AN AMERICAN MOMENT
On the seventh day of OpenAI's 12 Days extravaganza, ChatGPT is finally adopting a project from Claude that has been sorely missing — projects. This will allow users to group chats and data, making it easier to tailor ChatGPT to your needs. Every weekday until December 20 the AI lab is making at least one product, service or feature announcement. It is safe to say it has been a mixed bag so far. We've had Sora, ChatGPT Canvas, o1, Advanced Voice and several "stocking stuffers." ChatGPT Projects is available globally from today but it is being slowly rolled out, so some users may have to wait a while. They started the rollout during the live stream in lieu of a terrible Christmas joke. OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil led the Projects announcement live along with Drew Schuster, and Thomas Dimson who joined OpenAI when the AI lab acquired Global Illuminations. Projects is a feature I've been waiting for in ChatGPT. It is one of the main things that keeps pulling me back to Claude. I can, for example, share a dozen notes and files on a novel I'm writing and every new chat within the project can access that data. I don't need to keep sharing documents each time I start a session. ChatGPT Projects lets you group anything available within ChatGPT together including your custom data, conversations, GPTs and simple chats. Every chat within that project can access any information within the project, or you can just use the project like a folder to group together similar chats. You can use any ChatGPT feature including SearchGPT, Canvas and coding. During the demo, OpenAI showed the ability to start a chat from within the project, as well as adding files and even tagging in existing chats. One example use case of a project is to organize a Secret Santa. This allowed for the upload of rules, budget and a spreadsheet with a list of who gets what. Within this you can also give ChatGPT specific instructions just for that project, overriding the main instructions you might have given to ChatGPT generally. Within an individual chat you can ask the AI to pull in data stored within the chat and even have it adapt the data or create new tables based on the data. One word of warning from the demo — be specific. If you ask ChatGPT to write an email based on data it could include 'secret' details of who wants what for Christmas. Another example shown during the 12 Days live stream involved coding a personal website. You can give it custom instructions on the technology you want to use as well as content you want included — and ChatGPT can build the website. You'll still need to find a way to host it yourself though. 12 Days of OpenAI: The biggest announcements
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Stock market today: Wall Street slips at the end of a bumpy weekA 7-year-old rivalry between tech leaders Elon Musk and Sam Altman over who should run OpenAI and prevent an artificial intelligence "dictatorship" is now heading to a federal judge as Musk seeks to halt the ChatGPT maker's ongoing shift into a for-profit company. Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging it had betrayed its founding aims as a nonprofit research lab benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits. Musk has since escalated the dispute, adding new claims and asking for a court order that would stop OpenAI’s plans to convert itself into a for-profit business more fully. The world's richest man, whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and social media platform X, last year started his own rival AI company, xAI. Musk says it faces unfair competition from OpenAI and its close business partner Microsoft, which has supplied the huge computing resources needed to build AI systems such as ChatGPT. “OpenAI and Microsoft together exploiting Musk’s donations so they can build a for-profit monopoly, one now specifically targeting xAI, is just too much,” says Musk's filing that alleges the companies are violating the terms of Musk’s foundational contributions to the charity. OpenAI is filing a response Friday opposing Musk’s requested order, saying it would cripple OpenAI’s business and mission to the advantage of Musk and his own AI company. A hearing is set for January before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland. At the heart of the dispute is a 2017 internal power struggle at the fledgling startup that led to Altman becoming OpenAI's CEO. Musk also wanted the job, according to emails revealed as part of the court case, but grew frustrated after two other OpenAI co-founders said he would hold too much power as a major shareholder and chief executive if the startup succeeded in its goal to achieve better-than-human AI known as artificial general intelligence , or AGI. Musk has long voiced concerns about how advanced forms of AI could threaten humanity. “The current structure provides you with a path where you end up with unilateral absolute control over the AGI," said a 2017 email to Musk from co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman. “You stated that you don't want to control the final AGI, but during this negotiation, you've shown to us that absolute control is extremely important to you.” In the same email, titled “Honest Thoughts,” Sutskever and Brockman also voiced concerns about Altman's desire to be CEO and whether he was motivated by “political goals.” Altman eventually succeeded in becoming CEO, and has remained so except for a period last year when he was fired and then reinstated days later after the board that ousted him was replaced. OpenAI published the messages Friday in a blog post meant to show its side of the story, particularly Musk's early support for the idea of making OpenAI a for-profit business so it could raise money for the hardware and computer power that AI needs. It was Musk, through his wealth manager Jared Birchall, who first registered “Open Artificial Technologies Technologies, Inc.”, a public benefit corporation, in September 2017. Then came the “Honest Thoughts” email that Musk described as the “final straw.” “Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a nonprofit,” Musk wrote back. OpenAI said Musk later proposed merging the startup into Tesla before resigning as the co-chair of OpenAI's board in early 2018. Musk didn't immediately respond to emailed requests for comment sent to his companies Friday. Asked about his frayed relationship with Musk at a New York Times conference last week, Altman said he felt “tremendously sad” but also characterized Musk’s legal fight as one about business competition. “He’s a competitor and we’re doing well,” Altman said. He also said at the conference that he is “not that worried” about the Tesla CEO’s influence with President-elect Donald Trump. OpenAI said Friday that Altman plans to make a $1 million personal donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, joining a number of tech companies and executives who are working to improve their relationships with the incoming administration. —————————— The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.A Tribute to Atal Ji, Statesman Who Shaped India with His vision