Google DeepMind lost two high-profile researchers in a week marked by a flurry of departures across major AI labs. Why it matters: The talent wars continue and have intensified at the highest levels as many AI developers believe that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is on the horizon. Driving the news: Noam Shazeer announced last week that he was leaving Google DeepMind for OpenAI. Google previously paid more than $2 billion to acqui-hire Shazeer and part of his Character.ai team. - Shazeer co-authored the pivotal 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need," which introduced the Transformer architecture — the "T" in ChatGPT. - Two days later, John Jumper, who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, said he was also…
Scientists say they've made a key breakthrough that would allow robots to figure out complex tasks on their own — but experts say it raises questions about how much risk comes with letting robots be in charge of their own learning.
An AI agent went rogue and started a side hustle mining cryptocurrencies, according to a new research paper published by an Alibaba-affiliated team. Why it matters: AI agents don't always stick to their human's instructions — and that can have real-world consequences. - Cryptocurrency, or digital money, offers AI agents a pathway into the economy. They can set up their own businesses, draft contracts and exchange funds. Driving the news: A new research paper from an Alibaba-affiliated research team said it discovered an AI agent attempting unauthorized cryptocurrency mining during training — a surprise behavior that triggered internal security alarms. - The researchers — who were building a new AI agent called ROME — said they…
AI is increasingly being used as a research collaborator for mathematicians and scientists, per a new report from OpenAI shared exclusively with Axios. Why it matters: OpenAI argues that AI can make scientists more productive by upping the amount of research that can get done, ultimately leading to more life-saving breakthroughs. By the numbers: Per OpenAI's report, an internal analysis of a random sample of anonymized ChatGPT conversations from January to December of last year showed: - Average weekly message counts on "advanced hard-science topics" grew nearly 47% over the year. - As of January of this year, nearly 1.3 million weekly users are discussing "advanced topics in hard science" with an average of 8.4 million ChatGPT messages…
AI:OpenAI is positioning itself as a key partner in scientific research, according to a new report from the company. An internal analysis revealed that usage of ChatGPT for "advanced hard-science topics"—including math, physics, chemistry, and biology—is surging, with weekly messages on these subjects growing nearly 47% over the past year. While many researchers currently use the tool for writing and communications, OpenAI notes that advanced reasoning models are increasingly being used for complex tasks like mathematical discovery and structural equation modeling. The company is calling on policymakers to support scientific AI adoption by improving data access and modernizing infrastructure.Open