Happy Monday! I spent this week keeping up with the latest AI / tech releases and updates so you don't have to. Here are the 4 things I found most interesting.
The White House finalized a framework that hands the government up to 30 days of early access to frontier AI models before they launch.
On August 3 the administration locked in a voluntary safety framework, then briefed OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Microsoft on it behind closed doors the next day. Closed-source frontier models would go to the government for up to 30 days of cybersecurity testing before public release. Open-weight models are exempt, and the exact thresholds for which models get reviewed are being kept classified.
My take: I don't like that the White House is like the authority here, as these models affect the whole world. In theory it's a good thing tho, but we won't know what goes on.
xAI shipped a Grok voice model that talks back in real time, no typing required.
On August 5, xAI rolled out grok-voice-think-fast-2.0, a speech-to-speech model that listens and replies out loud with barely any lag, and made it the default for anyone using Grok's voice mode. It's Elon's push to make talking to Grok feel like an actual conversation instead of a walkie-talkie.
My take: I didn't test this out myself, but if it actually holds up it's amazing. Voice models all feel like a turn-based game to me, and I can't get behind that feeling. An actual real-time model would be goated.
ChatGPT crossed 1 billion weekly users, more than doubling in a year.
Around August 6, OpenAI confirmed ChatGPT now has over 1 billion weekly active users, up from 400 million a year ago. That's roughly one in eight people on earth opening it every week, which makes it one of the fastest-growing products in history.
My take: No surprise here, even my mom started to use ChatGPT. It's actually wild when you think about it. Other than the social media apps and WhatsApp, there hasn't really been an app to get this big. I mean, labeling GPT as an "app" isn't fair either, but yeah.
Jeff Dean is leaving Google after 27 years to start his own AI company.
On August 5, Google's chief scientist Jeff Dean, along with Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le, announced they're leaving to found Discovery Loop, a startup built to automate the research loop itself: proposing experiments, running them, and refining from the results. These are some of the biggest names behind Google's entire AI stack, and Google is even backing the new venture as an investor.
My take: I'm wondering who's gonna replace them. Also, I saw a screenshot of Jeff Dean's work laptop. Hard to imagine all the memories it holds.
Those were the biggest AI updates on my radar this week.
On My Mind
Most of us live life in stages. You get into school, then your favorite uni, then you graduate, then you land the dream job, and so on. We get so used to these big wins that we disregard the small things. And there's only so many big wins to chase before you run out, which most people do once they settle into the rat-race after uni.
I think it's really important to notice the small things. And I mean small: finding a good barber, someone replying to you instantly, waking up refreshed when you'd normally wake up feeling like you got into a fight. These little things that make your life a tiny bit better are what keep you going.
Big wins are great, but they go stale way too fast. You earn 10k in a month, amazing! Now it's the norm, and the months you don't hit it you feel bad. You land the dream job? Incredible! Now all your time gets consumed by it and the hype fades in a few months. It's just your "job" now after all.
I'm not rich in any way, but I think this is what people mean when they say "money can't buy happiness." It sounds outrageous to most since almost every common problem is tied to money. But once those get solved, then what? You'll just come up with a ton of new ones.
I rambled a bit, but what I'm trying to say is: chase the big goals, but also notice the small things that give you tiny bits of dopamine. As you grow up, you realize life isn't a game with milestones. You decide how you want to live, and how you want to experience it.
More from me!
My latest post: I shared 5 AI/ML coding projects you can build this week, each with a YouTube tutorial to follow along. Check it out!
Tool of the week: The voice tool I use every day to prompt AI (it's free and works on mobile too). Just clicking the link supports me! :)
10x the context. Half the time.
Speak your prompts into ChatGPT or Claude and get detailed, paste-ready input that actually gives you useful output. Wispr Flow captures what you'd cut when typing. Free on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.
Have a great week, take care of yourself!
Volkan