Intelligence Almanac

What it is: OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and GPT-4, develops advanced AI models and tools that have transformed how we interact with technology. Their ChatGPT service has become a widely-used AI assistant for writing, analysis, and problem-solving tasks, with over 100 million weekly active users.

What's new: Deep Research, OpenAI's latest tool, brings sophisticated research capabilities to ChatGPT Pro users. It can analyze hundreds of sources simultaneously, synthesizing information from texts, images, and PDFs into comprehensive reports. The system provides detailed citations and explains its reasoning process, powered by OpenAI's new o3 model which excels at complex analytical tasks.

Why it matters: Picture spending days on a literature review that Deep Research could help you draft in minutes. While human expertise remains essential for verification and nuanced understanding, this tool could dramatically accelerate research tasks. At $200 monthly with 100 queries included, it's an accessible way to enhance your research workflow.

Read OpenAI's announcement or related article on The Guardian or Reuters

OpenAI has announced GPT-4.5 (internally known as Orion) as their final non-chain-of-thought model. This release aims to simplify their product offerings and improve user experience by moving away from complex model selection interfaces. The update focuses on creating a more streamlined, unified approach to AI interactions.

Source: Sam Altman on X

Amazon is preparing to unveil a significant evolution of its Alexa assistant at a showcase event in New York City on February 26, 2025. This enhanced version represents Amazon's most ambitious update to the platform since its initial launch, integrating advanced AI capabilities to transform how users interact with their digital environment.

The reimagined Alexa aims to bring more natural, context-aware conversations to homes. Users can expect the assistant to maintain conversation history, enabling more coherent multi-turn dialogues and personalized interactions. Practical enhancements include streamlined service integration for tasks like food ordering and transportation, suggesting a shift toward more seamless daily assistance.

This development marks a strategic move in the evolving AI assistant landscape as major tech companies race to integrate generative AI into their consumer products. The new version is expected to debut through a subscription model, potentially starting with a free trial period to allow users to experience the enhanced capabilities firsthand.

Amazon’s new Alexa has reportedly slipped to 2025“Alexa, when will you be smarter?”The VergeJennifer Pattison Tuohy

Amazon’s revamped Alexa might launch over a month after its announcement eventThe AI-powered Alexa is having accuracy issues.The VergeWes Davis

The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2025 will be held in Singapore from April 24-28, 2025. This marks the thirteenth edition of this premier conference dedicated to deep learning and artificial intelligence research.

Conference Details

Location: Singapore

Key Dates:

• Full Paper Submission Deadline: October 1, 2024
• Financial Assistance Application Deadline: March 2, 2025
• Early Registration Deadline: March 15, 2025

Conference Scope

ICLR focuses on various aspects of deep learning, including:

• Unsupervised, semi-supervised, and supervised representation learning
• Computer vision and natural language processing
• Reinforcement learning
• Theoretical issues in deep learning
• Societal considerations including fairness, safety, and privacy
• Applications in robotics, neuroscience, and biology

ICLR is one of the three primary conferences of high impact in machine learning and artificial intelligence research, alongside NeurIPS and ICML

COGNITIVE 2025 is scheduled to take place from April 6-10, 2025 in Valencia, Spain. This conference represents the seventeenth edition of the International Conference on Advanced Cognitive Technologies and Applications.

Conference Topics

Brain and Cognition

• Brain information processing and informatics
• Human reasoning mechanisms
• Cognitive architectures
• Neural structures and neurobiological processes
• Brain-computer interfaces

Emerging Areas

• Brain connectivity
• Neuromorphic computing
• Brain-like computing
• Neuroscience

Autonomous Systems

• Swarm intelligence and emergent behavior
• Self-organized intelligence
• Complex behavior aggregation
• Agent-based systems and modeling

COGNITIVE 2025

The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2025 is the 34th edition of this premier global AI conference, scheduled to take place in Montreal, Canada, from August 16 to August 22, 2025.

To accommodate participants facing visa challenges, a satellite event will be hosted in Guangzhou, China, from August 28 to August 31, 2025.

The conference invites submissions across various tracks, including:

• Main Track: Original research on all aspects of artificial intelligence.
• Special Tracks:
• • AI for Social Good
  • AI and Arts
  • Human-Centred AI
  • AI Enabling Critical Technologies
• Survey Track: Comprehensive overviews of specific AI topics.

Important dates for prospective authors include:

• Abstract submission deadline: January 16, 2025
• Full paper submission deadline: January 23, 2025
• Summary reject notification: March 7, 2025
• Author response period: April 6–9, 2025
• Paper notification: April 28, 2025

The conference is chaired by Professor Shlomo Zilberstein from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with Professor James Kwok from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology serving as the Program Chair.

IJCAI 2025IJCAI 2025

Baidu has announced significant updates to its Ernie AI platform, with the Ernie 4.5 series set to roll out gradually in the coming months. In a move toward AI democratization, the company will make this series open-source on June 30, 2025. The update coincides with Ernie Bot becoming completely free from April 1, 2025, introducing enhanced deep search features with improved reasoning capabilities and multi-modal support. The platform currently serves 430 million users, processing 1.5 billion queries daily.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/chinas-baidu-release-next-generation-ai-model-this-year-cnbc-reports-2025-02-12/

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/baidu-make-ernie-ai-model-open-source-end-june-2025-02-14/

Baidu is preparing to launch Ernie 5.0 in the second half of 2025, marking a significant evolution in their AI capabilities. This next-generation model aims to compete with emerging players like DeepSeek in China's rapidly evolving AI landscape. The announcement comes amid increasing competition, with market data showing ByteDance's Doubao leading at 78.6 million users, followed by DeepSeek with 33.7 million users, while Ernie Bot currently serves 13 million users.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/chinas-baidu-release-next-generation-ai-model-this-year-cnbc-reports-2025-02-12/

The 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2025) will be held at the Vancouver Convention Center in Vancouver, Canada, from July 13-19, 2025

ICML is a premier gathering for machine learning professionals, featuring cutting-edge research presentations in artificial intelligence, statistics, and data science. The conference attracts a diverse range of participants, including academic and industrial researchers, entrepreneurs, engineers, graduate students, and postdocs

Schedule Highlights:

• • Tutorials: July 14, 2025
  • Main Conference Sessions: July 15–17, 2025
  • Workshops: July 18–19, 2025

2025 Conference

The 31st ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2025) will be held in Toronto, Canada from August 3-7, 2025. This data science conference features both Research and Applied Data Science tracks.

KDD 2025 – KDD 2025 | Toronto, CanadaKDD 2025

The Cognitive Science Society's annual conference, CogSci 2025, will take place from July 30 to August 2, 2025, at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco. This will be a hybrid event, offering both in-person and virtual attendance options.

This conference brings together researchers from various disciplines, including Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Education, to explore the nature of the human mind.

CogSci 2025 - Cognitive Science Society

Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN) 2025 is an annual scientific conference focusing on neural computations underlying complex behavior. The conference will be held at the University of Amsterdam from August 12-15, 2025.

The 8th annual CCN conference focuses on understanding the computational basis of cognition by integrating neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. The conference brings together researchers working on:

• Brain information processing for real-world tasks
• Brain connectivity and dynamics
• Cognitive and neural-level modeling
• Integration of machine learning with neurobiology
• Comparative studies of biological and artificial intelligence

Cognitive Computational Neuroscience

The Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2025 will be held from December 9-15, 2025, in San Diego. NeurIPS is one of the three primary conferences of high impact in machine learning and artificial intelligence research.

The conference covers diverse fields including:

• Machine Learning
• Computational Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Psychology
• Computer Vision
• Statistical Linguistics
• Information Theory

OpenAI's GPT-5 announcement outlines an integrated system incorporating their o-series technology, including o3. The release plan includes three access tiers: standard intelligence setting for free users with unlimited chat access (subject to abuse thresholds), enhanced capabilities for Plus subscribers, and advanced features for Pro subscribers. The system is designed to include voice interaction, canvas functionality, search capabilities, and deep research tools.

Source: Sam Altman on X