AI Reading for Tuesday March 4

In which I experiment with Deep Research and Sesame

Mar 04, 2025

Siri upgrade seen a long way off - The Verge

Is Apple having an AI crisis, or just being an astute fast follower? - Bloomberg

GPT-4.5 merely tied Grok-3 in latest LM Arena update. - LM Arena

Insignificant 1 point difference in the default ranking, but 4.5 won by.a small but statistically significant difference in the style-adjusted ranking.

Feels like a certain amount of Goodhart’s law might be creeping in. GPT-4-5 is a bit of a window dressing model bragging rights model, like a supercar not for use as a daily driver. In my experience Claude is very good but not as highly ranked, maybe some models study to the test more than others (or even use shenanigans).

Waymo Ubers launch in Austin - The Verge

Lacking deep pockets, European self-driving tech companies struggle to keep pace with US and China. - FT

Didi self-driving unit looks for $5b valuation - Bloomberg

This Scientist Left OpenAI Last Year. His Startup Is Already Worth $30 Billion. - WSJ

The third coming of Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman - Fast Company

AI agents might overreact in a crisis - Foreign Policy

It's really hard to decide how much to learn/generalize from evidence, how much to optimize, the bias/variance struggle is real.

Open source music creator goes up against Suno and Udio - Tom's Guide

Deepfake identity scams proliferate - The Register

AI Massage Robots Coming to Equinox - Bloomberg

The Government Knows A.G.I. is Coming - NY Times

Google releases SpeciesNet, an AI model designed to identify species observed in the wild by camera traps. - TechCrunch

Using AI to dynamically adjust 6G signals to optimize bandwidth - livescience.com

Are you a tool, or are you my friend? - YouTube

I experimented with the Sesame conversational AI, was uncanny and a bit unnerving. I talked to it about some Reddit posts as if they were coming from me.

I tried OpenAI Deep Research to learn about a stock - ChatGPT

Dissecting “All Along The WatchTower” - ChatGPT

Does seem grad-school-level to me. I’m sure it will impact the type of academic work that gets done significantly. Interestingly I think Bob Dylan says the last verse was supposed to be the first, randomly ended up switched around in the recording process. Dylan beefed with Don McLean over being referred to as ‘the joker’ in ‘American Pie’, but one could see him identifying with the joker’s words.