# Six months of AI with estrategIA: discoveries, dilemmas and future directions

Author: Fernando Nieto Lobato
Original publication: 2024-04-03
Spanish original: https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-27-seis-meses-de-avances
English URL: https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/essays/027/
Status: Published translation

This is a translation of the original Spanish essay published on 3 April 2024. Its claims, examples and forecasts retain that historical context.

English publication: 2026-09-29

This week marks six months since the first issue of estrategIA appeared on 4 October 2023, although we had previously created an [issue 0](https://open.substack.com/pub/estrategiabyaleph/p/bienvenidos-a-estrategia?r=2tyybn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web). With this anniversary in mind, we used the Easter break to look back over these months and prepare a brief overview of some of the most important subjects we have covered. Many of you have joined us in recent months and probably have not read those articles. We also want to sketch how some issues have evolved during a period that, although fairly short in human terms, is significant at the speed at which AI technology is beginning to develop. A post we saw in one of Reddit's main AI communities reminded us of precisely this just a few days ago:



[![Reddit post comparing New York Easter street photographs from 1900 and 1913 to illustrate the speed of technological change.](https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/assets/images/782a6643-8546-45fb-94d9-4a8dfeaaf14c_945x1130.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Qn1Q!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F782a6643-8546-45fb-94d9-4a8dfeaaf14c_945x1130.png)



*Original English screenshot: a post in r/singularity by strife38 is headed “Things can change really quickly”. It shares Jon Erlichman's comparison, dated 31 March 2024, of two New York street photographs: “Easter in NYC in 1900: 1 car” and “Easter in NYC in 1913: 1 horse”. The captions are the post's claims, retained here as part of the historical illustration.*



## The problem of disinformation



In [the first issue of estrategIA](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-1), we addressed disinformation, a problem that remains extremely serious and topical — as several news items in this very issue show — particularly in a year so full of elections. I recall that we also examined it from the perspective of Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of DeepMind, Google's AI laboratory, which led the field for many years. [In our second issue, we took an in-depth look at his highly recommended book *The Coming Wave*](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-2-ia-la-encrucijada-politica), which had just been published in Spanish. Here, the main change has concerned the author rather than the book's contents, which remain fully relevant: barely a fortnight ago, we learned that [Suleyman had left his own AI start-up, Inflection, to join Microsoft as head of a new AI division](https://www.expansion.com/economia-digital/companias/2024/03/19/65f9cd64e5fdea8a308b4593.html).



## OpenAI, GPT-4 and its capabilities



In [issue 3](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-3-como-aplicar-la-capacidad), we produced our first major practical article, exploring how GPT-4 V(ision) could analyse posters from Spain's latest general election. This was a particularly interesting application, as was [the creation of agents — OpenAI's GPTs — discussed in issue 7](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-7-agentes-de-ia-redefiniendo). There has been little new in this area, and we are still waiting for OpenAI's next major model, GPT-4.5 or GPT-5, rumoured for a summer release. Despite the wait, Sam Altman said in a recent interview that it would represent a significant qualitative leap.



Meanwhile, OpenAI has been fairly inactive in releasing models publicly, though not privately. Unfortunately, this is probably strongly influenced by this year's US elections and its concerns about the misuse of extremely powerful AI tools such as [Sora, which we discussed in issue 21](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-21-revolucion-audiovisual). In recent weeks, the company has been presenting Sora privately to Hollywood studios and filmmakers. The same applies to [the highly sophisticated voice-cloning system unveiled last week](https://www.20minutos.es/tecnologia/inteligencia-artificial/que-es-voice-engine-nueva-ia-openai-clonar-voz-5231957/), which is not yet publicly accessible: [Voice Engine](https://openai.com/blog/navigating-the-challenges-and-opportunities-of-synthetic-voices).



The other major development at OpenAI — the company which, despite everything, continues to lead the AI revolution it popularised with ChatGPT — is that [it appears to have overcome its own “Game of Thrones”, which we described in issue 8](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-8-juego-de-tronos-en-openai). In recent weeks, [it announced a new board of directors](https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-new-members-to-board-of-directors).



What has changed, and matters greatly within the AI industry, is that GPT-4 is no longer the best language model. It has been surpassed by [Claude 3's Opus version, a model we have already tested in depth in estrategIA, specifically in issue 24](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-24-evaluando-los-modelos). Before that, we had also analysed Google's latest model, Gemini. [Its Advanced version did not convince us](https://open.substack.com/pub/estrategiabyaleph/p/estrategia-20-google-lanza-el-modelo?r=2tyybn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web), for several reasons, but version Pro 1.5 is becoming particularly interesting thanks to its large context window, which lets it work with substantial amounts of external information, such as whole books.



[![Language-model Arena leaderboard dated 29 March 2024, with Claude 3 Opus and two GPT-4 preview models at the top.](https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/assets/images/caebfcd2-9391-4e42-837e-a9afcbda407b_1600x1066.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w9DK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcaebfcd2-9391-4e42-837e-a9afcbda407b_1600x1066.png)



*Historical leaderboard, transcribed from the English screenshot. Updated 29 March 2024; 76 models and 511,252 votes in total. Rankings, confidence intervals and model labels are reproduced as displayed.*



| Rank | Model | Arena Elo | 95% CI | Votes | Organisation | Licence | Knowledge cutoff |

|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

| 1 | Claude 3 Opus | 1255 | +3/−4 | 37,663 | Anthropic | Proprietary | 2023/8 |

| 1 | GPT-4-1106-preview | 1252 | +3/−3 | 56,936 | OpenAI | Proprietary | 2023/4 |

| 1 | GPT-4-0125-preview | 1249 | +3/−4 | 38,105 | OpenAI | Proprietary | 2023/12 |

| 4 | Bard (Gemini Pro) | 1204 | +5/−5 | 12,468 | Google | Proprietary | Online |

| 4 | Claude 3 Sonnet | 1200 | +3/−4 | 40,389 | Anthropic | Proprietary | 2023/8 |

| 6 | GPT-4-0314 | 1185 | +4/−4 | 35,803 | OpenAI | Proprietary | 2021/9 |

| 7 | Claude 3 Haiku | 1177 | +3/−4 | 26,773 | Anthropic | Proprietary | 2023/8 |

| 8 | GPT-4-0613 | 1160 | +3/−5 | 54,509 | OpenAI | Proprietary | 2021/9 |

| 8 | Mistral-Large-2402 | 1157 | +5/−4 | 28,356 | Mistral | Proprietary | Unknown |

| 9 | Qwen1.5-72B-Chat | 1149 | +4/−5 | 21,981 | Alibaba | Qianwen LICENSE | 2024/2 |

| 10 | Claude-1 | 1146 | +4/−5 | 21,868 | Anthropic | Proprietary | Unknown |

| 10 | Mistral Medium | 1146 | +4/−5 | 27,059 | Mistral | Proprietary | Unknown |

| 10 | Command R | 1146 | +5/−6 | 12,739 | Cohere | CC-BY-NC-4.0 | 2024/3 |

| 14 | Gemini Pro (Dev API) | 1127 | +4/−4 | 16,041 | Google | Proprietary | 2023/4 |

| 14 | Claude-2.0 | 1127 | +5/−5 | 13,484 | Anthropic | Proprietary | Unknown |



## The European Union has an AI law



Another major development in the six months since estrategIA launched is undoubtedly the EU's progress from a draft that had been under discussion for years, with a rather uncertain future, to an agreed text finalised in December, [as we reported in issue 11](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-11-la-union-europea-se), and then to [an AI law approved by the European Parliament, which we asked the best language models available at the time to analyse](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-25-explorando-la-ai-act).



## How the trends for 2024 are developing



Finally, to continue this brief review of some of the main subjects we have addressed during estrategIA's first six months, let us take a quick look at how [the AI trends we identified for 2024 in issue 14](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-14-horizonte-2024-las) are progressing, even though only three months of the year have elapsed.



### 1. AI will be integrated into our everyday tools, and we will increasingly use it almost without noticing



This trend is still developing and has yet to take off. AI applications are certainly becoming more common on our phones, but greater integration and ease of use are still needed. Perhaps we will see major advances in this direction over the coming months — [if, for example, the reports of an AI app store that Apple might soon launch are true](https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/wwdc-2024-could-introduce-us-to-apples-ai-app-store-heres-what-we-know). The same applies to autonomous agents, of which the interesting [Devin](https://www.genbeta.com/inteligencia-artificial/esta-primera-ia-capaz-programar-webs-aplicaciones-sola-asistencia-humana) is perhaps the best example so far.



### 2. Open-source models will narrow the gap with large proprietary commercial models still further, although the latter will remain more powerful. An open model might even match the capabilities of today's GPT-4



Here, progress continues to be very rapid. Last week X released Grok 1.0, and the models from the French start-up Mistral in particular are already very close to GPT-4's level. [Meta's release of Llama 3](https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-plans-launch-new-ai-language-model-llama-3-july-information-reports-2024-02-28/) is also expected in July. It will very probably be the most powerful open-source model yet, and might well surpass GPT-4.



### 3. New mobile phones will have AI, in some cases even running locally



We have already seen what the new Samsung Galaxy S24 phones, introduced in January, and Google Pixels can do. [This CNET article is worth reading if you want to explore further](https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/ai-showdown-how-samsungs-galaxy-s24-ai-tools-stack-up-against-google-apple/). The ball is now in Apple's court. Judging by the “announcement” of its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, it intends to go all out on AI with an “(A)bsolutely (I)ncredible” event. It has also [just presented a very promising new AI model](https://medium.com/@k.pranav_22/siri-get-smarter-apples-realm-unveils-a-new-era-for-on-device-ai-21febdd84da5).



[![Greg Joswiak announces WWDC24 for 10–14 June with the phrase Absolutely Incredible, and 9to5Mac highlights the initials AI.](https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/assets/images/16ad18c7-5619-4ad0-93b5-4a46ca6c61fd_909x1483.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tFYC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16ad18c7-5619-4ad0-93b5-4a46ca6c61fd_909x1483.png)



*Original English screenshot, 26 March 2024. Greg Joswiak: “Mark your calendars for #WWDC24, June 10–14. It’s going to be Absolutely Incredible!” A reply from 9to5Mac reads: “(A)bsolutely (I)ncredible you say”.*



### 4. 2024 will be the year of the great revolution in AI-generated video and audio



The unveiling of Sora, [which we have already discussed](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-21-revolucion-audiovisual), left everyone astonished because it demonstrated advances in video generation that had been thought to lie years ahead. Extraordinary audio tools are also being created, such as Suno.ai version 3, which we will certainly discuss in a forthcoming issue.



### 5. Robots



Anyone following AI news over recent months can see that this is an unstoppable trend, attracting billions in investment from many of the world's largest companies. Nvidia's developers' conference ended with a focus on robots, and the current landscape is fascinating. This chart, which we found on Reddit just the day before yesterday, provides an excellent overview. To see many of these leading robots in action, [we recommend this article](https://www.howtogeek.com/these-are-the-most-impressive-robot-demos-of-2024-so-far/), which brings together their best demonstrations.



[![Historical chart comparing milestones and pilots for 24 humanoid robot projects.](https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/assets/images/84cc3286-986d-432c-94d3-614dc9ef437e_640x507.jpeg)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!10gK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84cc3286-986d-432c-94d3-614dc9ef437e_640x507.jpeg)



*Historical chart: “Humanoid Bot Market — Player Milestones”, dated 29 March 2024, compiled by @DerrBash, @GoingBallistics5 and @HerbertOng. It compares public videos, commercial focus, public walking and hand demonstrations, useful work, LLM/voice integration, autonomous work, announced pilots and deployment. The original uses filled cells as visual milestone markers; the table below records its names and written qualifications without treating an empty cell as proof of incapability.*



| Organisation | Robot | Written qualifications and pilot labels visible in the chart |

|---|---|---|

| Figure.ai | 01 | BMW (January 2024) |

| Tesla | Optimus | Pilot field: N/A |

| Agility Robotics | Digit | No hands; Amazon (October 2023) |

| Sanctuary AI | Phoenix | Canadian Tire retail trial (March 2023); some small print is not legible |

| Apptronik | Apollo | Mercedes (March 2024) |

| 1X Technologies | EVE/NEO | No legs (Eve); no hands (Eve); useful-work and autonomous-work cells specify Eve |

| Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia | ergoCub | Research |

| Neura Robotics | 4NE-1 | — |

| Reflex Robotics | Reflex | No legs; no hands |

| Boston Dynamics | Atlas | Research; no hands |

| IHMC | Nadia | Research; no hands |

| Westwood Robotics | Themis | Research; no hands |

| Fourier Intelligence | GR-1 | — |

| Unitree | H1 | No hands |

| LimX Dynamics | CL-1 | No hands |

| Agibot | RAISE-A1 | — |

| MagicLab | MagicBot | — |

| UBTECH | Walker | — |

| Kepler Exploration | Forerunner | “at CES 2024?” |

| XPENG | PX5 | No hands |

| Xiaomi | CyberOne | Research |

| PNDbotics | Adam | Research; no hands |

| Robot Era | XBot-S | Research; no hands |

| Toyota Research | Punyo | Research; no hands |



*The chart's location colours distinguish USA/Canada, Europe, US-based ownership by Hyundai, China, Singapore and Japan. Its footnotes distinguish human-like hands from grippers, flippers or balls, and describe pilots as third-party industrial trials, potentially including deployments.*



**Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we want to thank you for joining us during these first six months of estrategIA**, and remind you how much it helps when you share the newsletter with people who might be interested, so that it can reach an ever wider readership. We are already approaching 500 subscribers.



**The core team producing the newsletter each week — Pablo Martín, Fernando Nieto and Natalia Benito — would also particularly like to thank our guest authors**, [Santiago Comadira](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-19-inteligencia-artificial), [Gustavo Fedi](https://open.substack.com/pub/estrategiabyaleph/p/estrategia-22-la-era-de-la-inteligencia?r=2tyybn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) and [Fernando Ujaldon](https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-26-la-estrategia-nacional), for sharing their knowledge with us in different issues.



Once again, thank you all for being here. **To finish, we would like to leave you a small gift**. Natalia Benito has **compiled the tools we have recommended over these six months in our AI in action section, and the collection is publicly available on our website**:



- **[COLLECTION OF AI TOOLS](https://institucioneducativaaleph.com/encuentra-todas-las-herramientas-de-ia-mostradas-en-nuestra-newsletter-estrategia/)**



Fernando Nieto Lobato



*Director of Digital Innovation, Institución Educativa ALEPH*



*English edition link note: the source’s editor-only link to issue 24 has been replaced with that article’s public URL, verified in the local publication inventory.*