Tesla/X CEO Elon Musk seems to believe that training AI models with solely human-made data is becoming impossible. Musk claims that there’s a growing lack of real-world data with which to train AI models, including his Grok AI chatbot.
“We’ve now exhausted basically the cumulative sum of human knowledge … in AI training,” Musk said during an X live-stream interview conducted by Stagwell chairman Mark Penn. “That happened basically last year.”
Musk’s comments reflect those of former OpenAI researcher Ilya Sutskever, who predicted last December that the AI industry had reached “peak data.” Musk’s solution to this issue — synthetic data — also mirrors the larger industry. Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta already leverage synthetic data to train their models.
“The only way to supplement [real-world data] is with synthetic data, where the AI creates [training data],” Musk said. “With synthetic data … [AI] will sort of grade itself and go through this process of self-learning.”
While the use of synthetic data can offer significant cost savings to companies, some studies suggest that over-reliance on synthetic data can lead to model collapse where the AI’s responses become less creative and more biased over time as they’re repeatedly trained on recursively generated data.
The lack of human-derived data hasn’t stopped X from spinning off its Grok AI feature into its own iOS app on Thursday. The chatbot and image generator, notable for their complete lack of intellectual property or content guardrails, used to only be available to folks shelling out $8 a month for an X premium account. However, the new app is free for anyone to download.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.