg Brockman, another co-founde=
r of OpenAI and its president, announced on Monday that he was taking a sab=
batical for the rest of the year.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
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Figure redesigns its humano=
id robot from the ground up for slick new F.02 (5 minute read)
Figure's second-generation humanoid rob=
ot is aimed at production lines in commercial settings. Its engineers took =
a ground-up hardware and software redesign approach to developing the robot=
that included upgrades to the AI systems, computer vision, battery pack, e=
lectronics, sensors, and actuators. The robot now has microphones and speak=
ers that allow it to have one-on-one conversations with humans. A video tra=
iler from Figure showing off the robot is available.
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China begins launching a me=
gaconstellation, and it sounds a lot like Starlink (6 minute read)
There are two serious efforts underway =
in China to develop a rival to SpaceX's Starlink project. The first batch o=
f 18 satellites for one of those projects launched into low-Earth orbit on =
Tuesday on a Long March 4A rocket. Besides providing civilians with interne=
t, the network could be used for military applications and as a diplomatic =
tool. The full deployment of these networks will require a significant incr=
ease in China's launch capacity.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
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Predictions for the future =
of software engineering (2 minute read)
Software engineering will likely look r=
adically different in a few years. The introduction of coding agents that c=
omplete tasks end-to-end will change how engineers work, making them more l=
ike engineering managers who spend more time on the higher level parts of c=
oding. This will have many effects, like creating more software, more engin=
eers, and productivity gains for companies. Marketing may even start being =
directed to AI agents as companies try to get them to choose their products=
over a rival's.
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OpenAI: Introducing Structu=
red Outputs in the API (5 minute read)
OpenAI has introduced two new ways to g=
uarantee valid inputs. The first is a new 'strict' option for function defi=
nitions and the second is a new feature option for the 'response_format' fi=
eld that lets users pass a JSON schema to specify a required output. OpenAI=
's models will now return a 'refusal' message if a model denies a request. =
The new gpt-4o-2024-08-06 model is 50% cheaper on inputs and 33% on outputs=
compared to gpt-4o-2024-05-13. It also supports up to 16,384 tokens, up fr=
om 4,096.
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Return-to-office mandates h=
urt employee retention, productivity, survey says (5 minute read)
Employee retention improves when employ=
ees have a say in where they work. A recent survey on employee satisfaction=
found that those who are allowed to choose between in-person, remote, or h=
ybrid work are three times more likely to want to stay at their company. It=
also found that workers facing return-to-office mandates are 14 times less=
likely to 'quit and stay'. Several other studies have found similar result=
s.
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Fair Source (GitHub Repo)
Fair Source aims to legitimize the prac=
tice of companies meaningfully sharing the code for their core software pro=
ducts while retaining control of their roadmaps and business models - it is=
not to be confused with Free and Open Source Software.
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Thanks for reading,
Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders
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