Good Morning! Today we’ll delve into NVIDIA's groundbreaking revelations at SIGGRAPH 2023, uncover Microsoft's ambitions to expand Bing Chat to other browsers, and take a closer look at Elon Musk's venture into brain-computer interfaces with Neuralink.

- Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

NVIDIA SIGGRAPH Keynote

At the SIGGRAPH 2023 computer graphics show in Los Angeles, NVIDIA made several significant announcements, with a focus on generative AI and graphics. Some of the key headlines include:

• The introduction of the next-generation GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip platform, aimed at enhancing AI and graphics capabilities.

• The launch of NVIDIA AI Workbench, a unified toolkit that simplifies model tuning and deployment on NVIDIA AI platforms.

• A major upgrade to NVIDIA Omniverse with generative AI and OpenUSD, showcasing the company's commitment to the Alliance for OpenUSD, co-founded with Pixar, Adobe, Apple, and Autodesk.

• NVIDIA's presentation of twenty research papers at the conference, highlighting the company's collaboration with SIGGRAPH members to deliver rendering and generative AI breakthroughs.

• The expansion of NVIDIA's CloudXR software developer kit (SDK) to deliver more scalable and customizable extended reality (XR) experiences for enterprises and developers.

Bing Chat Expands to Third-Party Browsers

Microsoft has announced plans to make Bing Chat, an AI-powered chatbot, available to third-party browser developers. Launched six months ago, Bing Chat is powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 large language model and has been integrated into Microsoft's Bing app, Edge browser, and Office 365 platforms. The expansion to third-party browsers aims to reach a wider audience and showcase Bing Chat's proficiency in providing summarized answers, generating images, and more.

Availability and Limitations: While Microsoft has not specified which third-party browsers will support Bing Chat, it is currently available for select users of Chrome on Windows and Safari on macOS. However, some features are exclusive to Microsoft Edge users, such as longer conversations, chat history, and higher message and input character limits. In other browsers, the chatbot currently supports only five messages in a conversation with a character limit of 2000.

Future Developments: Microsoft plans to introduce plug-ins to the Bing Chat experience, allowing developers and third parties to build on top of Bing and help users take actions on their queries and complete tasks. The company is working with OpenTable to enable restaurant bookings within Bing Chat and WolframAlpha for generating visualizations. More details on these developments are expected to be shared at Microsoft's Build conference.

Neuralink: Elon Musk's Brain Implant Startup

Neuralink, a neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk in 2016, is developing implantable brain-machine interfaces with the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with technology. The company's primary goal is to implant brain-computer devices in paralyzed humans, allowing them to control phones or computers. Neuralink's brain-computer interface, called "The Link," is designed to be fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and enable fast and reliable computer control.

Key Achievements and Developments:

• Animal testing: In 2020, Neuralink demonstrated its technology by implanting computer chips in the brains of pigs. In 2021, the company showcased a macaque playing a simple video game after being implanted with a brain chip.

• FDA approval for human trials: In May 2023, Neuralink received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its first-in-human clinical trial. The company's first clinical trials with a small number of human patients aim to treat paralysis or paraplegia.

• Funding: In August 2023, Neuralink raised $280 million in a Series D funding round led by Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based VC firm established by Peter Thiel. The company's valuation has risen to about $5 billion from $2 billion two years ago.

Elon Musk envisions that brain implants could cure a range of conditions, including obesity, autism, depression, and schizophrenia, as well as enabling web browsing and telepathy. Neuralink also aspires to cure neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and dementia and restore neural activity inside the body, allowing those with spinal cord injuries to move limbs.

How Google Measures Productivity: A Mixed-Methods Approach

In an interview with Engineering Productivity Researchers at Google, Ciera Jaspan and Collin Green, they discussed their mixed-methods approach to measuring productivity.

The QUANTS Framework:

1. Quality of the code

2. Attention from engineers

3. Intellectual complexity

4. Tempo and velocity

5. Satisfaction

Goals/Signals/Metrics (GSM) Framework: Google uses the Goals/Signals/Metrics (GSM) framework to guide metric creation. The process starts by defining a high-level goal without references to specific ways to measure it. Then, signals are identified that indicate whether the goal is being achieved. Finally, metrics are chosen to quantify these signals.

Developer Experience (DevEx) Framework: The DevEx framework distills the factors affecting developer experience into three dimensions: feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state. By capturing qualitative insights from developers and augmenting these insights with data from their systems, Google can unlock clear signals on productivity and how to improve it.

Youtube Spotlight

My Unorthodox Method to Remember Everything

ForrestKnight describes his unconventional methods to retain and recall information from books and experiences. The two primary techniques he uses are discussing topics with others (and with himself) and spaced repetition. These methods allow him to remember details from stories, lessons, and programming concepts.

Highlights:

• Emphasizes the importance of conversations (both internal and with others) to reinforce learning.

• Uses self-conversations and questions to explore topics more deeply.

• Discusses his preference for biographies over self-help books for a richer learning experience.

• Mentions spaced repetition as an effective learning technique, based on the forgetting curve principle by Herman Ebbinghaus.

More Notes

1. WeWork goes from $47B valuation to ‘substantial doubts’ about its future

2. X Removes Logo off of their SF Building due to complaints

3. UK’s first drone delivery service launches in remote Scottish islands

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