Mira Murati returns to the spotlight and previews new AI approach

In short: Mira Murati, the CEO of Thinking Machines Lab and former OpenAI CTO, gave her first major interview in about 18 months and briefly outlined what her company is building next.

What happened

Mira Murati appeared in an interview with Bloomberg in San Francisco, her first major media appearance in roughly a year and a half. Murati used the moment to remind people that her new company, Thinking Machines Lab, is active after operating mostly quietly.

During that time, the company has been raising money, hiring researchers, and releasing one product called Tinker. Tinker is an API, which is a way for software tools to talk to each other, that helps developers fine-tune open-source AI models (adjust them for a specific task, like training a general tutor to become a math tutor).

Murati also previewed what the company calls “interaction models.” She said they are designed to handle a continuous stream of audio, text, and video, updating about every 200 milliseconds. That is about one fifth of a second, so the goal is to respond more like a live conversation, including pauses, interruptions, and mid-sentence corrections.

She did not give a release date. She described this as an early step rather than a finished product.

Murati also revisited the November 2023 leadership crisis at OpenAI, when Sam Altman was fired and she became interim CEO. She said she would have pushed harder for more information, a better transition plan, and more transparency.

Why it matters

Many AI tools today work like sending a text and waiting for a reply. If Murati’s “interaction models” idea works, future AI could feel more like talking to a person in real time, which could change how people use assistants at work and at home.

Source: TechCrunch AI