#204 - OpenAI Audio, Rubin GPUs, MCP, Zochi

Our 204th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 03/21/2025

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris.
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/.

Join our Discord here! https://discord.gg/nTyezGSKwP

In this episode:

• Baidu launched two new multimodal models, Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1, boasting competitive pricing and capabilities compared to Western counterparts like GPT-4.5 and DeepSeek R1.
• OpenAI introduced new audio models, including impressive speech-to-text and text-to-speech systems, and added O1 Pro to their developer API at high costs, reflecting efforts for more profitability.
• Nvidia and Apple announced significant hardware advancements, including Nvidia's future GPU plans and Apple's new Mac Studio offering that can run DeepSeek R1.
• DeepSeek employees are facing travel restrictions, suggesting China is treating its AI development with increased secrecy and urgency, emphasizing a wartime footing in AI competition.

Timestamps + Links:

• (00:00:00) Intro / Banter
• (00:01:36) News Preview
• Tools & Apps

• • (00:02:50) Baidu launches two new versions of its AI model Ernie
  • (00:10:46) OpenAI Unveils New Audio Models to Make AI Agents Sound More Human Than Ever
  • (00:16:41) OpenAI’s o1-pro is the company’s most expensive AI model yet
  • (00:20:53) Google brings a ‘canvas’ feature to Gemini, plus Audio Overview
  • (00:22:18) Anthropic adds web search to its Claude chatbot
  • (00:23:55) xAI launches an API for generating images

• Applications & Business

• • (00:26:28) Nvidia announces Rubin GPUs in 2026, Rubin Ultra in 2027, Feynman also added to roadmap
  • (00:36:25) M3 Ultra Runs DeepSeek R1 With 671 Billion Parameters Using 448GB Of Unified Memory, Delivering High Bandwidth Performance At Under 200W Power Consumption, With No Need For A Multi-GPU Setup
  • (00:40:07) Intel reaches 'exciting milestone' for 18A 1.8nm-class wafers with first run at Arizona fab
  • (00:42:45) Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, acquires a generative AI video startup
  • (00:44:44) Tencent Reportedly Makes Massive NVIDIA H20 Chip Purchase for WeChat’s DeepSeek Integration

• Projects & Open Source

• • (00:46:32) Anthropic’s Not-So-Secret Weapon That’s Giving Agents a Boost
  • (00:50:50) Mistral AI drops new open-source model that outperforms GPT-4o Mini with fraction of parameters
  • (00:53:30) EXAONE Deep: Reasoning Enhanced Language Models

• Research & Advancements

• • (00:55:58) Sample, Scrutinize and Scale: Effective Inference-Time Search by Scaling Verification
  • (01:07:44) Block Diffusion: Interpolating Between Autoregressive and Diffusion Language Models
  • (01:12:27) Communication-Efficient Language Model Training Scales Reliably and Robustly: Scaling Laws for DiLoCo
  • (01:18:46) Transformers without Normalization
  • (01:19:52) Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks
  • (01:26:12) HCAST: Human-Calibrated Autonomy Software Tasks

• Policy & Safety

• • (01:26:45) Announcing Zochi, an Intology Project
  • (01:32:46) DeepSeek, a National Treasure in China, is Now Being Closely Guarded
  • (01:37:02) Claude Sonnet 3.7 (often) knows when it’s in alignment evaluations

• Synthetic Media & Art

• • (01:42:27) US appeals court rejects copyrights for AI-generated art lacking 'human' creator
  • (01:45:10) Trump urged by Ben Stiller, Paul McCartney and hundreds of stars to protect AI copyright rules