Our 204th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!

Recorded on 03/21/2025

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.

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In this episode:

• Baidu launched two new multimodal models, Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1, boasting competitive pricing and capabilities compared to Western counterparts like GPT-4.5 and DeepSeek R1.


• OpenAI introduced new audio models, including impressive speech-to-text and text-to-speech systems, and added O1 Pro to their developer API at high costs, reflecting efforts for more profitability.


• Nvidia and Apple announced significant hardware advancements, including Nvidia's future GPU plans and Apple's new Mac Studio offering that can run DeepSeek R1.


• DeepSeek employees are facing travel restrictions, suggesting China is treating its AI development with increased secrecy and urgency, emphasizing a wartime footing in AI competition.

Timestamps + Links:

• (00:00:00 ) Intro / Banter


• (00:01:36 ) News Preview


• Tools & Apps

• 
  
  
  
  • (00:02:50 ) Baidu launches two new versions of its AI model Ernie
  
  
  • (00:10:46 ) OpenAI Unveils New Audio Models to Make AI Agents Sound More Human Than Ever
  
  
  • (00:16:41 ) OpenAI’s o1-pro is the company’s most expensive AI model yet
  
  
  • (00:20:53 ) Google brings a ‘canvas’ feature to Gemini, plus Audio Overview
  
  
  • (00:22:18 ) Anthropic adds web search to its Claude chatbot
  
  
  • (00:23:55 ) xAI launches an API for generating images
  
  
  
  

• Applications & Business

• 
  
  
  
  • (00:26:28 ) Nvidia announces Rubin GPUs in 2026, Rubin Ultra in 2027, Feynman also added to roadmap
  
  
  • (00:36:25 ) M3 Ultra Runs DeepSeek R1 With 671 Billion Parameters Using 448GB Of Unified Memory, Delivering High Bandwidth Performance At Under 200W Power Consumption, With No Need For A Multi-GPU Setup
  
  
  • (00:40:07 ) Intel reaches 'exciting milestone' for 18A 1.8nm-class wafers with first run at Arizona fab
  
  
  • (00:42:45 ) Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, acquires a generative AI video startup
  
  
  • (00:44:44 ) Tencent Reportedly Makes Massive NVIDIA H20 Chip Purchase for WeChat’s DeepSeek Integration
  
  
  
  

• Projects & Open Source

• 
  
  
  
  • (00:46:32 ) Anthropic’s Not-So-Secret Weapon That’s Giving Agents a Boost
  
  
  • (00:50:50 ) Mistral AI drops new open-source model that outperforms GPT-4o Mini with fraction of parameters
  
  
  • (00:53:30 ) EXAONE Deep: Reasoning Enhanced Language Models
  
  
  
  

• Research & Advancements

• 
  
  
  
  • (00:55:58 ) Sample, Scrutinize and Scale: Effective Inference-Time Search by Scaling Verification
  
  
  • (01:07:44 ) Block Diffusion: Interpolating Between Autoregressive and Diffusion Language Models
  
  
  • (01:12:27 ) Communication-Efficient Language Model Training Scales Reliably and Robustly: Scaling Laws for DiLoCo
  
  
  • (01:18:46 ) Transformers without Normalization
  
  
  • (01:19:52 ) Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks
  
  
  • (01:26:12 ) HCAST: Human-Calibrated Autonomy Software Tasks
  
  
  
  

• Policy & Safety

• 
  
  
  
  • (01:26:45 ) Announcing Zochi, an Intology Project
  
  
  • (01:32:46 ) DeepSeek, a National Treasure in China, is Now Being Closely Guarded
  
  
  • (01:37:02 ) Claude Sonnet 3.7 (often) knows when it’s in alignment evaluations
  
  
  
  

• Synthetic Media & Art

• 
  
  
  
  • (01:42:27 ) US appeals court rejects copyrights for AI-generated art lacking 'human' creator
  
  
  • (01:45:10 ) Trump urged by Ben Stiller, Paul McCartney and hundreds of stars to protect AI copyright rules