AI Weekly Digest - July 29 2024

News, views and innovations from the global artificial intelligence sector. LinkedIn newsletter readers can also sign up to an enhanced email edition of the AI Weekly Digest - published every Friday. You can subscribe for free.

$1tn wiped off tech stocks - are investors backing off from AI?

The?Nasdaq 100 Index closed down 3% in the US last Wednesday, wiping a combined $1tn off the value of tech stocks, as investors reportedly soured on the prospects for AI following Alphabet's Q2 report. Nvidia, Broadcom and Arm Holdings were among the biggest fallers, and Mapsignals investment strategist Alec Young said: “The overarching concern is, where is the ROI on all the AI infrastructure spending? There’s a pretty insane amount of money being spent. Maybe it’ll pay off in a few years. But I think investors realise that the payoff is going to take time to materialise and the hyperscalers earnings are being hurt in the short term by how much they’re spending on it.”

UK regulator CMA signs AI agreement with EU and US counterparts

UK competition regulator the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has joined EU and US counterparts in committing to work together to protect competition and the public from the rise of artificial intelligence. A joint statement with the European Commission, US Federal Trade Commission and US Department of Justice agreed that while AI technologies have the potential to spark growth and innovation, they also pose risks to consumers and fair competition which would need action if they arose.

UK/US/EU to share key information and understanding

The UK, US and?EU competition regulators and agencies agreed to share information and understanding on issues across key areas of AI. They pledged to use their individual powers to address potential risks, including the potential for leading AI and tech firms to entrench or extend their existing market power in the AI space. CMA CEO Sarah Cardell said: “AI is a borderless technology which has the potential to drive innovation and growth, delivering transformative benefits for people, businesses, and economies around the world. That’s why we’ve come together with our EU and US partners to set out our commitment to help ensure fair, open and effective competition in AI drives growth and positive change for our societies.”

OpenAI aims to challenge Google search dominance with SearchGPT

OpenAI?is launching?SearchGPT, a test version of a?search engine which the?ChatGPT-maker said will cite sources of information from business partners including?News Corp?and the?Atlantic?magazine. OpenAI said the new tool will summarise information found on websites, including news sites, and allow users to ask follow-up questions, similarly to how they can with the leading AI?LLM. An?OpenAI spokeswoman said: “We expect to learn more about user behaviour” in the test. The Guardian noted that the prototype search engine, which uses generative AI to produce results, 'raises the prospect of a significant challenge to?Google’s dominance of the online search market'.

Meta launches open-source AI app ‘competitive’ with closed rivals

Meta?has launched its open-source AI app?Llama 3.1 405B, which it said is "competitive" with rival models from?OpenAI?and?Anthropic?“across a range of tasks”. The social media giant said: “Developers can fully customise the models for their needs and applications, train on new datasets, and conduct additional fine-tuning... This enables the broader developer community and the world to more fully realise the power of generative AI. Developers can fully customise for their applications and run in any environment... all without sharing data with Meta.”

Zuckerberg: 'Open source necessary for positive AI future'

Hailing?Llama,?Meta?co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: “I believe that open source is necessary for a positive AI future. AI has more potential than any other modern technology to increase human productivity, creativity, and quality of life - and to accelerate economic growth while unlocking progress in medical and scientific research. Open source will ensure that more people around the world have access to the benefits and opportunities of AI, that power isn’t concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies, and that the technology can be deployed more evenly and safely across society.”

US technology giants establish the Coalition for Secure AI

US technology giants including Microsoft, Amazon,?Google,?Intel, and?Nvidia?have established the?Coalition for Secure AI, a new industry group which will focus on artificial intelligence security across a number of industries including advertising, media buying and online content creation. Co-chair Omar Santos, an AI security researcher at?Cisco, said the ultimate aim of the new body was to “create a future where technology is not only cutting-edge but also secure-by-default". Google VP of security engineering, Heather Adkins, said the Coalition will help to prepare “defenders for a changing cybersecurity landscape: When handling day-to-day AI governance, security practitioners don’t have a simple path to navigate the complexity of security concerns."

News/Media Alliance calls for halt to Google’s 'misappropriation of digital publishers’ content'

US trade body the?News/Media Alliance?has asked the country's Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission to halt?Google’s?“misappropriation of digital publishers’ content to power its generative artificial intelligence products to enhance its monopoly power". NMA president and CEO Danielle Coffee said: “The prominent placement of AI Overviews at the top of Google’s search results page will reduce click through to publishers’ websites even further and thus further strengthen Google’s monopoly.

Netflix chief plays down concerns over AI impact on jobs

Netflix?co-CEO Ted Sarandos played down the potential impact of AI on entertainment industry jobs, saying: “If you look back over a hundred years of entertainment, you can see how great technology and great entertainment work hand in hand. Animation didn’t get cheaper, it got better in the move from hand-drawn to CGI animation. And more people work in animation today than ever in history. So, I’m pretty sure that there’s a better business and a bigger business in making content 10% better than it is making it 50% cheaper.”

Report: Condé Nast cease-and-desist warning to?Perplexity

Vogue?publisher?Condé Nast?has reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to?Perplexity, accusing the AI-powered search start-up of scraping its content without permission.?Wired?previously reported that Perplexity's web crawlers do not respect the robots.txt blocking protocol, while?Forbes?began legal action against the group last month.

Cohere funding round values it at $5.5bn

Canadian AI start-up Cohere has raised $500m in a funding round which values it at $5.5bn, bolstering its push to take on rivals including OpenAI and Anthropic. The group, which was founded by former Google researchers Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst and Ivan Zhang, intends to double headcount to about 500 this year.

Report: Nvidia?developing version of Blackwell processor to sell in China

AI chip giant?Nvidia?is reportedly developing a version of its new Blackwell processor which it will be able to sell in China without contravening US export restrictions.

Google parent 'innovating at every layer of AI stack'

Google parent Alphabet's CEO?Sundar Pichai said: “We are innovating at every layer of the AI stack. Our longstanding infrastructure leadership and in-house research teams position us well as technology evolves and as we pursue the many opportunities ahead... We are in the early stage of a very transformative area."

CAC warns: AI groups must adhere to 'core socialist values'

Chinese government officials are testing artificial intelligence companies’ LLMs to ensure their systems “embody core socialist values”, the Financial Times reported. Regulator the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has forced large tech groups and AI start-ups including ByteDance, Alibaba and Moonshot to participate in a mandatory government review of their AI models, sources said.

'EU could lag behind other regions in AI services' - Meta VP warns

Meta deputy privacy officer and vice-president Rob Sherman warned the EU could lag behind other regions in AI services as he confirmed that Brussels has asked the group to voluntarily pause training future models on local data. He said privacy watchdogs in the bloc had asked for more time to “get their arms around the issue of generative AI”. He said: “If jurisdictions can’t regulate in a way that enables us to have clarity on what’s expected, then it’s going to be harder for us to offer the most advanced technologies in those places...?it is a realistic outcome that we’re worried about.”