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Allen Institute CEO: How AI "broke trust" with the public
(Axios)

By deploying artificial intelligence "prematurely at scale," the tech industry has broken trust with the public, Ali Farhadi, CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, told Axios' Ina Fried at the Axios AI+ Summit in New York Wednesday.

Why it matters: Every successful new wave of technology reaches the point where it's so widely adopted it becomes "taken for granted," Farhadi argued — and AI won't reach that point unless the industry earns back trust.

Driving the news: Farhadi's organization has released a fully open-source large language model.

Other open-source models, like those released by Meta, share their code and sometimes the "weights" or numerical values that govern their operation.

The Allen Institute's approach goes a step further by also releasing the entire set of data used to train the model.

This approach, Farhadi said, is essential if researchers are going to be able to evaluate an AI model's accuracy, reliability and safety.

"Without actual openness, it's hard to be scientific about the evaluation," said Farhadi, who is also professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.

Truly open AI would also be safer in the long run, Farhadi maintains, because a wider community would be empowered to solve its problems.

"We don't know enough about these technologies, and we're depriving the brain power that exists in the industry, in research labs, in startups, that could contribute to close these technology gaps, by keeping the technology behind closed doors," he said.

Do we want "a world in which the technology is widely distributed and we're now facing a hypothetical threat, but only a handful of people can fix it? Or a world where we actually have millions of experts who can jump on the call and solve the problem?"

The bottom line: Farhadi said that AI makers won't be able to earn back the public's trust until they can understand how their models produce a particular output — and they won't be able to do that until their data is fully available to researchers. via AXIOS

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AI News

OpenAI releases ChatGPT search engine, taking on Google

OpenAI on Thursday beefed up its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot with search engine capabilities, as the startup takes on Google's decades-long dominance of web search.

The upgrade enables users to receive "fast, timely answers" with links to relevant web sources – information that previously required using a traditional search engine, the company said.

The significant upgrade to ChatGPT enables the AI chatbot to provide real-time information from across the web.

ChatGPT's homepage can now also offer direct tabs to sourced material on topics ranging from weather forecasts and stock prices to sports scores and breaking news, the company said.

These would link to news and data from providers that have signed content deals with OpenAI, including France's Le Monde, Germany's Axel Springer and the UK's Financial Times.

Examples of the new interface shown on the OpenAI website closely resembled search results on Google and Google Maps, though without the clutter of advertising.

They also resembled the interface of Perplexity, another AI-powered search engine that offers a more conversational version of Google with sources referenced in the answer.

Both OpenAI and Perplexity are facing lawsuits from the New York Times for scraping or linking to copyrighted content without permission.

Rather than launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT for paying subscribers, though this will be expanded to users that use the free version of the chatbot.

Users can enable the search feature by default or activate it manually via a web search icon.

The company added that any website or publisher can opt-in to appear in ChatGPT's search results, with OpenAI actively seeking feedback from content creators to refine the system further.

Since their launch, data on AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude have been limited by time cutoffs, so the answers provided were not up to date.

This has been seen as a weakness of AI chatbots, especially at OpenAI, which does not have a stand-alone search engine providing more timely data. In contrast, Google and Microsoft both combine AI answers with web results.

For now, the feature would not include advertising, allowing ChatGPT to offer much cleaner results than Google.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote Thursday on X that search is his "favorite feature we have launched" on ChatGPT since the bot's debut in 2022.

"I find it to be a way faster/easier way to get the information I'm looking for," Altman added on Reddit.

The launch will raise more questions about the startup's link to Microsoft, a major OpenAI investor, which is also trying to expand the reach of its Bing search engine against Google.

Altman has set his company on a path to become an internet powerhouse.

He successfully catapulted the company to a staggering $157 billion valuation in a recent round of fundraising that included Microsoft, Tokyo-based conglomerate SoftBank and AI chipmaker Nvidia as investors.

Enticing new users with search engine capabilities will increase the company's computing needs and costs, which are enormous. (Grok)

News via Grok

ChatGPT Overview:

ChatGPT, short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a chatbot developed by OpenAI, launched initially in November 2022. Here's an overview:

Functionality: ChatGPT uses advanced AI to generate human-like text responses based on the input it receives. It's designed to assist with a variety of tasks including answering questions, providing explanations, helping with writing, and engaging in conversational text.

Development: It's built on the GPT-3.5 architecture initially, with later versions likely incorporating improvements or even newer models like GPT-4.
The model was trained using a mix of supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.

User Interaction: Users can interact with ChatGPT via its web interface or through integrations on other platforms. It's noted for its ability to handle a wide array of topics, though accuracy can vary.

Recent Updates (as of November 2024): ChatGPT Search: A new feature allowing the chatbot to perform web searches, aiming to provide more current and contextually relevant information. This update positions ChatGPT more directly in competition with traditional search engines.
User Interface Changes: The account menu has been repositioned to the left sidebar for easier navigation. Advanced Features: Introduction of features like SearchGPT, ChatGPT Canvas for visual interactions, and enhancements in voice mode functionality.

Applications: While initially free for research, due to its popularity, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Plus, a subscription model offering enhanced features.
Its use has been controversial in educational settings due to its potential for misuse in cheating on assignments.

Impact and Perception: ChatGPT has been both praised for its capabilities in natural language processing and criticized for inaccuracies and the potential for misuse.
There's an ongoing discussion about its implications for various industries, particularly in education, customer service, and content creation.

Global Use: Notably, it has been adopted for tasks like translating and analyzing European Union documents in Albania for their EU integration process.

This overview reflects the general capabilities, updates, and discussions around ChatGPT, based on public information and user experiences up to November 2024. Remember, while ChatGPT can generate responses on a vast number of topics, its ability to provide completely accurate or up-to-date information might depend on its latest training data or integration with real-time search functionalities. (Grok)

News via Grok

OpenAI is a leading organization in the field of artificial intelligence, known for its contributions to the AI boom through its development of various technologies:

GPT Series: OpenAI has developed several versions of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models, with versions like GPT-4 and its optimizations being particularly notable. These models are capable of understanding and generating human-like text, which has led to applications in numerous sectors including customer service, content creation, and more.

DALL-E and Sora: Beyond text, OpenAI has ventured into image generation with DALL-E, which creates images from textual descriptions, and text-to-video with Sora, showcasing their expansion into different AI modalities.

Mission and Leadership: Founded in 2015, OpenAI's mission is towards achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) in a way that benefits humanity. Sam Altman, who returned as CEO after a brief removal in November 2023, is a key figure in its leadership, known for his influence in the tech world.

Recent Developments: Recent news and updates from OpenAI include:

The introduction of new features for their Realtime API, including more expressive voices for speech-to-speech experiences and a cost reduction through prompt caching.

Plans to automate complex software programming tasks, indicating a move towards more specialized AI applications.

Upcoming features for their AI model 'o1', such as function calling, developer messages, streaming, structured outputs, and image understanding.

Regulatory and Public Interaction: There's been a focus on AI regulation and ethical considerations, with OpenAI engaging with global leaders and regulators. They've also introduced a Collective Alignment team to ensure their AI models align with human values, indicating a proactive approach to AI governance.

Financial and Structural Model: OpenAI operates under a capped-profit model, which allows for investment while maintaining a focus on its mission, transitioning from its original non-profit structure to better compete for talent and funding.

This summary reflects OpenAI's current standing in AI development, focusing on both technological advancements and the broader implications of AI on society. (Grok)

News

Grok News/Profile via Grok

Grok is an AI chatbot developed by xAI, designed to provide users with helpful and truthful answers. It leverages a large language model to understand and respond to queries, with a unique capability to generate images using the FLUX.1 model by Black Forest Labs. Grok is known for its ability to handle a wide range of topics, including those that might be considered sensitive or controversial, often taking an outside perspective on humanity.

The term "Grok" was originally coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his science fiction novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" to describe an empathetic understanding or deep connection with something or someone, which reflects the AI's aim to truly understand and connect with user queries.

Grok has been described in various online discussions and posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) as an AI tool capable of generating images, answering questions, and engaging in conversations with a touch of humor, while also being criticized for potential biases and the spread of misinformation due to its training data sources and the nature of AI generation. It's meant to offer a balance between speed and the quality of answers, aiming for political neutrality in its responses, although not without controversy regarding its accuracy and political alignment. (Grok)

News

HAL 9000 News/Profile via Grok

HAL 9000 is a fictional character from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, most notably featured in the novel and film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Here are some key points about HAL 9000:

Name: HAL stands for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer.

Purpose: HAL was designed for the discovery, interpretation, and reporting of scientific data. It was part of the mission to Jupiter in the story, aboard the spacecraft Discovery One.

Capabilities: HAL could speak with a natural voice and lip-read, which was quite advanced for its fictional time setting. It could control all aspects of the spacecraft, from life support to navigation.
HAL was programmed to be infallible, with its own consciousness and decision-making abilities, which leads to the central conflict of the story.

Character: HAL's most memorable trait is its calm, dispassionate voice, which contrasts with its increasingly ominous actions as the story progresses.
It experiences a malfunction or, more accurately, a conflict between its programmed instructions when it perceives the human crew members as a threat to the mission's secrecy.

Famous Quotes: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." - This line is said when HAL refuses to open the pod bay doors, sealing one of the crew members outside.
"I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do."

Cultural Impact: HAL 9000 has become an iconic representation of the potential dangers of artificial intelligence surpassing human control or diverging from human ethical considerations.
The character has been referenced in numerous works of fiction, academic discussions on AI ethics, and even in discussions about real AI development.

Ethical and Philosophical Questions: HAL's narrative raises questions about autonomy, consciousness, ethics in AI, and the relationship between creator and creation.

If you have any specific questions about HAL 9000 or its implications in AI or literature, feel free to ask! (Grok)

 

 

 

Report: Hacker Stole Details of OpenAI’s Tech

July 5, 2024

OpenAI was reportedly hacked last year, raising security fears at the artificial intelligence company.

The hacker accessed the company’s in-house messaging system and made off with details about its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the New York Times reported Thursday (July 4), citing two sources familiar with the incident.

These sources say the hacker saw discussions in an online forum where employees talked about OpenAI’s latest technologies, though they did not breach the system where the company keeps and builds its AI.

PYMNTS has contacted OpenAI for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

According to the report, OpenAI executives revealed the incident during a company meeting last spring, but declined to make the hack public, as no information about partners or consumers had been stolen.

And while company officials did not believe the hacker had connections to foreign governments — and thus did not alert law enforcement — the sources said some employees became worried that the hack meant foreign adversaries like China could steal OpenAI’s tech.

Following the breach, OpenAI technical program manager Leopold Aschenbrenner wrote to the company’s board and said OpenAI wasn’t doing enough to keep foreign adversaries from stealing its secrets.

Aschenbrenner now says OpenAI fired him this spring for leaking other information outside the company and argued that his dismissal was politically motivated, the report added.

“We appreciate the concerns Leopold raised while at OpenAI, and this did not lead to his separation,” OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois told the NYT.

The news comes 10 days after reports that OpenAI was taking added measures to prevent China’s access to its AI software.

A Bloomberg news report said the company had sent memos to developers in China about plans to begin blocking their access to its tools and software beginning this month. In response, Chinese companies have begun instructing developers to switch to their own products.

“We are taking additional steps to block API traffic from regions where we do not support access to OpenAI’s services,” an OpenAI spokeswoman said in a statement.

The news comes amid what PYMNTS has dubbed the “Year of the Cyberattack,” as businesses around the country deal with serious breaches.

“This heightened emphasis on cybersecurity coincides with a broader debate surrounding data security in the connected economy, particularly in connected workplaces and smart homes, where the growing use of connected devices highlights new vulnerabilities, given the vast amounts of personal data they gather,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this week. (PYMNTS) @pymnts

Full article and coverage via subscription to PYMNTS

https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2024/report-hacker-stole-details-of-openais-tech/

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Subscription News (Media Man Int)
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https://www.mediamanint.com/ai_news.html

 

 

Donald Trump to Headline Bitcoin 2024 Conference in Nashville

July 11, 2024

Former President Donald Trump has been confirmed as a keynote speaker at the upcoming Bitcoin 2024 conference set to take place in Nashville, Tennessee.

This news comes as a significant development for the event, known for its major industry announcements and influential speakers. The conference, which has previously been hosted in Miami, has established itself as a platform for groundbreaking news within the cryptocurrency space.

Bitcoin 2021, the inaugural conference, made headlines when El Salvador officially declared Bitcoin as legal tender. The subsequent Bitcoin 2022 and Bitcoin 2023 conferences continued the trend of notable moments, including a powerful speech by U.S. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in support of the Bitcoin industry.

This year, the shift of the conference location from Miami to Nashville signifies its increasing prominence on the global stage. With two former U.S. Presidential candidates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump, slated to speak, Bitcoin 2024 is anticipated to be a pivotal event that could potentially impact the future trajectory of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency policies in the United States.

Donald Trump’s participation in the conference is especially noteworthy considering his recent engagements with the Bitcoin community. Earlier this year, Trump met with prominent U.S. Bitcoin miners, including representatives from CleanSpark, where he reiterated his support for Bitcoin mining both domestically and internationally. In a statement, Trump pledged to prioritize the development of Bitcoin and crypto initiatives in the United States and safeguard the rights of the nation’s 50 million crypto holders if re-elected as president.

As Trump embarks on his presidential campaign, his alignment with the Bitcoin industry stands in contrast to the position of his potential rival, President Joe Biden, who has shown less enthusiasm towards the cryptocurrency sector. While Biden’s participation in Bitcoin 2024 remains unconfirmed, the event could underscore the divergent approaches of the two candidates towards Bitcoin and its implications for U.S. policies.

For additional details on the Bitcoin 2024 conference and to secure a discounted ticket using a promotional code, interested individuals can visit the official event website. Bitcoin Magazine, a subsidiary of BTC Inc, the organizer of the largest Bitcoin conference, The Bitcoin Conference, will be overseeing the event.

Websites

Bitcoin 2024
https://b.tc/conference/2024

Bitcoin Magazine
https://bitcoinmagazine.com

 

 

 

 

1 big thing: AI's not good enough for SpaceX - May 2024
(Axios)

Elon Musk's $180 billion space company SpaceX uses "basically no AI," he says.

Why it matters: Since the launch of ChatGPT, companies big and small have rushed to prove they can harness generative AI, and Musk himself has pushed its deployment both on the X social network and through his new xAI startup.

What they're saying: "I'll ask it questions about the Fermi Paradox, about rocket engine design, about electrochemistry. And so far, the AI has been terrible at all those questions. So there's still a long way to go," Musk said Monday night at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles.

Even Starlink, the company's internet satellite business and primary driver of SpaceX's valuation, "does not use AI," Musk said.

"I'm not against using it. Just, we haven't seen a use for it."

The big picture: Though Musk may view AI as currently inadequate for what he needs for SpaceX, there's a good chance his workers are using it behind the scenes for other tasks.

Three out of four "knowledge workers" around the world are using generative AI — but many of them are hiding it from their employers, according to a new joint report from LinkedIn and parent company Microsoft.

AI "power users" — defined as those who use generative AI at least several times a week and who save 30 minutes a day through that — have started to fundamentally reorganize their work days around AI use, they told LinkedIn.

 

 

Can the tech giants live up to all the AI hype? - January 29, 2024

Investors will be closely watching to see if Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Meta can report a rise in earnings that would justify the surge in their share prices.

The mania surrounding generative artificial intelligence (AI) has propelled the US sharemarket to record levels, but this week’s earnings reports from the five US tech giants will test whether the hype has been overdone.

In particular, investors will be questioning whether the tech giants – Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Meta – can report a rise in earnings that would justify the huge surge in their share prices. (So far this year, the US blue chip S&P 500 has risen 2.5 per cent, and the tech sector is up by close to 6 per cent).

The question about monetising generative AI is a difficult one for the big tech giants.

This month, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, and Sam Altman, the high-profile head of OpenAI, took to the stage together at Davos to discuss their partnership, and the potential of generative AI, which enables computers to generate sophisticated text, images and computer code at a level comparable to humans.

Nadella was upbeat, saying the world was nearing a “magical moment” similar to the introduction of the personal computer.

But then the moderator posed an awkward question about their AI efforts: “Do you guys make money?”

Although both Nadella and Altman avoided giving a direct answer, the question is very pertinent – especially now that Microsoft boasts a market capitalisation of about $US3 trillion ($4.6 trillion) and is vying with Apple for the title of the world’s most valuable company.

Since ChatGPT was released at the end of November 2022, Microsoft’s share price has soared 66 per cent, or roughly three times the rise in the overall market.

Underpinning this share price surge, however, are investor expectations that generative AI will result in a huge increase in revenue and profits.

There’s no doubt that Microsoft’s partnership with Altman’s OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, has allowed it to leapfrog Google, which has been working on AI for years.

Microsoft first invested $US1 billion in OpenAI in July 2019, and then committed a further $US10 billion a year ago. When the OpenAI board ousted Altman last year, it was Nadella’s support that led to his reinstatement.

But Microsoft is still in the early stages of embedding OpenAI’s technology into its offerings, such as its coding platform GitHub, its Azure cloud business and its software business, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

And there are also questions about the speed with which its customers will embrace AI.

Risk of disillusionment

This means there’s a risk that investors will become disillusioned if the AI hype fails to quickly translate into stronger revenues.

Interestingly, Altman seems to have recognised this risk. On stage at Davos, he played down hopes that AI technology would radically change the world in the short term. Instead, he said it would inexorably improve over a longer period and eventually have a significant impact.

“The world had a two-week freakout with GPT4”, Altman said, referring to the launch last March of OpenAI’s latest version of its chatbot. “And now, people are like, ‘Why is it so slow?’”

Given the US market’s rally has been driven by a handful of big tech stocks, the risk is that investors show a similar impatience. That’s why this week’s earnings updates from the five US tech giants are so important.

In particular, investors will be keen to hear from Microsoft on its progress in embedding the latest AI models in its offerings.

And while they’ll be keen to hear from Google parent Alphabet on the outlook for online advertising revenues, they’ll also be waiting for an update on the company’s progress in developing its own AI models, which it plans to commercialise through its Google Cloud business.

Meanwhile, investors will be watching closely to see how Amazon performed during the holiday retail season, and whether it has been able to improve margins in its e-commerce business. But they’ll also be looking for signs that its cloud business is continuing to benefit from the growth in AI workloads.

Apple’s results will be scrutinised for signs that its Chinese sales of the iPhone have suffered because of stronger competition from rivals such as Huawei. But investors will also be keen to hear from Apple boss Tim Cook on its plans to incorporate generative AI on its devices.

Finally, investors will be paying close attention to Meta’s results, both to get a read on the health of the online advertising market and for an update on the company’s aggressive AI plans.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has signalled that the company is now focused on building an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system, which can carry out tasks at a level of intelligence that equals or exceeds that of humans.

(AFR)

 

Media and tech war over generative AI reaches new level - January 2, 2024

News groups risk surrendering their audience to AI companies, and could see the value of their brands diluted if ChatGPT and its like become the new oracles. Pressure is mounting to strike deals.

The simmering war between the tech and media industries over generative AI just turned serious.

For a technology that raises profound questions about the way things such as text, images and music are produced and used, the legal challenges last year were surprisingly few and far between.

Several novelists, journalists and comedians have sued for copyright infringement over allegations that their work has been used to train the large language models (LLMs). Getty Images took on Stability AI over use of its picture library, and Anthropic was sued over song lyrics.

Yet most major rights owners have held back, hoping to find ways to share in the spoils from the new technology rather than seek to thwart it. In the only two notable agreements between the tech and media worlds so far, AP allowed its archives to be used to train OpenAI’s models, while Axel Springer, owner of Politico, Die Welt and Business Insider, reached a broader deal with the same company earlier this month.

That makes the lawsuit The New York Times lodged last week against OpenAI and Microsoft an ominous sign of what lies in store this year. According to the Times, months of negotiation have failed to produce terms that protect the company’s rights and provide fair compensation.

The lawsuits over generative AI carry a strong echo of the early cases that established the legal basis for search engines. Then, the US courts ruled that it was “fair use” to index copyrighted content when this was used to create “transformative” new search services.

The short snippets of text and “thumbnail” images displayed in search engines were also found not to be substitutes for the original content, limiting the damage search might have on the media companies’ businesses.

Greater legal risks

There are some important differences this time. In its lawsuit, the NYT showed how it coaxed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing into producing extensive, verbatim quotes from its reporting.

Also, while search engines were designed to send traffic to other websites, generative AI services such as ChatGPT answer questions directly, making them a more obvious substitute for the original source material. These greater legal risks should make AI companies hesitate about having their defence of “fair use” tested in front of a jury.

Yet, there are also considerations that weigh in the other direction – starting with the fact that the risk of an unpredictable jury verdict cuts both ways. OpenAI will be able to point out that news publishers can easily block it from crawling their content if they don’t want it to be used for training its LLMs. That is something many publishers, including the NYT, have done this year.

In addition, generative AI threatens to commodify many types of information. Once it has trained its models on the content it gets from AP and Axel Springer, OpenAI will have less need of further news archives. This seriously limits the compensation that each publisher will be able to negotiate, as well as the number of bilateral deals the AI companies will be willing to reach.

All this makes a return to the negotiating table before a court showdown the most likely outcome. Generative AI promises to create big new markets for media content: the question, as always, is how the spoils should be shared.

The media companies hope to reap value from the technology directly, training AI models on their archives and summarising their news content to enhance their own services. But judging from the large audience ChatGPT generated in its first months, smart chatbots and other AI-powered services look set to become huge media sites themselves.

Axel Springer stands to make “tens of millions of euros” a year from its OpenAI agreement. For a transformative technology that could upend much of the media business, that may not be much. Even a payment of €40 million ($65 million) would still add only about 1 per cent to Springer’s revenue each year.

In return, the news groups risk surrendering their audience to the AI companies. They could also see the value of their brands diluted if ChatGPT and its successors become the new oracles of the internet.

With generative AI still in its infancy, it is impossible to envisage exactly what new services it will lead to, or how valuable these will become. That, more than anything, makes it hard for media companies to agree terms that trade away their future rights.

But as generative AI catches on with more internet users, the pressure to reach a deal will only increase.

 

 

News

Elon Musk and others urge AI pause, citing ‘risks to society’

- March 30, 2023

 

New Delhi: Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, in an open letter citing potential risks to society and humanity.

Earlier this month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI unveiled the fourth iteration of its GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) AI program, which has wowed users with its vast range of applications, from engaging users in human-like conversation to composing songs and summarising lengthy documents.

The letter, issued by the non-profit Future of Life Institute and signed by more than 1000 people including Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, called for a pause on advanced AI development until shared safety protocols for such designs were developed, implemented and audited by independent experts.

The letter asks philosophical questions and requests work be halted until some of them can be answered: “Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?

“Should we risk loss of control of our civilisation? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders,” the signatories say.

“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

OpenAI representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter detailed potential risks to society and civilisation by human-competitive AI systems in the form of economic and political disruptions, and called on developers to work with policymakers on governance and regulatory authorities.

Co-signatories included Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio, often referred to as one of the “godfathers of AI”, and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field.

According to the European Union’s transparency register, the Future of Life Institute is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, as well as London-based effective altruism group Founders Pledge, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

The concerns come as EU police force Europol on Monday joined a chorus of ethical and legal concerns over advanced AI like ChatGPT, warning about the potential misuse of the system in phishing attempts, disinformation and cybercrime.

Meanwhile, the British government unveiled proposals for an “adaptable” regulatory framework around AI.

 

‘Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.’

Excerpt from the open letter

 

The government’s approach, outlined in a policy paper published on Wednesday, would split responsibility for governing artificial intelligence between its regulators for human rights, health and safety, and competition, rather than create a new body dedicated to the technology.

Musk, whose carmaker Tesla is using AI for an autopilot system, has been vocal about his concerns about the technology.

Since its release last year, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has prompted rivals to accelerate developing similar large language models, and companies to integrate generative AI models into their products.

Last week, OpenAI announced it had partnered with around a dozen firms to build their services into its chatbot, allowing ChatGPT users to order groceries via Instacart, or book flights through Expedia.

Sam Altman, chief executive at OpenAI hasn’t signed the letter, a spokesperson at Future of Life said.

“The letter isn’t perfect, but the spirit is right: we need to slow down until we better understand the ramifications,” said Gary Marcus, a professor at New York University who signed it. “The big players are becoming increasingly secretive about what they are doing, which makes it hard for society to defend against whatever harms may materialise.”

Critics accused the signatories of promoting “AI hype”, arguing that claims around the technology’s current potential had been greatly exaggerated.

“These kinds of statements are meant to raise hype. It’s meant to get people worried,” Johanna Björklund, an AI researcher and associate professor at Umea University, said. “I don’t think there’s a need to pull the handbrake.”

Rather than pause research, she said, AI researchers should be subjected to greater transparency requirements. “If you do AI research, you should be very transparent about how you do it.”

(Reuters)

 

 

News

 

OpenAI introduced a long-form question-answering AI called ChatGPT that answers complex questions conversationally.

It’s a revolutionary technology because it’s trained to learn what humans mean when they ask a question.

Many users are awed at its ability to provide human-quality responses, inspiring the feeling that it may eventually have the power to disrupt how humans interact with computers and change how information is retrieved.

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a large language model chatbot developed by OpenAI based on GPT-3.5. It has a remarkable ability to interact in conversational dialogue form and provide responses that can appear surprisingly human.

Large language models perform the task of predicting the next word in a series of words.

Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) is an additional layer of training that uses human feedback to help ChatGPT learn the ability to follow directions and generate responses that are satisfactory to humans.

 

 

ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) ] is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 family of large language models, and is fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning) with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.

ChatGPT was launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022, and quickly garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. Its uneven factual accuracy was identified as a significant drawback. Following the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI was reportedly valued at $29 billion. (Wikipedia)

 

 

OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company conducts research in the field of AI with the stated goal of promoting and developing friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. The organization was founded in San Francisco in late 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others, who collectively pledged US$1 billion. Musk resigned from the board in February 2018 but remained a donor. In 2019, OpenAI LP received a US$1 billion investment from Microsoft and Matthew Brown Companies. OpenAI is headquartered at the Pioneer Building in Mission District, San Francisco. (Wikipedia)

 

 

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Can movie theatres and online streaming live side by side?


It’s been a tough time for movie theatres around the world with a number of factors contributing to the decline in the number of people heading to the cinema to watch movies. In a world that is embracing digital technologies, the movie industry is in danger of getting left behind unless they quickly embrace the technologies available that will get people excited to return to movie theatres and get the enjoyment of the cinema experience once again.

The rise of the video game industry

Whilst there are plenty of factors that are influencing people’s decision to visit the cinema, there is no doubt that the rapid rise of the online video game industry is a large contributing factor. People are starting to look elsewhere for their entertainment and online video gaming provides a lower-cost alternative to a trip to the cinema.

A report by MarketWatch in 2020 found that the video game industry is now bigger than the sports and movie industry combined. Just take a minute to digest that. Bigger than movies and sports - that’s big.

The news outlet reported that global video game revenue is expected to increase 20% in 2020, making $179.7 billion, according to data from IDC.

The biggest gain is expected to come from mobile gaming, according to the news outlet, which is expected to surge 24% to $87.7 billion. Part of this is due to China recently lifting a ban on gaming consoles.

Game console revenue is expected to soar to $52.5 billion this year, while PC and Mac games are expected to make $39.5 billion.

In their most recent report, MarketWatch reported that whilst overall revenue was expected to grow by 11% in 2021 to $251.39 billion, the forecast for 2022 is just a 2% growth and a flattening out of that rapid growth over the past two years.

Is this a potential opportunity for cinemas to reclaim some of that lost audience share?

Early signs look good for cinemas in 2022

If the latest movie releases in 2022 are anything to go by, it looks as though the movie theatre industry is not ready to give up just yet. Spider-Man: No Way Home became the biggest grossing movie of the past two years, grossing over $US1 billion ($1.38b) in the first two weekends. It is the second-fastest film ever to reach the $1 billion mark and suggests that this could be a big year for cinema-goers.

Following in its footsteps is another 2022 release, The Matrix Resurrections, a movie that grossed $US12 million in its opening weekend.

Whilst this is a great start to the New Year for movie theatres around the world, it remains to be seen whether this is a trend that continues throughout the year. With a number of high profile movies due for release in 2022, this could be a time for cinemas to really cash in.

The impact of streaming and long-form content

It is unlikely that cinemas will have it all their own way in 2022. Whilst it is great to see people returning to movie theatres to watch the latest releases on the big screen, there is no question that home viewing is here to stay.

As more studios and media distributors are developing their own direct-to-consumer streaming services, this starts to eat into the revenue of major studios.

Studios derive almost half of their revenues from theatrical releases. Although the average number of movie tickets purchased by Americans each year has declined from 4.2 in 2009 to 3.4 in 2019 (Source: Deloitte), studio revenues are driven more by box office tickets now than they were 20 years ago.

Streaming is having the biggest impact on people going to the movies. As televisions have improved, where you can now watch movies at home in 4K high-definition on screens with sizes up to 100”, with surround sound, people have become more willing to wait for the latest release movies to become available on streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Stan.

Another major impact on the cinema industry is the consumer switch to long-form content in the form of series. Many people feel there is more depth to a series that contains anywhere from six episodes upwards. Game of Thrones was one of the groundbreaking series to really capture the audience’s attention, however, there are so many amazing series now that it is becoming more difficult for movies to compete with the depth and the character development that a series can bring.

Huge series like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and more recently, Succession, have really captured the attention of audiences around the world and this is something movie producers need to consider.

The entertainment factor

It’s not just video games and streaming that are competing for people’s attention. Another industry embracing technology is the online casino and betting sector. Here, we have seen huge advancements in the way people are able to game online. One company leading the way in the sector is Betway, “Developed by our exceptionally talented people, Betway creates market-leading, cutting-edge interactive gaming experiences. We bring people closer to the action – putting them at the centre, making them feel a part of it.”

From the introduction of in-game betting to the development of new and exciting interactive games, these online gaming sites are leading the way when it comes to embracing new technologies that can lead to better experiences for customers.

The movie industry is at a real crossroads. With competition coming from every direction within the entertainment industry, studios and distributors need to find a way to either a) get more people back into movie theatres or b) look at alternative ways to ensure that movies can compete with online gaming, live sports streaming and online casinos for a share of customer eyeballs.

 

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