The Daily AI Briefing - 17/03/2025

Welcome to The Daily AI Briefing, here are today's headlines! In today's rapidly evolving AI landscape, we're tracking significant developments across multiple fronts. China's Baidu launches ultra-affordable AI models challenging Western competitors, Elon Musk faces a legal setback in his battle with OpenAI, developers get new tools for AI-assisted coding directly in their editors, and Harvard researchers unveil an AI system for personalized medicine. Let's dive into these stories shaping our AI future. First up, China's Baidu has unleashed two remarkably affordable multimodal AI models that could trigger a global AI price war. Their new ERNIE 4.5 model reportedly outperforms GPT-4o across multiple benchmarks while costing just 1% of its price – approximately $0.55 and $2.20 per million input and output tokens. The company also introduced ERNIE X1, their first reasoning model, which matches capabilities of competitor DeepSeek's R1 at half the price. Using a step-by-step "thinking" approach, it excels in complex calculations and document understanding tasks. This aggressive pricing strategy could force Western companies to slash their rates, potentially democratizing access to advanced AI worldwide. We may be witnessing the start of "intelligence too cheap to meter" – a significant shift in the AI landscape. Moving to legal developments, a federal judge has denied Elon Musk's request for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI's structural changes. While fast-tracking the trial for this fall, the judge dismissed several of Musk's claims entirely. Internal emails cited by OpenAI allegedly reveal that Musk once wanted to merge OpenAI into Tesla as a for-profit entity – directly contradicting his current legal position. The lawsuit, filed last year, accuses OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of abandoning their original mission of developing AI for humanity's benefit in favor of corporate profits. OpenAI denies these accusations, maintaining that any restructuring of for-profit subsidiaries will better support their non-profit mission. With OpenAI's rumored $40 billion SoftBank investment contingent on its pivot to a for-profit model, this lawsuit could significantly impact both the company's future and the broader AI landscape. For developers, there's exciting news about coding with AI directly in your preferred editor. ChatGPT's updated macOS app now includes a "Work with Apps" feature enabling seamless integration with code editors. The process is straightforward: install the "openai.chatgpt" extension in your code editor, connect the ChatGPT app to your editor, open any code file, and start making natural language requests to modify or explain your code. After reviewing ChatGPT's suggestions, you can instantly apply changes to your file with a single click. Different ChatGPT models offer varying levels of code expertise, allowing you to choose based on whether you need quick edits or complex refactoring – making AI assistance more accessible than ever for programming tasks. Finally, researchers from Harvard and MIT have introduced TxAgent, an AI system designed for personalized medicine. This innovative agent uses multi-step reasoning and real-time biomedical knowledge retrieval to generate trusted treatment recommendations tailored to individual patients. TxAgent leverages 211 specialized tools to analyze drug interactions and contraindications, evaluating medications at molecular, pharmacokinetic, and clinical levels. The system identifies risks based on patient-specific factors including comorbidities, ongoing medications, age, and genetic factors. By synthesizing evidence from trusted biomedical sources and iteratively refining recommendations through structured function calls, TxAgent represents a significant step toward AI-assisted personalized healthcare solutions. That concludes today's AI Briefing. From China's price-disrupting models to advances in personalized medicine, we're seeing AI reshape industries at an accelera