Liquid AI Is Redesigning the Neural Network

Inspired by microscopic worms, Liquid AI’s founders developed a more adaptive, less energy-hungry kind of neural network. Now the MIT spin-off is revealing several new ultra-efficient models.

Oct 24, 2024

Artificial intelligence might now be solving advanced math, performing complex reasoning, and even using personal computers, but today’s algorithms could still learn a thing or two from microscopic worms.

Liquid AI, a startup spun out of MIT, will today reveal several new AI models based on a novel type of “liquid” neural network that has the potential to be more efficient, less power-hungry, and more transparent than the ones that underpin everything from chatbots to image generators to facial recognition systems.

Liquid AI’s new models include one for detecting fraud in financial transactions, another for controlling self-driving cars, and a third for analyzing genetic data. The company touted the new models, which it is licensing to outside companies, at an event held at MIT today. The company has received funding from investors that include Samsung and Shopify, both of which are also testing its technology.

James Cameron: Special Video Message at the SCSP AI+Robotics Summit in D.C.

Attention Just Raised $14 Million In Funding to Analyze Sales Calls With AI

New York-based AI startup Attention, which uses natural language processing to fill out customer relationship management (CRM) programs and generate action items from sales calls, just raised a fresh round of funding.

The startup said that it had secured a $14 million Series A funding round led by French VC firm Alven. Existing investors Eniac, Frst, and Liquid2 Ventures also participated in the funding round, along with 645 Ventures and Aglae. The funds follow a $3.1 million seed round the startup raised when it launched in January 2023.

When Attention founders Anis Bennaceur and Matthias Wickenburg first met, they were building competing startups. At the time, Bennaceur was building Mixer, a career platform for creative professionals, and Wickenburg was working on competitor Swipecast. But they bonded over a shared pain point: sales calls.

Sales calls were a nuisance because "it was hard to know what was happening," Bennaceur told BI, adding that "there was nothing to record calls or transcribe the conversation, so it was hard to get volume out of these conversations." So they forged an alliance and, in 2021, launched Attention to help solve the issue.

Read Attention’s announcement about their AI sales call analyzation tools

Microsoft AI Tour Demo: Copilot Studio and Pre-built Agents | Jared Spataro

Agents draw on the context of your work data in the Microsoft 365 Graph, systems of record, Dataverse, and Fabric, and can support everything from your IT help desk and employee onboarding to acting as a personal concierge for sales and service.

Runway Releases AI Facial Expression Motion Capture Feature, Act-One

AI video has come incredibly far in the years since the first models debuted in late 2022, increasing in realism, resolution, fidelity, prompt adherence (how well they match the text prompt or description of the video that the user typed) and number.

But one area that remains a limitation to many AI video creators — myself included — is in depicting realistic facial expressions in AI generated characters. Most appear quite limited and difficult to control.

But no longer: today, Runway, the New York City-headquartered AI startup backed by Google and others, announced a new feature “Act-One,” that allows users to record video of themselves or actors from any video camera — even the one on a smartphone — and then transfers the subject’s facial expressions to that of an AI generated character with uncanny accuracy. The free-to-use tool is gradually rolling out “gradually” to users starting today, according to Runway’s blog post on the feature.

More about Runway’s new facial expression tools on VentureBeat

Small but Mighty: Efficient AI for Any Device or Application | Meta Llama 3.2

Hear an exciting announcement about the latest release of Llama, featuring a new update that will take AI to the next level. Discover how this new development will unlock unprecedented possibilities for innovation and transformation. Be among the first to learn about the future of AI and how Llama is leading the way.

Ollama Just Made It Easier To Use AI On Your Laptop — With No Internet Required

The free open-source model market just got a whole lot more interesting with the announcement that Ollama can now run HuggingFace GGUF models in an instant.

The GGUF (GPT-Generated Unified Format) model format is a highly optimized file design that was created by the open-source AI community to allow for use on modest-sized consumer hardware.

Typical AI models demand large computers with powerful processors and extreme amounts of memory. By compressing a model into a single GGUF file, it’s easy to download over the internet and can be run on just about any decent home computer. More importantly, they can also be installed and run by non-technical users.

Previously, models had to first be made available through the Ollama library to run and download on your laptop. This makes the whole process easier and HuggingFace says it will work to simplify things even further. It's probably fair to say that the GGUF format has done more to increase the popularity and availability of open-source AI than just about any other recent development, bar the release of the LlaMA family of models from Meta.

More about Ollama’s ability to run connection-free GGUF models

Blackrock Aims to Broaden Investor Access to Artificial Intelligence Stocks

Artificial Intelligence names prove to be "really powerful mega forces" in the markets, according to Jay Jacobs of Blackrock. Jay shares why he believes we're "still early" in the AI race. His firm hopes to broaden access to stocks with the A.I. Innovation & Tech ETF (BAI) and Technology Opportunities Active ETF (TEK).

Thats all for today, however new advancements, investments, and partnerships are happening as you read this. Subscribe today, so you don’t miss any AI related news.