Published Date:
December 24, 2024

o3: OpenAI’s Bold Move to Combine Smarter Reasoning with Safer AI

Explore what's new with the o3 family and its deliberate alignment method for enhanced AI safety. Also this week: The Rest of Shipmas, Perplexity’s Latest Acquisition, Agentforce 2.0, EU’s €1.5 billion AI Factories, and more.
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Merry Christmas, everyone! 🎄

Here’s a special treat from our community member Antti—a fully AI-created video to spread some holiday cheer. (You’ll find his recipe at the bottom!)

This is also the final Lead with AI newsletter of 2024.

It’s been a wild, inspiring year of exploring together how AI can reshape the way we work, lead, and grow. The insights, discussions, and shared experiences from this community have been incredible and shaped every step of this journey. And thank you for being part of it all!

As we close out 2024, I’d love to hear from you—what’s been your favorite AI tip, tool, or moment from this year? Let me know in the reply, and I’ll include some highlights in our first issue of 2025.

That said, let’s dive into this week’s issue with news and inspirations for you to apply AI in your work, team, and organization:

  • “Your AI Team” Updates: ChatGPT with Notes and Notion, Gemini’s Fast Reasoning Model, Midjourney’s Moodboard
  • AI Implementation Case Study: Citigroup's Productivity Boosts
  • The Executive AI Brief: o3 is Betting Big on a New Method for AI Safety
  • Weekly Quick Hits: ChatGPT’s phone number, Perplexity’s Latest Acquisition, Agentforce 2.0, EU’s €1.5 billion AI Factories, and more.

And other interesting sharings from the ​Lead with AI PRO​ community.

ChatGPT

On Day 11 of Shipmas, OpenAI rolled out updates to its desktop apps, paving the way for a 'more agentic' ChatGPT. 

The app can now also read Apple Notes, Notion, and Quip with Advanced Voice Mode and Search features, which is really powerful for those using such tools to organize and produce content. 

You can use the Option+Shift+1 shortcut to instantly pair ChatGPT with supported apps and the Option+Space shortcut to trigger instant access.

Gemini

Google debuts Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Mode, a new advanced reasoning-focused model to rival OpenAI’s o1. The model stands out with its speed and integrates a 'chain-of-thought' reasoning technique to address complex coding, math, and physics problems. (Watch a demo here and try it on Google AI Studio)

Midjourney

MidJourney's new Pinterest-like moodboards let users upload image collections to inspire personalized AI styles. Plus, you can now easily organize the work and set up multiple profiles for different projects. (Read details here)

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Citigroup's Productivity Boosts

Citigroup rolled out two AI tools, Citi Assist and Citi Stylus, to enhance productivity for 140,000 employees across eight countries, including the US, Canada, India, and the UK.

  • Citi Assist: Described as "a super-smart coworker," this tool helps employees navigate internal policies and procedures to quickly find answers to HR, compliance, risk, and finance questions.
  • Citi Stylus: An AI-powered document assistant accelerating decision-making by summarizing, comparing, and searching multiple documents at once so employees don’t waste time on manual, repetitive parts.

The bank plans to expand these tools to more countries after reviewing employee interactions and collecting feedback for potential new use cases. 

>> Read more details here.

OpenAI’s o3 sets new standards in reasoning and AI safety.

Credit: Benj Edwards / Andriy Onufriyenko via Getty Images

OpenAI wrapped up its Shipmas with a big announcement: o3 and o3-mini, the next frontier in reasoning models. (Fun fact: o2 was skipped due to a trademark conflict!)

The o3 family outperforms o1 in coding, graduate-level science, and math benchmarks and features adjustable reasoning time (low, medium, high compute) to balance speed and accuracy for diverse tasks. It also scored highly on the ARC-AGI benchmark, though AGI is still far off.

Another big focus is safety—o3 introduces “deliberative alignment,” embedding safety reasoning directly into the system to align AI with human values, reduce misuse, and cut reliance on costly human labeling.

​>> Read Lance B. Eliot’s deep dive on deliberate alignment and its implications.

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Quick Hits

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From The Lead with AI Community

Every day, Lead with AI members discuss practical ways to benefit from AI in their work and organizations.

This week's highlights include:

  • I found two business examples using AI video tools: animating product shots with Sora and creating ads from product shot photos with Capcut Commerce Pro.
  • Wendy shared Ruben Hassid’s demo comparing Veo 2 and Sora outputs.
  • Antii made a Christmas video using ChatGPT for story and keyframe prompts, Leonardo AI for visuals, Runway for motion, Udio for music, and ElevenLabs for SFX.
  • The $30 billion Omnicom-Interpublic merger marks the end of the "Mad Men" era as AI, data, and automation redefine advertising in the age of "Math Men and Women." I found a Forbes article on this industry shift.‍
  • Inference AI will outscale training by a billion times, driven by real-time applications like RAG models, Agentic AI, and Co-Pilots, redefining productivity and personalized intelligence. Henrik shared Jon Nordmark's insights on how "Always On AI" will deliver decisions, insights, and support at an unprecedented scale.
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See you next week,

Daan van Rossum - Lead with AI

Daan van Rossum​

Host, Lead with AI

Merry Christmas, everyone! 🎄

Here’s a special treat from our community member Antti—a fully AI-created video to spread some holiday cheer. (You’ll find his recipe at the bottom!)

This is also the final Lead with AI newsletter of 2024.

It’s been a wild, inspiring year of exploring together how AI can reshape the way we work, lead, and grow. The insights, discussions, and shared experiences from this community have been incredible and shaped every step of this journey. And thank you for being part of it all!

As we close out 2024, I’d love to hear from you—what’s been your favorite AI tip, tool, or moment from this year? Let me know in the reply, and I’ll include some highlights in our first issue of 2025.

That said, let’s dive into this week’s issue with news and inspirations for you to apply AI in your work, team, and organization:

  • “Your AI Team” Updates: ChatGPT with Notes and Notion, Gemini’s Fast Reasoning Model, Midjourney’s Moodboard
  • AI Implementation Case Study: Citigroup's Productivity Boosts
  • The Executive AI Brief: o3 is Betting Big on a New Method for AI Safety
  • Weekly Quick Hits: ChatGPT’s phone number, Perplexity’s Latest Acquisition, Agentforce 2.0, EU’s €1.5 billion AI Factories, and more.

And other interesting sharings from the ​Lead with AI PRO​ community.