AI Weekly Digest - April 15 2024
Here is PA Media's weekly need-to-know round-up of key news from the artificial intelligence sector. LinkedIn newsletter readers can also sign up for free to an enhanced email edition of the AI Weekly Digest - published every Friday. You can subscribe for free and benefit from:
Microsoft AI to open new artificial intelligence hub in London
Microsoft?announced it will open a new artificial intelligence hub in London to work on its AI products and to research the technology .?
Suleyman: 'Great news for Microsoft AI and the UK'
The US software giant recently created Microsoft AI, a new team within the group, led by?Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google-owned AI giant?DeepMind. He said the new UK hub, based at?Microsoft’s?Paddington offices, will “drive pioneering work to advance state-of-the-art language models and their supporting infrastructure, and to create world-class tooling for foundation models”.?Suleyman added: “This is great news for Microsoft AI and for the UK. As a British citizen, born and raised in London, I’m proud to have co-founded and built a cutting-edge AI business here."
Musk forecasts AI 'smarter than any one human' by end of 2025
Elon Musk told an interviewer "my guess is that we’ll have AI that is smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year", providing hardware and power supplies are maintained. He added that "full" artificial general intelligence will be achieved by 2029 , saying: "Last year it was chip constrained...?people could not get enough Nvidia chips. This year it’s transitioning to a voltage transformer supply. In a year or two [the constraint is] just electricity supply."
CMA: 'Real concern' over Big Tech’s concentration of power in AI
The Competition and Markets Authority expressed "real concern" about concentrations of power in artificial intelligence development, saying an "interconnected web " of partnerships involving a small number of firms - Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and?Nvidia - dominate the space. CEO Sarah Cardell said during a speech in Washington: "When we started this work, we were curious. Now, with a deeper understanding and having watched developments very closely, we have real concerns. The essential challenge we face is how to harness this immensely exciting technology for the benefit of all, while safeguarding against potential exploitation of market power and unintended consequences."
Meta's Clegg: 'Everyone should think of AI as a sword, not just a shield'?
Meta global affairs chief Sir Nick Clegg said fears of generative AI as an election risk are overblown. He told the Meta AI Day event in London: “It is right that we should be alert, and we should be vigilant . But of the major elections which have taken place already this year, in Taiwan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, it is striking how little these tools have been used in a systematic basis to really try to subvert and disrupt the elections." The former deputy PM went on: “I would urge everyone to think of AI as a sword, not just a shield, when it comes to bad content. The single biggest reason why we’re getting better and better and better in reducing the bad content that we don’t want on our walls, on Instagram and Facebook and for so-on, is for one reason: AI.”
Reports: OpenAI and Meta set to launch AI models 'capable of reasoning'?
Both OpenAI and Meta are reportedly poised to release new artificial intelligence models which are capable of reasoning and planning, a key step on the path to human-like cognition . OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said: "We’re going to start to see AI that can take on more complex tasks in a more sophisticated way. I think we’re just starting to scratch the surface on the ability that these models have to reason."
'Pivotal moment' as WPP Open to integrate Google's Gemini gen AI models
领英推荐
WPP has agreed a tie-up with Google to integrate its Gemini generative-AI models with its in-house AI-powered marketing operating system. Chief technology officer Stephan Pretorius said: “This collaboration marks a pivotal moment in marketing innovation. Our integration of Gemini 1.5 Pro into WPP Open has significantly accelerated our gen-AI innovation and enables us to do things we could only dream of a few months ago. With Gemini models, we’re not only able to enhance traditional marketing tasks, but also to integrate the end-to-end marketing process for continuous, adaptive optimisation. I believe this will be a game-changer for our clients and the marketing industry at large."
YouTube CEO warns using content to train OpenAI's text-to-video generator would be 'clear violation'
YouTube?chief executive officer Neal Mohan said the use of the group's videos to train?OpenAI’s?text-to-video generator would be a “clear violation” of its terms of use, but added he had no knowledge that that had taken place. He said: "From a creator’s perspective, when a creator uploads their hard work to our platform, they have certain expectations . One of those expectations is that the terms of service is going to be abided by. It does not allow for things like transcripts or video bits to be downloaded."
JPMorgan Chase CEO: 'AI has potential to augment virtually every job'
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said AI could be “possibly as transformational as some of the major technological inventions of the past several hundred years: Think the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the internet ", in his annual letter to shareholders. He said: “Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition. It may reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well.”
Microsoft warns China will disrupt global elections
Microsoft has claimed that China will try to disrupt elections this year in the US, South Korea and India, using AI-generated content. This follows a reported 'dry run' with the presidential election in Taiwan. The US software giant's threat intelligence team said state-backed cyber groups, helped by North Korea, would target high-profile polls : “As populations in India, South Korea and the United States head to the polls, we are likely to see Chinese cyber and influence actors, and to some extent North Korean cyber actors, work toward targeting these elections.” The report added that “at a minimum” China will create and distribute social media AI-generated content that “benefits their positions".
South Korea to invest $6.94bn in artificial intelligence by 2027
South Korea will invest $6.94bn in artificial intelligence by 2027, President Yoon Suk Yeol announced. He said the commitment would help retain the country’s leading global position in cutting-edge chips. He also introduced a separate fund to foster AI chip orders, competing with the US, China and Japan , which are all offering policy support and funding to strengthen domestic AI chip production.
Meta policy changes include 'Made with AI' labels
Meta has announced major changes to its policies on digitally created and altered media - including applying 'Made with AI' labels to AI-generated videos, images and audio posted. This will be rolled out next month on Facebook , Instagram and Threads , expanding the social media giant's previous policy that only applied to a narrow slice of doctored videos. Meta vice-president of content policy, Monika Bickert, said it would also apply separate and more prominent labels to digitally altered media which poses a “particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of importance”. This would be regardless of whether the content was created by using AI or other tools. The more prominent “high-risk” labels would be applied immediately, a spokesperson added.
Arm CEO warns of AI models' insatiable/unsustainable thirst for electricity
Arm?CEO Rene Haas said AI models "are just insatiable in terms of their thirst" for electricity. He warned of the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT: “The more information they gather, the smarter they are, but the more information they gather to get smarter, the more power it takes.” He went on to say: “By the end of the decade, AI data centres could consume as much as 20% to 25% of US power requirements . Today that’s probably 4% or less... That’s hardly very sustainable, to be honest with you.”
Investors set to help Musk's xAI startup raise $3bn
Investors are reportedly in talks to help Elon Musk's artificial-intelligence startup xAI raise $3bn, the Wall Street Journal reported. The funding round is set to value the company at $18bn , the report added. Among the backers considering an investment is venture capital firm Gigafund, sources said, along with an unnamed co-founder of another US venture firm.