In this week's edition of Break Bytes:

• Learning about Haptic Technology in today’s Spotlight

• This week’s news roundup you should know about

• Meta’s Llama 2

• Hollywood Strikes!

• US Senate goes to AI school this fall

🔦 Spotlight: Haptic technology

^{Learn about modern technologies and their applications.}

Haptic technology are interfaces that mimic the sense of touch to a user.

Some examples of haptic technology are force and vibrotactile feedback. In these examples, these methods alert the user through vibrations, resistance etc. Haptic technology is going to play a crucial role in the modern technology, especially gaming.

Homework: Research the company that partnered with Sony (send me the name via Twitter/LinkedIn before next Wednesday) for its haptic technology, and look into 3 of its global competitors.

I’ll announce the company next week, and share the three companies I found.

Next week, we’ll explore haptic technology even further.

🗞️ The RoundUp

^{The most important news of the week in next-gen tech.}

1/ Anthropic’s Claude 2

Anthropic’s latest model, Claude 2, is a serious competitor against OpenAI’s ChatGPT. I’ve found myself using it more, over ChatGPT.

You can give it a try for free here

2/ Chipotle’s Bot-vocados

US fast-food chain, Chipotle, is testing it’s new robot prototype Autocado, a bot helper for turning avocados into guacamole － reportedly, it can turn 25 pounds of avocados in half the time i't’d its human colleague.

3/ Futureverse raises $54 million to wed AI and the Metaverse

Futureverse, an AI and Metaverse technology company has raised $54 million in its recent funding round, led by 10T holdings, and crypto company, Ripple.

4/ Fable’s Showrunner AI technology is changing entertainment

Generative AI takes a step toward big entertainment, which ironically benefits given the recent turmoil in Hollywood, that we’ll cover in today’s main headlines.

Fable released a research paper based in AI agents that can write, produce, direct, cast, edit, voice, and animate episodes of TV. If achieved, this could put creatives in the media industry in a tight spot.

NEWS

Meta’s Llama 2📎

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has released the second generation of their Llama model － Llama 2. It’s an open-source competitor to OpenAI’s GPT-4.

It’s available for all to use for research and commercial purposes.

This comes after an expansion between Meta and Microsoft, who is also partnered with OpenAI. Meta is also partnering with Qualcomm to integrate the Llama 2 model in hardware devices, ex. phones and laptops, starting in 2024.

Give the Llama 2 model a try for free here

NEWS

Hollywood Strikes!📎

Backlash has been the main spotlight in Hollywood for the past week.

Actors and writers alike have been against the AI proposal made last week, that would allow studios to use an actor’s AI likeness indefinitely.

Jon Starck, the CTO at AI company Synthesia, chimed in stating that AI replicas were “natural progression” from previous AI efforts in entertainment.

If this proposal gets passed, this will affect acting as a viable career, cutting the dreams of countless people short.

And those same actors will be used as data points to train and improve the performance of their AI systems, all while their replicas get reused across films and series.

Now, I’m no expert in the entertainment industry, but this just rings as a legal deepfake of the actors affected by this.

Few newsletter issues ago, in Issue #001, I presented the idea of the Great Displacement － this is a present example of the impact of automation across industry, and this time, the media industry being one of the ongoing victims.

NEWS

US Senate to get an AI crash course this fall📎

Undoubtedly, the world moves when the US moves. The US Senate will get an AI crash course this fall to educate the board so they can lay a better foundation for AI regulation. With this in mind, it’s safe to predict that we could see 2024 start with a bang with regulation laws being applied, and other countries following suit.

How will this impact current industries, we have yet to see. But one thing is for certain － once we have clear rules on AI application, we’ll see a lot of turbulence across fields, from technology to entertainment.

We’ll make sure to keep an eye on this, so you get updated as soon as there are new developments.

📹 Behind The Scenes

^{Sharing what I’m up to behind the screens.}

Feels great to be back after a long hiatus!

As you’ll be able to tell, the newsletter has been rebranded (for the fourth time) to Break Bytes.

This is was needed change since the previous three names didn’t really stick.

I’ve also spent time diving deeper into copywriting as of late, shadow-writing other creators, and creating my own frameworks.

Do you notice the revamped presentation? Do you like it? Let me know!

On another note, I’ve taken Astronomik off the shelf. I didn’t work on it during the hiatus because there’s greater demand for local AI models over a platform solution.

But with that, I’ve made the decision to pivot to an AI automation flow builder!

The idea is you’d be able to drag and drop nodes onto the canvas, and build AI-powered automation flows in seconds.

💌 Share The Luv

^{Because luv makes the world go round.}

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✌️ That's all for today, folks!

If you have anything interesting to share with us, DM on Twitter: @ricobuilds

See ya next Wednesday :)

－ Rico

Thank You!