Journalism

The company behind Ray, an open source AI framework that helps power ChatGPT, has just released a new tool to help developers work with large language models (LLMs). Called Aviary, Anyscale describes it as the “first fully free, cloud-based infrastructure designed to help developers choose and deploy the right technologies and approach for their LLM-based … Read more

“Welcome to the era of spatial computing,” announced Apple as it unveiled its latest device, a pair of mixed-reality goggles called the Vision Pro. CEO Tim Cook described it as “a new kind of computer that augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world.” A new operating system powers the device, … Read more

AlphaSense has used artificial intelligence technologies for over ten years, as a way to compete against the likes of Bloomberg in the market intelligence industry. It recently launched its first generative AI application, Smart Summaries, which provides summaries of content such as earnings calls. We spoke to VP of Product Chris Ackerson, who previously worked … Read more

LangChain is a programming framework for using large language models (LLMs) in applications. Like everything in generative AI, things have moved incredibly fast for the project. It started out as a Python tool in October 2022, then in February added TypeScript support. By April, it supported multiple JavaScript environments, including Node.js, browsers, Cloudflare Workers, Vercel/Next.js, … Read more

We’re in a new golden age of decentralized versions of Twitter. Mastodon (an open source project built on the ActivityPub protocol), Bluesky (a company building the AT Protocol) and now Nostr (an open protocol project) are all attempting to fulfill the promise of Twitter in 2007, when it was erroneously called an open platform. Intriguingly, … Read more

No prizes for guessing the focus of this year’s Microsoft Build developer conference. Of course, it was AI — just as it had been at Google I/O earlier this month. But whereas Google’s AI announcements seemed disorganised and all over the map, Microsoft came up with a cohesive framework to entice developers: its new “Copilot … Read more

Developer tools are scrambling to integrate AI into their products, no matter which part of the developer workflow they cater to. One example is Gradle Build Tool, an open source build automation tool that has been around for fifteen years now. The company behind it, Gradle Inc, has been paying particular attention to AI, since … Read more

We first profiled Pinecone in early 2021, just after it launched its vector database solution. Since that time, the rise of generative AI has caused a massive increase in interest in vector databases — with Pinecone now viewed among the leading vendors. To find out how Pinecone’s business has evolved over the past couple of … Read more

Jyoti Bansal is the CEO of Harness, a DevOps company that has recently fine-tuned its tagline to “the industry’s first Software Delivery Platform to use AI to simplify your DevOps processes.” Harness isn’t the first company to pivot hard towards AI, of course, but given its focus on continuous delivery, I took the opportunity to … Read more

Today at Google I/O, the web giant’s annual developer conference, Google announced a bunch of new AI tools — including new tooling for the TensorFlow ecosystem, a new one-stop shop for developers called ML Hub, and upgrades to its cross-platform set of ML solutions called MediaPipe. Ahead of the announcements, I conducted an email interview … Read more

When it comes to generative AI, the open source community has embraced Meta AI’s LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI), which was released in February. Meta made LLaMA available in several sizes (7B, 13B, 33B, and 65B parameters), but at first it was restricted to approved researchers and organizations. However, when it was leaked online … Read more

“Generative AI is one of the best augmentation means — not substitution, augmentation. Augmenting the professions that actually exist. Augmenting an auditor, augmenting a tax advisor, augmenting a legal expert, augmenting a strategic adviser.” So says Nitin Mittal, who is leading a new generative AI practice within Deloitte Consulting, when I asked him how generative … Read more

Nvidia has announced a new safety toolkit for AI chatbots called NeMo Guardrails, which acts as a kind of censor for applications built on large language models (LLMs). The software has been released as an open source project. Jonathan Cohen, VP of Applied Research at Nvidia, spoke about the new software yesterday in a briefing … Read more

The Australian public company Atlassian has just launched a new generative AI feature in its cloud software suite. Called Atlassian Intelligence, it’s being touted as “a new virtual teammate” and was built in collaboration with OpenAI. Ahead of the announcement, I spoke with Atlassian’s Sherif Mansour (the company’s Head of AI) and Luke Heinrich from … Read more

The metaverse hype was a dominant storyline in the tech industry over 2022. But after the initial loud posturing of Meta (née Facebook), it dawned on the industry that in order for the metaverse to succeed, open standards would need to be defined and alliances formed around those standards. That was why, in June of … Read more