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OpenAI Robotics
PLUS: AGI will not make labor worthless
Together with
Howdy! It’s Barsee again.
Happy Tuesday, AI family, and welcome back to AI Valley.
In today’s edition:
OpenAI is building Robots again
US unveils new restrictions on exporting AI chips to counter China
Plus trending AI tools, posts, and resources
Ready, set, go…
ROBOTICS
OpenAI is Building Robots Again
OpenAI is returning to robotics, four years after shuttering its original program in 2020.
Here's what you need to know:
The company is looking to build a new team from scratch and is advertising for three key roles: an electronic sensing engineer to work on robot sensors, a robotics mechanics engineer to work on the nuts and bolts such as gearboxes and motors, and a technical project manager to oversee product development and operations.
Caitlin Kalinowski, former lead for Meta’s AR glasses, is leading the effort as OpenAI's hardware director, having joined in November.
The new team will focus on building advanced robots by combining hardware and software. Their goal is to create intelligent, adaptable robots that can learn and perform tasks effectively in real-world settings.
Their recent partnership with Figure AI could further accelerate these efforts by leveraging industrial-scale testing and insights.
Why it matters:
OpenAI's return to robotics signals a shift toward integrating AI models with physical systems, advancing their goal of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). This move suggests that OpenAI sees beyond the limitations of a software-only approach, potentially overcoming past challenges like data scarcity and unlocking new opportunities in combining generative AI with robotics.
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SIDE UPDATES
Google is testing "Daily Listen," a feature that creates a 5-minute personalized podcast based on your search and reading habits. Found in the Google app under the Search bar (for Search Labs users), it lets you play, pause, skip, and even like or dislike stories. It’s available in the U.S. on Android and iOS for users with Search Labs access.
Fears about human labor being replaced by machines go back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. These fears continue today with the rapid progress of AI in several previously secure human domains. Just like low-skilled workers thrived by specializing and trading, human-level AI will still need to collaborate with humans, relying on them for services it can’t provide.
NVIDIA’s new model, Sana, generates 4K images in seconds on laptops with just 16GB GPU memory. With 1.6 billion parameters, it’s smaller but faster than competitors like FLUX. The project is open-sourced and available on platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face.
Alibaba’s Qwen Chat is a free tool for experimenting with Qwen AI models. It includes models for conversation, image understanding, and reasoning. Future updates will add web search, voice interaction, and image generation capabilities.
Tech giants OpenAI and Google are reportedly purchasing unused video content from creators for thousands of dollars to train their AI models. The companies are seeking exclusive videos, often intended for platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Prices range from $1 to $2 per minute, with higher rates for premium content like 4K or drone footage.
Adobe’s new Firefly Bulk Create tool can edit up to 10,000 images in one click. It handles background changes, resizing, and preset dimensions for social platforms. Currently in private testing, it’s set to launch in early 2025.
GOVERNMENT
US unveils new restrictions on exporting AI chips to counter China
With just one week remaining in office, President Joe Biden unveiled new export guidelines for U.S.-made AI chips. Announced by the Commerce Department on Monday, the rules classify countries into three groups based on their access to U.S. AI technology.
Here's what you need to know:
Tier 1: The first group, including 18 close allies like Japan, the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, will retain unrestricted access to U.S. AI technology.
Tier 2: The second group, covering 120 countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, will have a cap of 50,000 GPUs per country but may negotiate higher quotas under specific conditions.
Tier 3: The third group, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, will face stricter bans, with no access to advanced AI chips or most "closed" AI models.
Why it matters:
The new restrictions assert U.S. dominance in AI technology by limiting access to advanced chips. However, they could significantly impact companies like Nvidia, which depends on international markets for growth.
Nvidia has criticized the rules, calling them “unprecedented and misguided.” The company argues that the restrictions will harm innovation, economic growth, and U.S. leadership in AI while giving foreign competitors an advantage.
TRENDING TOOLS
Betterwatchlist > The stock market watchlist with AI superpowers. Get AI-powered insights on why prices are moving in real-time. (link) *
Minduck Discovery > Search the world with your mind-map AI. (link)
Hugging Face SmolAgents > Create powerful AI agents with minimal effort. (link)
Trellis > Swarm of agents that automate most of your manual PDF tasks. (link)
Anyvoice > Create hyper-realistic voice clones from just 3 seconds of audio. (link)
Astral > A marketing team in your browser. (link)
THINK PIECES / RESOURCES
The best ChatGPT prompt I've ever created: I spent 2 months curating this prompt to write prompts. (link)
How companies are using AI agents internally. (link)
o1 isn’t a chat model and that’s the point. (link)
How Meta plans to crank the dopamine machine with infinite AI-generated content. (link)
Accenture dropped a wild prediction. AI agents, not humans, will be the main users of company software by 2030. (link)
Will AI steal your job? No. It will allegedly make 78 million more jobs than it steals by 2030. (link)
AI founder's bitter lesson. (link)
What companies succeeding with AI do differently. (link)
CONTENT CORNER
1/
Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta plans to automate the work of midlevel software engineers by 2025, with AI eventually taking over all coding for its apps.
2/
i read science fiction to imagine what might change - i read ancient literature to understand what doesn't
— David (@DavidSHolz)
9:48 PM • Dec 29, 2024
This is the founder of Midjourney.
If you want to build for the future, read more Science-Fiction (Sci-fi) because Sci-fi authors live in the future.
3/
woah okay, so one trick i've discovered is that LLMs trust their own prompts more than my prompts
so, the main problem is i want Claude to be less of a coward. and i managed to make a good system prompt for that!
first i triggered a fight with Claude, made him lecture me, then… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Louis Arge (@louisvarge)
5:00 PM • Jan 11, 2025
This guy gaslighted Claude to give him a decent answer without giving a moral lecture.
4/
If a quantum computer will ever get closer to the 10 minutes mark to derive a private key from its public key, then the Bitcoin blockchain will be inherently broken.
5/
Watch Stagwell's CEO Mark Penn interview Elon Musk at CES!
— Live (@Live)
3:46 AM • Jan 9, 2025
Elon Musk said in an interview at CES 2025 that AI has used up all the human training data available. Now, companies are turning to AI-generated synthetic data to train new models, despite its challenges.
6/
The above video will help you understand AI more fundamentally.
THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY
That’s all for today’s issue, folks.

💡 Help me get better and suggest new ideas at [email protected] or @heyBarsee
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