AI Shocks Again: Microsoft Beats Apple, Spotify's New AI, New Drug with AI, Alienware gets AI!

Spotify just added a cool new AI trick to its app. Now it can make playlists just by listening to what you say. Like, if you want music that makes you feel like a vampire hunter from a movie, you just tell Spotify and it gives you a playlist called Blade's Essence, full of songs that match that feeling. This feature is fresh and still being tested, so only some people can use it. Right now, if you have Spotify Premium and you're in the UK or Australia, you can try it out on your phone. Just go to your music library in the app. You can tap the plus sign, choose AI playlist, and type what kind of music you want. You can ask for things like music for reading on a rainy day or more sad songs, and Spotify will give you a list of 30 songs that fit what you're looking for. You can even say you don't like certain songs and it won't show them again. What's really neat is how specific you can get. You can mix up genres, moods, artists, or even decades. You can mention places, animals, things you do, movie characters, colors, and even use emojis to describe what you want. There are a couple of things it can't do, though. It won't make playlists about news or specific brands, and it won't listen if you ask for something offensive. So far, it's been a lot of fun to use. It's way faster than making a playlist by hand, and it's great for finding new music that fits exactly what you're in the mood for. This might even help Spotify decide to raise its prices later on. Right now, if you're a student, it costs about $6 a month, and for others it's around $11. Spotify is planning to make this feature feature better over the next few months, and they're thinking about when to let more people try it. We're keeping an eye out for updates alright Now Microsoft is gearing up to show off its new AI PCs at an event next month in Seattle, and it's pretty sure that its new laptops powered by ARM chips will be better than Apple's M3 MacBook Air. They think these new laptops will do better at tasks that need a lot of computing power and tasks that use AI. For a long time, Microsoft has been waiting for Qualcomm to make chips good enough to make Windows run well on ARM devices. Now they believe Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite processors are going to be a game changer. These processors will be in many laptops that run Windows and in Microsoft's latest Surface devices made for everyday people Microsoft is really excited about these chips. They're planning to show demos where these new processors work faster than Apple's M3 MacBook Air, especially for tasks that need a lot of CPU power, tasks that use AI, and even running apps that were made for different types of computers. Microsoft has seen problems in the past with making apps work well on ARM devices, but it's been making progress, including making it possible to run apps on Windows 11 that were originally made for different kinds of processors. Besides, Google has just launched a version of Chrome that works well on these new devices. Microsoft has also mentioned that its upcoming Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 will have these new Qualcomm chips, not the usual intel chips for their consumer versions. These new computers are being called Next gen AI copilot PCs by Microsoft. They're supposed to be different from other computers because they can do new AI powered stuff first, like an AI Explorer app that helps you find anything you've ever looked at or done on your computer. Microsoft is also working on making video streaming better on these new ARM powered Windows devices with an AI feature. Plus, these computers will have special effects for video calls and let you create pictures with AI for free. They're even making it possible for the AI to understand the context of what you're doing on your computer to help out more and more. Qualcomm, the company making these new chips, is also feeling good about them. They've shown that these chips can outperform Apple's M2 processor and Intel's latest chips and tests. Microsoft will fully reveal its AI PC plans on May 20, right before its big yearly conference for developers. Inside sources say Microsoft is aiming for a future where every person has an AI copilot, kind of like how they wanted a computer in every home years ago. They're betting big on AI with Windows, hoping that by 2026, half of all new Windows devices will be able to run AI tasks. Keep an eye out for more info in June, right after Microsoft shares more about its AI PC ideas. We will cover all the details from the event on May 20, including updates on new Surface devices and the developers conference. Also, Dell just rolled out their newest laptops with cool AI features. In India, they introduced the XPS 14 and 16, Alienware, M16, R2, Alien and Inspiron 14 Plus. All these laptops are designed to be super fast and efficient, perfect for everyone from gamers to students. The big news is that these laptops use Intel's latest chips that are made to work well with AI. This means they can do some smart things automatically to make your computer run better. Dell's excited because these laptops represent the next big thing in PCs, especially with AI, making them even more helpful and efficient. The Alienware M16 R2 has been updated with feedback from users, focusing on making it powerful yet easy to carry around. It has a new cooling system and a special button to make it quieter, which is great for gamers. The Inspiron 14 plus is all about bringing AI features into a compact and powerful laptop, perfect for creators who need to multitask without slowing down. Prices start from approximately $1,293 when converted from Indian rupees for the Inspiron 14 plus to approximately $3,658 for the XP, and they'll be available from April 25, 2024 at different stores and online@dell.com now. Science has just made another breakthrough with AI. Scientists have figured out how to use AI to make new types of antibiotics from scratch. This breakthrough is happening at a time when bad bacteria and other germs are getting too strong for existing drugs, causing over 4.95 million people to die worldwide in 2019. In the US alone, these super germs cause more than 2.8 million infections and 35,000 deaths every year. Because these germs keep changing and becoming resistant to drugs, finding new antibiotics is super important, but also very hard and expensive. It usually takes 10 to 15 years and about $2.6 billion to make a new drug, and most new drugs never even make it past the final approval stage. Enter AI, specifically a kind of AI called Generative AI, which can create new stuff that never existed before, like pictures, music, or in this case, drug designs. This kind of AI was used by a group of smart people from McMaster and Stanford universities to create a new AI model named Synthomol. This model can think up new drug compounds that could fight off a particularly tough germ called a Cyantobacter baumannae, which is very good at resisting antibiotics. Synthomol works by mixing and matching pieces of molecules in new ways using a huge library of 132,000 possible building blocks. It's like a super complex Lego set for creating molecules which could lead to about 30 billion different combinations. The team focused on making molecules that could be put together easily in the lab, and out of 150 top picks, they managed to make 58. From these they found six new drug candidates that could fight the germ without being harmful to people. This work shows how AI can make it much faster and cheaper to come up with new drugs, giving us hope against diseases that are becoming harder to treat. It's a big deal because it could mean getting new treatments ready quicker or which is super important for keeping us all healthy. All right, don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more updates. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next one. Sam.