AI Beat Newsletter: AAIA Toronto 4/17 event, catch the recording of this week’s “AI & Cybersecurity” webinar, and this week’s handpicked stories/reports: ChatGPT can now remember and reference all your previous chats, Kompact AI, developed by Ziroh Labs and IIT Madras, can run AI models without heavy computing chips, The 2025 AI Index Report

In today’s newsletter:

• Recent and upcoming chapter events and other events of note (AAIA Toronto))

• Recent AI news stories that caught our (and Perplexity AI’s!) eye

• Become an AAIA member

AAIA Chapter events and other events of note:

• AAIA Toronto Chapter Casual Meetup

  • Thursday, April 17, 2025, 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM

  • The Applied AI Association (AAIA) Toronto Chapter is hosting its first casual meetup on Thursday, April 17, 2025, from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM at Track & Field Bar, 582 College Street, Toronto. This event offers AI professionals and enthusiasts a chance to network in a relaxed atmosphere while enjoying games like bocce ball and shuffleboard. It’s an excellent opportunity to connect with Toronto’s vibrant AI community, share ideas, and celebrate the local AI ecosystem.

  • 👉 RSVP now and join us for great conversations, games, and good times!

• Watch recordings of recent online events:

  

  AAIA Global Online Event Series:  AI and Cybersecurity: Navigating the Expanding Threat Landscape

  

  AAIA India Chapter online event:  AI in Healthcare - A Panel Discussion

  

  Charlotte, NC, USA Chapter:  Navigating the IP Frontier: Intellectual Property in the Age of AI

• Save the date:

  • STACKxDays, the premier event for senior developers, presented by the VR/AR Association and the Applied AI Association

    • October 28-30, 2025

    • UC San Diego Park & Market

    • STACKxDays is looking for speakers for three different conference tracks:

      • Technical Talks Main Stage: Dive deep into AI & XR projects, case studies, best practices, and workflows

      • Mindset Stage: Inspire with talks on developer well-being, ethics, personal experiences, and the creative process

      • Workshop Leaders & Demos: Lead hands-on sessions and teach new tech stacks (Workshop spaces available for purchase)

      • Ready to share your knowledge and connect with fellow innovators? Apply to speak

      • Interested in purchasing workshop space or exploring sponsorship opportunities? Let us know in your application!

• View the complete AAIA Events calendar

• Have an event you would like to share with AAIA members? Email details to: [email protected].

AI in business and the enterprise news:

Here’s news that caught our and Perplexity’s attention as notable stories over the last week:

• ChatGPT can now remember and reference all your previous chats (Ars Technica, April 10, 2025)

  • “OpenAI today announced a significant expansion of ChatGPT's customization and memory capabilities. For some users, it will now be able to remember information from the full breadth of their prior conversations with it and adjust its responses based on that information.”

• Kompact AI, developed by Ziroh Labs and IIT Madras, can run AI models without heavy computing chips (The Tech Portal, April 10, 2025)

  • “Ziroh Labs, the homegrown AI startup, has developed a new computing platform that claims to reduce reliance on costly and scarce GPUs for running large AI models. The system, called Kompact AI, has been built in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, and is intended to allow advanced AI systems to operate on CPUs found in standard computers.”

• Data trust and the evolution of enterprise analytics in the age of AI (CIO, April 9, 2025)

  • “In 2025, BI dashboards are dead and AI is moving the user experience from query, response and decision support to agent-based planning and execution with validated accuracy, automated process execution, adaptability and business impact. Enterprises are moving past experimentation, enabling specialized tools and systems of intelligence to address challenges at scale. The melding of AI with enterprise analytics is happening now as enterprise data platform vendors like Snowflake and Databricks recognize that they must differentiate beyond data aggregation and cleansing to systems of intelligence that support systems interaction and engagement.”

• The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited (Microsoft podcast series)

  • “In this special Microsoft Research Podcast series, Lee revisits the book, exploring how patients, providers, and other medical professionals are experiencing and using generative AI today while examining what he and his coauthors got right—and what they didn’t foresee.”

• Inside Isomorphic Labs, the secretive AI life sciences startup spun off from Google DeepMind (CNBC, April 9, 2025)

  • “As DeepMind’s chief business officer, Murdoch was tasked with finding business applications for DeepMind’s innovations in AI research. With Isomorphic, Murdoch wanted to zero in on the possibilities of AlphaFold2, an AI system with the capability of predicting the structures of proteins.

    The viral program was developed by DeepMind in 2020 and helped solve a mystery that had flummoxed biologists for 50 years. If applied correctly, it had the potential to find new treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer. The system would go on to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry.

    It also helped Murdoch, and Isomorphic’s founder Demis Hassabis, decide on an ultimate goal: to “solve all disease” through AI-powered drug discovery.”

• Dr Arvind Gupta: Trustworthy systems to empower India’s growing economy (CIO, April 4, 2025)

  • “AI is included in everything from digital assistants in homes to advanced analytics in healthcare and financial services, and it will become our ‘new normal’. Simultaneously, questions around privacy, fairness, and accountability remain as India implements the DPDP Act and sets standards for data protection. A balanced framework, where ethical considerations, transparent data handling, and robust oversight guide development, can help AI implementation flourish without compromising user trust or individual rights.”

• How the U.S. Public and AI Experts View Artificial Intelligence (Pew Research, April 3, 2025)

  • “Experts are far more positive and enthusiastic about AI than the public. For example, the AI experts we surveyed are far more likely than Americans overall to believe AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on the United States over the next 20 years (56% vs. 17%).”

• The 2025 AI Index Report (Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence)

  • Top Takeaways

    • 1. AI performance on demanding benchmarks continues to improve.

      2. AI is increasingly embedded in everyday life.

      3. Business is all in on AI, fueling record investment and usage, as research continues to show strong productivity impacts.

      4. The U.S. still leads in producing top AI models—but China is closing the performance gap.

      5. The responsible AI ecosystem evolves—unevenly.

      6. Global AI optimism is rising—but deep regional divides remain.

      7. AI becomes more efficient, affordable and accessible.

      8. Governments are stepping up on AI—with regulation and investment.

      9. AI and computer science education is expanding—but gaps in access and readiness persist.

      10. Industry is racing ahead in AI—but the frontier is tightening.

      11. AI earns top honors for its impact on science.

      12. Complex reasoning remains a challenge.

  • IEEE Spectrum’s summary of the report (h/t The Neuron, IEEE Spectrum, April 7, 2025)

  • Download the report

• How Google Used AI to Re-Create ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for the Las Vegas Sphere (Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2025)

  • “Showing an 86-year-old movie, shot with a 35mm camera, on a 160,000-square-foot curved, immersive screen initially seemed impossible—even to AI engineers at Google. …To make it work, Google’s enterprise business, Google Cloud, and its research unit, Google DeepMind, invented new AI methods to enhance resolution and extend backgrounds to include characters and scenery not in the original shots. Google calls these techniques “performance generation” and “outpainting.””

• Teachers Using AI To Show Students In Their Dream Jobs (YouTube, April 9, 2025)

  • We promise this will put a smile on your face!

Have a newsworthy story or industry report/insight to share with AAIA members and community? Email details to [email protected].