You can now create your own personal AI agent

Welcome to Simplified AI, your gateway to discovering the world of Artificial Intelligence!

We hope you're all back on-schedule now because that one hour difference for Daylight Saving Time really hits harder than it should. Goodbye to sunshine and hello to driving home from work in the dark (for the in-office crew, that is).

What is AI ?

Turning AI topics into a walk in the park, not a mind-boggling maze

For our first newsletter, we should probably start with the most basic topic: What is AI?

Let's get the most obvious answer out of the way - AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. It's been around since the 1950's, but it's really generated a lot of buzz and excitement in the past few years.

Think of AI like a digital brain that can learn and make decisions, similar to how you do. However, instead of relying on human brain power it's using numbers and computer code. Imagine you are trying to train a new dog. You're going to train the dog by using treats and the more tricks and skills it learns, the smarter it becomes. AI undergoes a similar process, but instead of using treats, it gets trained with vast amounts of data. The pool of data is so massive that it would be impossible for a single human to process. As a result, AI becomes more intelligent over time.

We're still very early in understanding what AI can accomplish, but one thing is for sure - it will continue to get better at tasks and it's meant to make our lives more convenient and efficient. Here are a couple of examples of what AI can do:

• Recognizing faces in photos and sorting them into albums on your phone

• Helping self-driving cars get better at avoiding accidents

• Suggesting things you might like based on similar interests (like how Amazon guides you to certain items or Netflix recommends new shows)

AI is an umbrella term, similar to how the word "technology" can refer to everything from your microwave to your smartphone to advanced robotics. In future newsletters, we'll get into more specific topics on AI, how it came to be, how it operates and the impact it will have on us as a collective society.

AI News Flash

Catch the latest AI news that is making all of the headlines this week!

ChatGPT gets…"GPTs"

If you're reading this, you're probably familiar with ChatGPT, the LLM (Large Language Model) tool that exploded into our lives in late 2022. An LLM is like a language wizard that can understand and use words to assist you with writing, learning, and other tasks. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has now launched a transformative marketplace to feature AI-driven apps, which are aptly named "GPTs". This is a huge announcement that must make other marketplace players like Google and Apple scared for the future of their app stores, but great for consumers as competition heats up.

The scope of the available apps and what developers will create is likely unimaginable right now, but expect the apps to cover everything from educational assistance to creative design. OpenAI provided an example in their keynote speech of their inaugural developers conference of one of these GPT "Apps" acting as a personal assistant to book a flight for you. The prospect sounds great that you won't have to spend hours tracking and looking at times and prices…let's just hope it doesn't book you a 10hr layover in favor of saving $20. These GPTs are part of OpenAI's broader strategy to leverage ChatGPT's massive popularity, which now boasts 100 million weekly users.

Say goodbye to Siri, Bixby and Cortana (if you even ever used them) and hello to the possibility of your next virtual AI assistant.

AI Company Spotlight

Explore trailblazing companies that are shaping our digital future

Assembly AI

The future of voice technology is changing with advanced AI-driven speech recognition and analysis. Founded in 2017 in San Francisco, Assembly AI offers state-of-the-art transcription and natural language processing (NLP) solutions. 

So what sets them apart? Plenty of other companies offer the same type of speech-to-text transcription.

For starters, they're getting closer to human-level accuracy for listening to speech. Way better than your dad or grandpa that yells "WHAT?" five times when you're trying to talk to them and they're in the other room. Their latest speech recognition model, Conformer-2, boasts remarkable accuracy, surpassing other similar models and performing with up to 43% fewer errors in noisy environments​​. This will help speech recognition when people are in the real world with others having conversations all around them.

With even more features for real-world use, their technology goes beyond simple transcription, with speaker labels, timestamps, text filtering, and custom vocabularies, allowing deep understanding of spoken content​.

AssemblyAI is not just facilitating transcription but also enabling the development of smarter applications. Through their Audio Intelligence models and the new LeMUR framework, developers can build apps that detect sentiment, moderate content, and much more, all powered by voice data​​.

This AI company is aiming to revolutionize how we interact with technology through speech, making it a standout player in the AI space to watch—and listen to. Next, can they solve the issue of "duck" and "beach" showing up in text when you're really trying to say something else? You know what I'm talking about.

Try it for yourself now by visiting their Playground and uploading your favorite YouTube video.

Get Creative with AI

Practice using AI and unleash creativity with your new collaborator

Copy the prompts below and paste them into ChatGPT, Bing AI, Google Bard, or your generative AI tool of choice and let AI work its magic. Share your results with us…and take it a step beyond the initial prompts and see what you can create!

Text-based

• Craft a short, funny, or heartwarming story involving a talking animal of your choice and an unexpected adventure.

Visual-based*

• Create an enchanting forest scene where ordinary trees have leaves that resemble a mix of butterflies and autumn leaves.

Visit us on Instagram and Twitter to see how our examples turned out!

*Visual-based examples are for users of Dall-E or premium users of ChatGPT, may require paid subscription.