Top 5 stories of the week: AI buzz and CES unveils a self-driving — baby stroller?

Happy New Year! This first week of 2023 has already been a whirlwind of AI and excitement from CES 2023, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Senior writer/editor Sharon Goldman was kept busy with, among other AI news, DALL-E and ChatGPT. Will 2023 be the year of generative AI? It’s sure starting that way. In our top story of the week, Goldman talks to DALL-E inventor and DALL-E 2 co-inventor, Aditya Ramesh, about how far the technology has come in its first two years, and how much further it can go.

Our second and third top stories both star ChatGPT. In position 2, Ben Dickson analyzes Microsoft’s decision this week to incorporate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine, reportedly as soon as March. Will it help Bing unseat Google as the top search engine? Maybe — but maybe it will topple Google in other ways.

In position 3, papers written by ChatGPT have been banned from a top AI conference. And then the crowd went wild! Teachers and professors have already been expressing their concern about receiving papers written by AI instead of by students; now the topic has moved beyond academia. Since it directly affects those who create and revise the actual AI technology, expect to see the issue addressed in 3, 2, 1 …

Our fourth and fifth top stories of the week are about new technologies unveiled at this week’s CES show. Everyone could use a lighter pair of AR glasses, but a self-driving baby stroller? That’s going to be a harder sell.

Here are the top five stories for the week of January 2.

1. Two years after DALL-E debut, its inventor is ‘surprised’ by impact

Before DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, there was just a research paper called “Zero–Shot Text-to-Image Generation.” 

With that paper and a controlled website demo, on January 5, 2021 — two years ago today — OpenAI introduced DALL-E, a neural network that “creates images from text captions for a wide range of concepts expressible in natural language.” (Also today: OpenAI just happens to reportedly be in talks about a “tender offer that would value it at $29 billion.”)

2. ChatGPT and the unbundling of online search

Since the release of ChatGPT in November, there has been a lot of speculation about OpenAI’s latest large language model (LLM) spelling doom for Google Search. The sentiment has only intensified with the recent report of Microsoft preparing to integrate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine.

There are several reasons to believe that a ChatGPT-powered Bing (or any other search engine) will not seriously threaten Google’s search near-monopoly. LLMs have several critical problems to solve before they can make a dent in the online search industry. Meanwhile, Google’s share of the search market, its technical ability and its financial resources will help it remain competitive (and possibly dominant) as conversational LLMs start to make their mark in online search.

Meanwhile, the real (and less discussed) potential of LLMs such as ChatGPT is the “unbundling” of online search, which is where real opportunities for Microsoft and other companies lie. By integrating ChatGPT into successful products, companies can reduce the use cases of Google Search.

3. Top AI conference bans ChatGPT in paper submissions (and why it matters)

A machine learning conference debating the use of machine learning? While that might seem so meta, in its call for paper submissions on Monday, the International Conference on Machine Learning did, indeed, note that “papers that include text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT are prohibited unless the produced text is presented as a part of the paper’s experimental analysis.”

It didn’t take long for a brisk social media debate to brew, in what may be a perfect example of what businesses, organizations and institutions of all shapes and sizes, across verticals, will have to grapple with going forward: How will humans deal with the rise of large language models that can help communicate — or borrow, or expand on, or plagiarize, depending on your point of view — ideas?

4. Lumus readies new waveguide designs for smaller and lighter AR glasses           

Israel’s Lumus, the developer of reflective waveguide technology for augmented reality (AR) eyewear, has introduced its second-generation technology to enable the development of smaller and lighter AR glasses.

The Lumus Z-Lens 2D waveguide architecture builds upon 2D Maximus to enable the development of smaller, lighter AR eyeglasses with high-resolution image quality, outdoor-compatible brightness and seamless prescription eye integration. The AR modules can be as much as 50% smaller.

The new technology will be demoed publicly for the first time at CES 2023, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week. Lumus hopes the tech will be the AR bridge to the exciting possibilities of the metaverse.

5. Glüxkind unveils smart stroller Ella which uses AI for safer movement

Glüxkind Technologies showed off its AI-based smart stroller Ella at CES 2023.

Vancouver, Canada-based Glüxkind Technologies created Ella to support new parents on their daily adventures, be more inclusive and enable families to spend quality time together. It’s another example of tech — and AI in particular — infiltrating everyday products that normally don’t have much tech. I have to say I never expected to see a baby stroller with AI.

Ella, Glüxkind’s AI stroller, is designed and optimized for daily life, not the showroom. With Ella’s adaptive push and brake assistance, parents and caregivers alike can enjoy effortless walks regardless of terrain: uphill, downhill, and even when fully loaded with groceries and toys. All that stuff will be a walk in the park, the company said.