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In this inaugural ‘5 Things’ post, I have a collection of noteworthy AI updates to share. Not all posts will be exclusively AI focused m, but given the current state of AI there is a lot to talk about.
What is ‘5 Things?’
Exactly what it sounds like—a weekly post featuring five recent, interesting, noteworthy, curious, and/or useful things that have been on my mind.
Hume.AI launches empathetic AI
OpenDevin goes open source
CrewAI productizes
Element451 launches AI Assistants for Education
HAI released its comprehensive annual report on the state of Artificial Intelligence. As always, its packed with useful information and insights about the AI industry landscape and where we’re all headed.
At a whopping 500+ pages this thing is dense and difficult to get through for one person. To help with this, I created a custom GPT to help rifle through the insights and pull out specific subject matter. I’ve made the GPT available for anyone to use, just click the link below.
I had to include this after experiencing it myself. Hume.AI has delivered a jaw dropping voice-based AI model. Called “Empathetic AI,” the team at Hume has done what no other company has been able to do with voice chat in over a decade — they nailed human emotional resonance and reflection.
As this model improves in speed and performance, this could be a game-changing UX tool with the power to open up more human experiences through empathetic dialog that resonates deeply with the user.
An open source response to the Devin fundraising announcement by Cognition Labs targeting a $2 billion valuation.
Devin is one of the first AI applications claiming the ability to deliver a complete “Junior Developer” in an AI. The idea being that you can give it a task (like an Upwork coding project) and it is capable of self-directing and navigating the project to code completion. It’s an early glimpse at the future of work and the ways we may see LLMs begin to take over (or at least augment) knowledge worker industries.
In the launch demo, Devin is shown completing the coding work for an Upwork task. Lower level coding for sure, but impressive nonetheless, even if it requires manual oversight and human review.
NOTE: Recent criticisms have been raised about the validity of the Upwork demonstration shared by Cognition Labs. Without getting into, it's a good reminder to take any AI hype with a grain of salt.
Upon hearing news that Cognition Labs is seeking a $2 billion valuation based on their Devin demonstration, a group of developers decided to push back on the hype by releasing an open source replica called, OpenDevin, to demonstrate the ease of building a Devin-like application.
Available on GitHub now, you can download and run OpenDevin yourself and watch as it makes its way through coding tasks and challenges.
I’ve been following CrewAI since its creator, João Moura, released the first iterations on GitHub. CrewAI is an open source AI development framework that enables anyone to build and orchestrate a “crew” of AI agents to work together and complete tasks collaboratively. Think: coder + designer + writer + product manager working together to develop a product requirements document (PRD) or build a new marketing strategy.
In the latest update, CrewAI is now productizing and offering Crew as an enterprise service and software platform. Huge news for companies that want the benefits of AI Agent orchestration, but who don’t have the in-house technical teams to build and maintain them.
Element451 has been quickly pushing the bounds of applying LLMs to higher education. Most recently, they’ve dropped a suite of AI Agents tailored to serve specific roles in higher education for supporting student and operations.
This is one of the best examples I’ve seen (in EdTech especially) of a company rapidly responding to the new advancements in LLMs. The solution is thoughtful, useful, and clearly valuable for their audience.
That’s a wrap for the first installment of ‘5 Things.’ Tune in next time. Follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter for more.
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