The Roundup: Moats, Bing For All, AI Orders Pizza by Phone

David Gentile

May 6, 2023 • 4 min read

Hello and welcome to my weekly AI roundup!

I want to thank all the new subscribers to the site, and the kind words some of you have shared with me about my posts on LangChain. I plan to continue my in-depth exploration of the framework with more articles, and possibly videos soon.

Please let me know what you would like covered - not just in LangChain, but other AI tools and topics.

Now for a recap and the 3 stories I found most interesting this week

Recap

My first article was a detailed overview of the LangChain framework. I explain the core concepts and how LangChain can be used for building applications powered by LLMs like OpenAI's GPT models.

Next I explored the concept of "Models" in LangChain, covering LLMs, Chat Models, and Text Embedding Models.

I plan to explore each module in depth over the coming weeks.

3 Stories

This story about Google is fascinating. Apparently, a memo from an internal researcher was leaked and inside was a scathing review of how Google was handling the AI race.

Quote from the memo:

💬

But the uncomfortable truth is, we aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While we’ve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch.

I’m talking, of course, about open source. Plainly put, they are lapping us. Things we consider “major open problems” are solved and in people’s hands today.

From the outside, I believe this is great news. It reveals that it may be harder for a single company to "take it all" and that the power of LLMs is not limited to massive corporations. Perhaps this core technology will be as open as the internet, benefiting everyone equally. Read the full text at the link below.

While Google strays further behind, Microsoft has surprisingly taken a strong position in the race. Investing early in OpenAI and releasing their Bing AI product it is clear they are heavily invested in making AI a key feature of the brand. Their most recent announcement is opening up Bing AI to the public and adding key features including:

Adding image and video answers instead of just text
Saving conversations in a chat history (before the chats just disappeared), and allowing you to continue past chats
Opening up to developers to create plugins that integrate into the chat interface - just like the OpenAI plugins

I am very impressed by how quick Microsoft has been moving in this space (especially how well they recovered from some serious mishaps with "Sydney" early on). I encourage you to give Bing AI a try if you haven't yet.

‼️ Baby AGIs interacting in the real world via phone 🤖

With @LangChainAI agents x @vocodehq, you can now execute arbitrary tasks using phone calls 🤯

Most of the world is not accessible via API – but they do have phone numbers

Watch me order a pizza (source code below) pic.twitter.com/f6PEk7O4fO
— vocode (YC W23) (@vocodehq) May 1, 2023

This last one I love. Using LangChain and vocode (an open-source library that lets you add LLM voice capabilities to phone calls and video chats), the vocode team built a chain that could "theoretically" order a pizza. They didn't do it, which is disappointing, but demonstrated the potential.

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Till next time,
David Gentile