AI Inside: Hands-on With Project Astra and Project Moohan

Thursday, December 12, 2024

First things first, apologies for the delay of the podcast this week. Yesterday, I woke up with a nasty cold and sore throat and doing the podcast sounded like the last thing my body needed to recover. As it turned out, I had so much to prepare for the embargoed news drop this morning that had I done the podcast yesterday, there’s no way in heck I would have ever finished it all the way I wanted. So, a blessing in disguise! Also, it as the added benefit of enabling Jeff and I to discuss said embargoed news on the show THIS week instead of next week. And that is exactly what we did!

Android XR: Google's AI-Powered OS for Extended Reality

Google has introduced Android XR, a new operating system built specifically for XR headsets and glasses. Google built the OS with Gemini at the core, and it really makes so much sense to me how these two technologies can fit together so well. XR and AI, I’ve been saying lately, is like chocolate and peanut butter! In the case of Android XR, Google really wants to do for the XR space what it did for smartphones with the Android OS.

Samsung's Project Moohan, their upcoming VR headset, will be the first to run on Android XR. It will feature multimodal controls and Gemini integration for an AI-enhanced experience.

Google is also working on AI glasses that run Project Astra which we all saw months ago at Google IO. To me, this is incredibly exciting stuff. Especially when you combine the Raxium MicroLED display technology with the almost-normal black framed glasses that connect to the smartphone to do all sorts of cool AI-driven contextualization of the world.

I got to try out both prototypes in a special exclusive visit to Mountain View last week. I wrote about my experience for Digital Trends. I also released a pretty long video on my channel today walking through the entire experience.

Shahram Izadi, VP & GM of XR at Google, will be a guest on the Android Faithful podcast on Tuesday, December 17. I'm also hoping to have him join us on AI Inside in January.

Gemini 2.0: Google's Latest AI Advancements

Google has announced Gemini 2.0, which ties into the XR story as well. This update brings more capable multimodal capabilities, including the ability to generate images and multilingual audio directly, as well as process text, code, images, and video. All of these qualities improve the Project Astra demo I mentioned earlier. Gemini 2.0 Flash offers faster and more capable performance.

Google is also testing Gemini 2.0 Agents, including Project Mariner (an experimental Chrome extension), Jules (an AI code agent for developers), and a gaming assistant.

OpenAI's "12 Days of Shipmas"

OpenAI has been busy with its "12 Days of Shipmas," releasing several updates to many of its key products. How on Earth do they have so much stuff ready to go in December?!:

- ChatGPT Pro for only $200 per month which gets users unlimited GPT-4o access, GPT-4 Pro mode, and more. I asked the question on the show “Who is this for?” Jeff answered something akin to business expense accounts. HA! So true.

- Sora, OpenAI's text-to-video model, gets a limited release. It does look like it still has issues around regular physics and even human limb movement.

- ChatGPT integration into Apple Intelligence, which we knew was coming eventually. Well, here we are!

- Canvas, now public, natively integrates GPT-4. I see this as a potentially very useful creation tool for wordsmiths.

Google's Quantum Supremacy Claim

Google has achieved "quantum supremacy" with its Willow quantum chip, completing a math equation in five minutes that would take a supercomputer 10 septillion years. While impressive, practical applications are still far off. Quantum computers are expected to eventually make current computing look archaic, but they currently make too many errors for practical use. This makes me think about the times we live in where “truth” is so pliable and stretchy. It almost feels like AI and Quantum Computing are here for all that un-truth considering neither are especially truthy.

Reddit's AI Strategy and New Search Tool

Reddit has turned its dataset into a source of key growth, reporting its first quarterly profit partly due to data licensing deals with Google and OpenAI. The platform's 19-year community provides well-organized, rated content that reflects genuine user sentiments.

Reddit has also launched "Reddit Answers," an AI search tool that provides summaries of responses and threads across the site. This move aims to compete with platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT for quick Q&A and potentially reduce Reddit's reliance on Google for traffic.

Here are a few other interesting stories

• AI Is Detecting More Breast Cancer Cases, Study Suggests - gizmodo.com

• Solos challenges Meta’s Ray-Bans with $299 ChatGPT smart glasses - theverge.com

• Key leaders behind Google’s viral NotebookLM are leaving to create their own startup - techcrunch.com

• "We have already achieved AGI. It’s even more clear with O1": OpenAI employee claims - futurism.com