World's first AI software engineer 🤖

Happy Sunday! Welcome to another edition of Lightway.

Earlier this month, NVIDIA CEO Jansen Huang predicted software engineering would soon become automated.

Less than 2 weeks later, a startup showcased an “AI Software Engineer” - an AI capable of creating software engineering projects - from planning, coding, testing and even dev-ops!

Moving on, here’s your weekly Tech roundup. Reading time in 3 minutes.

Highlights of the week

Meet Devin - the world’s first AI Software Engineer

In a first, Cognition-Labs released an “AI software engineer”, Devin, that can autonomously complete software engineering tasks.

Unlike other coding chatbots, Devin can complete entire projects independently by learning from the internet and can debug problems without human intervention.

In a demo, Devin created a virtual ping-pong game and hosted it on website in under 20 minutes. (read more)

Robots can now learn like humans

A new AI model allows robots to learn like humans. Developed by Covariant, a spinoff from OpenAI, the AI model blends large language model (LLM) smarts with unparalleled robotic finesse.

The AI model, RFM-1, is trained on diverse inputs—from Covariant’s robotic fleet to the vast expanses of internet data. Whether it's text, images, or videos, RFM-1 grasps and executes tasks with ease.

The AI model helps robots to learn continuously, evolve and adapt seamlessly. (read more)

Figure 01: Robot with ChatGPT integrated

ChatGPT gets a body. A robotics startup, Figure, unveiled the first version of their humanoid-robot with ChatGPT integrated.

Figure 01 is capable of holding conversations, planning, executing actions, and interpreting its environment through a multimodal model from OpenAI. (watch video)

 Tech Roundup

→ World’s fastest AI chip: AI start-up, Cerebras Systems, unveils the “world’s fastest” AI chip featuring 4 trillion transistors and a 50 percent increase in transistor density (link)

→ App store: Apple to allow iOS app downloads direct from websites in the EU (link)

→ Record AI funding in 2023: Venture funding in AI surged to record $50 billion in 2023 (link)

→ CoPilot GPT builder: Microsoft launches CoPilot GPT builder for pro subscribers, allowing users to build custom GPTs (link)

→TikTok building Instagram Competitor: New code leak suggest TikTok might be working on a photo-sharing app (link)

→ TikTok ban?: The US House passed a bill ban TikTok nationwide if its China-based owner doesn’t sell (link)

→ Starship: SpaceX successfully launches Starship in third flight test (link)

→ Apple acquires AI startup: Apple acquires Canada-based DarwinAI, an AI startup focusing on vision-based technology to improve manufacturing component efficiency. (link)

→ Claude Haiku: Anthropic releases affordable, high-speed Claude 3 Haiku model, capable of handling up to 21,000 tokens per second (link)

→ Midjourney Election ban: Midjourney bans prompts with Joe Biden and Donald Trump over election misinformation concerns. (link)

→ Self-driving taxis now available in LA: Waymo's robotaxi service expands into Los Angeles, starting free rides in parts of the city (link)

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