DeepSeek may have stoked the fire with its R1 model last week, as OpenAI becomes one of the first to retaliate with the release of o3-mini and Deep Research. Other key highlights include:
- SoftBank and OpenAI launch a joint venture in Japan to market OpenAI's enterprise AI tech to Japan's biggest
- The Beatles win their 8th Grammy Award thanks to AI for bringing its final song to life
- The first compliance deadline arrives as the EU's AI Act goes into effect, banning AI systems with "unacceptable risk" levels
Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI!
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On Friday last week, OpenAI introduced o3-mini and o3-mini-high, the newest additions to its family of reasoning AI models, designed with STEM problem-solving in programming, math, and science in mind. Marketed as both "powerful" and "affordable" by OpenAI, o3-mini self-fact-checks to deliver more reliable results while offering faster response times and fewer major mistakes. Although o3-mini doesn't leapfrog ahead of DeepSeek's R1 or OpenAI's o1, the affordability of the model, along with limited free access for everyone, has made it an appealing powerhouse option.
And they followed up on o3-mini with an AI agent called Deep Research
However, OpenAI is adamant about staying in the spotlight - it released Deep Research, an AI agent designed to aid in complex and in-depth research, in a blog post on Sunday. To combat concerns regarding AI's accuracy in more complex subjects, OpenAI says it has mitigated many such problems by leveraging a fine-tuned, "special version" of o3. In doing so, OpenAI claims that Deep Research achieved an accuracy of 26.6% on the aptly named Humanity's Last Exam benchmark, about twice the accuracy of the runner-up, o3-mini-high at 13%. Unlike o3-mini, however, Deep Research doesn't come for free and is currently only available to Pro subscribers.
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During the "Transforming Business through AI" livestream event in Tokyo, Japanese investment giant SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stepped up their partnership by announcing a new Japan AI joint venture. The two set up a 50:50 holding company called SB OpenAI Japan, which will market OpenAI's enterprise tech exclusively to major companies in Japan. Branding OpenAI's suite of AI tools as "Cristal Intelligence," SoftBank announced that it will spend $3 billion per year on this suite for itself and its subsidiaries, such as British chip designer Arm.
Nearly 50 years after the band officially broke up, The Beatles' "Now and Then" won them the "Best Rock Performance" award at this year's Grammy's. "Now and Then" was supposed to be the band's final song, pieced together from demos spanning from the late-70s to the mid-90s. However, it was never released due to technical difficulties stopping Lennon's vocals and piano from being separated. Roughly 30 years later, Beatles members Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, with the help of filmmaker Peter Jackson and his sound team, developed a machine-learning tool to split Lennon's voice from the piano, finishing the song and debuting it in 2023.
Starting this Sunday, the European Union has reached a significant milestone as its regulators gain the power to ban AI systems posing "unacceptable risk" as the first compliance deadline on February 2 has hit. The EU's comprehensive AI Act categorizes applications into four risk levels - from minimal to unacceptable - with heavy fines for violations. Companies using prohibited applications may face fines of up to €35 million or 7% of annual revenue, though targeted law enforcement and specific therapeutic uses were brought out as exemptions.
As the world's first, Britain is taking unprecedented steps to combat online child sexual abuse by making it illegal to use AI tools that generate explicit images, it announced on Saturday. The new law targets not only the creation but also the possession and distribution of these images, including the use of AI to "nudeify real-life images of children," the measures of which will be included in the Crime and Policing Bill when it comes to parliament. Authorities are also upping their investigative powers, while UK Interior Minister Yvette Cooper emphasized the connection between online activity and real-world abuse.
Online workspace platform Tana recently emerged from stealth along with its new platform to announce a $14 million Series A round led by Tola Capital, bringing the startup's total funding to $25 million. The company's design, described as "a knowledge graph with connections that mimic the human brain," allows for rapid transformation of unstructured data into AI workflows using its Supertag feature. Early endorsements from industry leaders underscore Tana's bold vision for reshaping global team collaboration.
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AI & The Future of Particle Physics at CERN (4-min read)
With AI becoming more prominent everywhere one can look, British physicist and 2026 CERN director Mark Thomson wants to bring more AI to the EU's premier particle physics lab to see if the tech can help scientists understand how the universe could end.
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