2024: An AI Year in Review

Welcome to this week's edition of FutureOrg AI, your go-to source for the latest in AI developments affecting the business world. Grab your coffee or drink (for happy hour) and let's dive into some exciting news!

INSIDE THIS WEEK:

🌏 COVER STORY

A YEAR IN REVIEW - WHAT A WATERSHED YEAR

Unless you've been living under a rock, 2024 has been a watershed year for AI. Here's what shook the industry:

JANUARY

A wave of AI-powered search competitors emerged to challenge Google's long-standing dominance. Perplexity AI secured $73.6 million in Series B funding, showcasing the growing investor confidence in alternative search technologies. Meanwhile, the presidential primary season opened with concerning developments in AI-generated disinformation, as fake robocalls using President Biden's voice attempted to suppress voter turnout in New Hampshire.

FEBRUARY

Google made significant moves in the AI space, rebranding its chatbot Bard as Gemini and launching Gemini Advanced, powered by a new foundation model. OpenAI unveiled Sora, a sophisticated text-to-video model, marking a significant advancement in multimodal AI capabilities.

MARCH

The European Parliament passed the landmark EU AI Act, establishing the first comprehensive regulatory framework for artificial intelligence systems. The legislation emphasizes responsible AI use and data privacy. At Nvidia's GTC conference, the chip giant unveiled its new Blackwell AI chip design, promising enhanced computing power and efficiency. Meanwhile, Microsoft faced scrutiny when AI safety whistleblower Shane Jones raised concerns about the company's Copilot Designer product.

APRIL

Meta’s released  Llama, Meta Llama 3. This release features pretrained and instruction-fine-tuned language models with 8B and 70B parameters that can support a broad range of use cases. This is one of the first major open source LLM from a major tech company.

The music industry joined the growing pushback against AI training practices, with artists issuing an open letter to AI vendors over unauthorized use of their work.

MAY

Google Deepmind’s AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of all of life’s molecules. This is a big deal. By accurately predicting the structure of proteins, DNA, RNA, ligands and more, and how they interact, it will transform our understanding of the biological world and drug discovery.

OpenAI released GPT-4o, an advanced multimodal language model designed for improved speed and reduced costs. The company also introduced a deepfake detector, though access remained limited to select researchers.

JUNE

At Computex 2024, major chipmakers including AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm showcased their latest AI innovations, highlighting the intensifying competition in the hardware sector.

JULY

OpenAI expanded its presence in the search market with an early prototype of SearchGPT, developed in partnership with publishers like Newsmax and Condé Nast. The company also released GPT-4o mini, joining the trend toward smaller, more efficient language models.

AUGUST

The EU AI Act came into force, initiating a tiered implementation timeline. Salesforce entered the AI agent market with Agentforce, a platform for building custom AI agents. Security vendor Pindrop launched a tool to identify AI-generated speech, addressing growing concerns about deepfake audio.

SEPTEMBER

OpenAI introduced its o1 series of reasoning models and announced plans to restructure as a for-profit entity. Microsoft implemented new safety tools for its generative AI products, while Oracle launched over 50 AI agents for business process automation.

OCTOBER

Meta announced plans to develop an AI-powered search engine with generated summaries. The New York Times intensified its stance against unauthorized AI training, sending a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity AI.

NOVEMBER

OpenAI's SearchGPT was publicly released as ChatGPT Search. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed that production of the Blackwell chip was proceeding at full capacity, despite earlier concerns about potential overheating issues.

DECEMBER

The AI Summit New York highlighted the growing interest in AI agents, while maintaining a cautious approach to their deployment. OpenAI released Sora Turbo, a faster version of its text-to-video model, to the general public. Google concluded the year with the release of Google Agentspace, its AI agent tool, following the launch of Gemini 2.0.

The future of banking and lending isn't just digital - it's conversational

🚀 "What if your bank's most effective collections agent never sleeps, never takes breaks, and handles 1000x more calls than humans?"

The future of banking and lending isn't just digital - it's conversational.

Meet the new era of AI voice agents that understand natural language just like humans do.

Gone are the days of shouting "REPRESENTATIVE!" at your phone.

No more "Press 1 for English... press 2 to hear these options again... press 3 to lose your sanity." 😉

These AI agents understand your local slang and creative vocabulary. They're like that friend who gets your jokes, except this one is really good at collecting payments.

Having conducted deep tech research in AI speech recognition and synthesis at UCLA since 2008, I've seen a quantum leap in capability.

For banks and lending institutions, this means:
• Dramatically reduced operational costs
• 24/7 payment collection capability
• Consistent brand voice across all calls
• Higher success rates in collections
• Zero reliance on third-party agencies

The real power? Scale. While human agents handle 50-60 calls daily, AI agents manage thousands - without fatigue or quality drop.

👇 Watch the live demo videos below. You won't believe they're not human!

Dear Readers,

As we close out the year, we want to take a moment to express our heartfelt thanks to each of you for being a part of our community. Your curiosity, engagement, and support have made this year truly special.

It’s been an exciting journey through the ever-evolving world of AI and tech, and we’re grateful to have shared it with such an insightful and passionate group of readers. We look forward to continuing to explore new ideas, trends, and innovations together in the year ahead.

Wishing you a joyful and restful holiday season, and a new year full of inspiration and discovery!

With gratitude,

Cho-Nan Tsai

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