Let’s get cosy with our AI companions + news from this week. Join real human companions Alex Papadopoulos Korfiatis (ML Research Scientist), Rafie Faruq (AI Startup Founder) and your host Alex Denne. Yikes! Over an hour - we had a lot to talk about this week eh?

Watch this episode on youtube (and see our AI background images) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHsQu4IipA7Ri2AqKcQZ1Yw

News links

1. PEW Research ChatGPT usage study - 14% of US adults have used it (Sample of 10k) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/24/a-majority-of-americans-have-heard-of-chatgpt-but-few-have-tried-it-themselves/


2. NVIDIA hits $1trn market cap and NVIDIA’s Computex keynote - https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/28/nvidia-computex-jensen-huang/


3. Another Statement on AI Risk: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk


4. Report released by the congressional research service on generative artificial intelligence and data - primer PDF - https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47569


5. Another of the 3 godfathers of AI have come out with deep regrets - Yoshua Bengio. (The other two are Geoffrey Hinton (also expressed regrets), and Yann LeCun (just interested in improving AI accuracy at the moment) - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65760449

Theme links

1. character.ai - Raised at a valuation of $1bn pre-revenue, user-created characters from elon musk himself, to abusive father figures, socrates and virtual girlfriends. Subreddit has 120k users, very impressive traction.


2. https://replika.com - the classic ai companion app.


3. I highly recommend people just browse the top posts there - I actually cried with laughter. https://www.reddit.com/r/replika/top/?t=all


4. As of February 2023, filters were put in place to prevent explicit conversations of an adult nature. Users who joined prior to that date can roll back to an earlier version of Replika that will still allow it. Here’s why https://www.garanteprivacy.it/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/docweb/9852506#english Italy SA clamped down due to too many risks to children and emotionally vulnerable individuals


5. Chai research - 4 billion messages served - https://www.chai-research.com/

Crazy things from this week

1. US lawyer admits using AI for case research - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65735769


2. Moodpen - https://moodpen.com/ - get clarity from your mood / journaling with AI + actionable steps

Topics we touched on

personal ai companion, roleplay ai chatbots, talking to AI, ai companionship, nvidia, chai, ChatGPT, replika, character.ai, deepmind, virtual companions, virtual friends, virtual characters, Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, Music Recommendations, Ted Lasso, Mae

Stay tuned for our next episode on - AI and Coding