Innovation Dinners & Events | GPT4o | Dating with AI | Humanoids | 3D worlds

Hello, Lovely innovators, Trailblazers, and Forward thinkers,

BAM! Welcome to the NEVER NORMAL!
What a crazy week it is already.

Monday. We successfully launched the Innovation Network Meetup!

The first edition took place at 3eality in Eindhoven, and judging by it’s success there are many more to come! For those of you that were there, thanks again!

With those who stayed, we watched OpenAi launch GPT4o at the Afterparty… and boy, oh boy, was it impressive… more on GPT4o in Aragorn’s article on that.

Obviously, we couldn’t wait to try it out, Aragorn did, and he posted a funny video of it on his LinkedIn.

Today, we’re also officially Launching our Innovation Dinner Trailer. All of you are obviously invited, but personal invitations will follow!

Limited spots, though, at 20 seats per dinner.
So be quick, but don’t worry, more dinners will follow!

In the brainstorm video, we had a very long chat about A.I. and the future of dating. This was inspired by an interview with Whitney Herde Wolfe, CEO of Bumble. Initially Aragorn was going to write an article on it, but he wasn’t able to finish that in time, so you can watch the video, and the article will follow in a future edition of the newsletter.

Humanoid Robots also continue their march; check out what Patrick had to say on the matter. We want to show you the newest update on Skybox, and finally, we have a book tip!

As always you can also watch the recording of how we brainstormed and put this newsletter together, the video is at the bottom of the letter!

Without further ado, enjoy this edition of the Innovation Letter!

Warm regards,

Aragorn & Patrick

Introducing: Innovation Dinner / June 12th
Save your seats!

Our first event was a big success and we loved it. But we are already working on the next one: AN EXCLUSIVE INNOVATION DINNER

This one is different. Sure, we aim to delve into the depths of tomorrow’s technology, but now we do it in a very intimate setting with selected thought leaders and pioneers, accompanied by an exquisite meal and handpicked wines. Together, we will unravel the threads of impending innovations and the expansive opportunities they promise.

We kick off with some drinks & bites in the sun at the terrace of Proeflokaal in Katendrecht (Rotterdam the Netherlands). At around 18:00 we will sit down for a fantastic 5-course dinner. 3-parts wonderful food, and 2-parts mind-blowing talk and discussion. Somewhere between 21:00 and 22:00 we wrap it up with dessert and will send you home levelled up!

Some people in the network found the magic combo: buy two tickets! One for yourself and the other one to treat your dearest customer or team member. Spoil them while captivating them. Give them a great evening and a clear vision for action!

Our first Meetup was a Smashing Success!

And WOW what a day it was. We had about 50 innovation network experts and members in the AI centre of the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven. Look at those happy faces.

What did we do? We talked about the best possible future, we shared insights and thoughts and we networked with great people. We kicked things off with a short introduction of Innovation Network by Chiara, Aragorn and Patrick.

Then we split into groups and discussed statements like “According to the WEF, within 2 years, 90 million jobs will disappear due to AI and Robotics across all industries.” and “Organisations that don’t innovate or don't know how to will no longer exist in five years.” Spoiler alert: Our groups had some pretty epic debates and brainstormed potential strategies for survival. Sorry, I mean, success.

After all that brainpower flexing, we enjoyed some well-deserved drinks. With most people having gotten to know each other during the roundtables, it was a fantastic networking opportunity. Business cards were exchanged, LinkedIn connections were made, and who knows - maybe that 1B AI company was among us

We wrapped up the day with the OpenAI spring release on the big screen, where we all enjoyed the GPT4o introduction together. Imagine a room full of AI enthusiasts watching OpenAI nerds solve a math riddle via a chatbot

A fantastic day.

Will we do this again? Oh YES absolutely! Stay tuned for more AI-infused fun!

Living in the Never Normal: GPT4o, VEO & Gemini Agents

Just two days ago, OpenAI released GPT-4.0. Many of you, like me, probably experienced that launch event with high expectations, only to feel slightly disappointed when we realized it wasn't GPT-5. I even made a video about this and posted it on LinkedIn. Initially, I was disappointed.

We were all expecting GPT-5, or at least hoping for it. This expectation was fueled by the recent release of the mysterious GPT-2 chatbot, available online at chat.lmsys.org. The point is, we were all expecting GPT-5, so when it turned out to be GPT-4.0 at the start of the live stream, many of us were a bit disappointed. But when you look at what was actually released, it's really quite impressive….

The Article dives into what GPT4o offers, and also covers the most important highlights of Google’s IO announcements from tuesday, including VEO! Which you can check out in the video below.

Keep Reading the FULL article on Linkedin

Optimus Speeds Ahead in Humanoid Robot Race

There’s a new Optimus video, the general purpose humanoid robot from Tesla. The video seems to be showing some kind of training facility where Optimus robots are guided towards a variety of tasks such as body movement, picking up objects and storing them in containers and taking a stroll through the office in its typical Biden imitation.

Optimus is not alone. Amazon currently has more than 750.000 robots operational in their warehouses, one of which is Digit. Boston Dynamics has upgraded Atlas. Sanctuary unveils Phoenix and earlier we wrote about Figure 01 which is ChatGPT in a robot body.

It’s obvious. The march of the machine has a huge new chapter: bi-pedal humanoid robots, equipped with LLM and exponential self learning capabilities. Tesla's AI experts have designed a special neural network that allows Optimus to learn from its experiences without needing any code. Tesla’s key advantages is that they are designing and building Optimus in-house and will hugely benefit from such a workforce in all their endeavours.

Blockade labs releases v3 of Skybox

In our keynotes we talk about how quickly AI can generate 3D environments. When Matthew Ball released his book “The Metaverse” in the summer of 2022 he argued that developers were the biggest obstacle for creating 3D worlds. Flash forward to today. Only 2 years later and AI can generate way more than we thought it would.

Skybox AI from Blockade labs has just released model 3 and it’s worth a peek. With Skybox you can use a prompt to create 3D worlds and scenes in different styles, ranging from realistic to comic to fantasy and artistic and more. The update has native 8K resolution (8192x4096 pixels). It’s a 77% increase in pixels over v2. And it’s free to play with (for a while). Check it out.

The Future of… Dating & AI

Right off the bat, we recommend that you watch the Netflix series “The Future of…” which includes an episode on dating.

Last week Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Bumble, spoke on her vision for the Future of Dating.. and how she things A.I. will play an important part in that future.

How Bumble Will Use AI to Create Healthier Relationships (youtube.com)

Obviously, her vision wasn’t nearly radical or exponential enough for Aragorn, but an article on it will have to wait for a later time.

In the meantime though, we wanted to share with you this interesting paper published in Nature on the impact of GPT-3 level Chatbots on the mental health of suicidal students.

Book Tip: God Human Animal Machine

Our reading tip for this month is “God Human Animal Machine” from Meghan O’Gieblyn. It’s an extremely thought provoking book where Meghan, a former religious believer, dives deep in a wide range of philosophical perspectives to explore what it means to be human in a world increasingly intertwined with machines.

She opens with a lingering quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein:

One of the most misleading representational techniques in our languages is the use of the word “L”.

And with that she embarks on a journey to investigate the nature of consciousness in the light of advanced technology such as AI. Many great philosophers, scientists and futurists are integrated in entertaining stories with personal anecdotes keeping a great balance between readability and depth.

A must-read for innovators and anyone interested in the future of technology.

Newsletter full video recording