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I’ll be at PLA next week (April 4-5)

Memory Care Initiative for Libraries at PLA with Brian Pichman, Stephen Abram, and Bruce Barnet

We are excited to be hosting a booth at PLA in Columbus, Ohio from April 3rd to 5th, 2024. Our booth number is Tabletop 8 in the Greater Columbus Convention Center.  We will introduce our suite of free resources developed in collaboration with MindCare, dedicated to supporting memory care in public library settings. Our focus is on enhancing the quality of life for individuals with memory issues such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, and aphasia, and providing comprehensive support for caregivers and library staff.

Here’s our website: https://www.mindcarestore.com/Libraries

We have been astounded that every time we talk about this initiative, in our year of research and engagement activities (including ALA 2023), everyone shares an emotional personal story and experience.  This comes from their hearts and caring for their communities, friends, and families.  This can be one of the fastest growing audiences in public library communities and beyond given the unfortunate increasing aging in our society.  Our journey has really motivated us as we developed these resources.

Here’s our Blog: Memory Care Library Blog: Resources and Tips for Libraries

Add it to your RSS feeds to get daily, digestible tips and ideas appropriate for staff and community to address Alzheimer’s, dementia, aphasia,, with memory care support for caregivers, residents, and partnerships with seniors nursing home, community centers, or residences. You can also visit it to see postings from January 2024 forward.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Stephen, Brian, and Bruce

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Posted on: March 28, 2024, 2:35 pm Category: Uncategorized

Amazon fights OpenAI with $4B Anthropic funding 

Via AI Tool Report

Amazon fights OpenAI with $4B Anthropic funding

Anthropic and Amazon logos
“Our Report: Following its $1.25B investment in September, Amazon has invested a further $2.75B in Anthropic (co-founded by ex-OpenAI engineers), which has just released Claude 3, reportedly more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4, outperforming both on industry benchmark tests.
 Key Points:
  • This brings Amazon’s Anthropic investment to $4B (their biggest-ever outside investment), and although they’ll maintain a minority stake, they won’t have a seat on the board.
  • Under the deal, Anthropic will use AWS as its primary cloud provider and Amazon’s chips for “mission-critical work” including safety research and future models.
  • Anthropic has closed five funding deals over the past year (including $500M from Google, with a commitment to increase to $2B) taking its total funding amount to $7.3B.
 Why you should care: Amazon’s $4B investment in Anthropic will no doubt raise alarm bells with US antitrust regulators following investigations into big tech investments in start-ups (like Microsoft’s $10B investment in OpenAI) to ensure fair competition.”

 

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Posted on: March 28, 2024, 11:59 am Category: Uncategorized

Hume Raises $50M Series B and Releases New Empathic Voice Interface

Hume Raises $50M Series B and Releases New Empathic Voice Interface

https://www.hume.ai/blog/series-b-evi-announcement?

“Hume AI shocked Twitter with EVI. Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) is a conversational AI with emotional intelligence. It understands your tone of voice and emotions to tune its own language and speech.

Our Summary

Hume AI previewed a new chatbot called EVI. EVI standing for empathic voice interface is a conversational AI that understands the tone of your voice and then adjusts his language and speech based on that.
What is going on here?
Hume AI’s new demo of an empathic chatbot is the next surprise in AI.
What does this mean?
First off, you have to try EVI to get a real sense of what capturing emotion from voice looks like. But still to give you a quick brief, here’s how EVI makes interacting with AI using voice much better.
  1. It responds with human-like tones of voice based on your expressions.
  2. Reacts to your expressions with language that addresses your needs and maximizes satisfaction.
  3. EVI knows when to speak because it uses your tone of voice for state-of-the-art end-of-turn detection.
  4. It stops when interrupted, but can always pick up where it left off.
  5. It can notice your reaction to its responses and self-improve over time.
EVI’s in a preview right now but devs can apply for early access to the API. Hume also raised a $50M series B.
Why should I care?
2023 was the year of chat. 2024 and beyond will have a voice as a big part. But who wants to listen to that robotic voice from AI chatbots? The current AI voices might sound like a human but they lose the nuance when speaking long-form text.
Hume is trying to solve that with EVI. If it can, imagine many more AI therapy and AI relationship tools coming up soon. One interesting idea away from these can be “speech practice”—using the little markers that show emotions present in your voice to create a public speaking coach.”
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Posted on: March 28, 2024, 10:53 am Category: Uncategorized

Claude 3 dethrones GPT-4

Via The Rundown AI

ANTHROPIC CLAUDE

Claude 3 dethrones GPT-4

Image source: Screenshot via LMSYS Chatbot Arena
“The Rundown: Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus model has surpassed OpenAI’s GPT-4 for the first time on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena leaderboard.
The details:
  • The LMSYS Chatbot Arena is a crowdsourced platform used by AI researchers to gauge the relative capabilities of AI language models.
  • GPT-4 models have consistently topped the Chatbot Arena charts since the leaderboard’s launch in May 2023.
  • Claude 3’s rise showcases growing competition in the LLM space, with many already replacing ChatGPT with Claude 3 in their daily workflows.
  • OpenAI is expected to release a major successor to GPT-4 Turbo (potentially GPT-4.5 or GPT-5) sometime this year.
Why it matters: Claude 3’s ascent is a pretty significant milestone in the rapidly evolving LLM landscape. As competitors like Anthropic and Google continue to gain ground with increasingly capable models — the pressure is on for OpenAI to respond with the next groundbreaking release.”
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Posted on: March 28, 2024, 10:51 am Category: Uncategorized

The Eclipse Is Great for Learning. But It’s Tough on School Logistics

The Eclipse Is Great for Learning. But It’s Tough on School Logistics

Safety concerns have led some districts to cancel school April 8

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/the-eclipse-is-great-for-learning-but-its-tough-on-school-logistics/2024/03

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Posted on: March 28, 2024, 9:13 am Category: Uncategorized

DIY Ideas for Safe Eclipse Viewing (Downloadable)

DIY Ideas for Safe Eclipse Viewing (Downloadable)

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Posted on: March 28, 2024, 9:11 am Category: Uncategorized

European Parliament Report: Artificial intelligence [What Think Tanks are thinking]

Artificial intelligence [What Think Tanks are thinking]

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BRI(2024)760389

Briefing 27-03-2024

“The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act moved close to final adoption when the European Parliament voted in favour of the text on 13 March. It will become law after the final endorsement of the Council of the European Union, making the Union the first major world power to adopt horizontal legislation governing AI. The act defines the rules for using and selling artificial intelligence systems in the EU, and regulates general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT and AI-based biometric surveillance. It also requires much more transparency than up to now in high-risk AI systems, and delineates unacceptable risks of AI. This note offers links to recent reports and commentaries from some major international think tanks and research institutes on artificial intelligence. More publications on the topic can be found in a previous edition of What think tanks are thinking.”

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Posted on: March 28, 2024, 9:10 am Category: Uncategorized