AI Weekly Digest - March 4 2024
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Microsoft sets principles to foster AI innovation and competition
Microsoft has announced a set of principles to foster innovation and competition in AI. The move comes amid concerns from rivals and regulators about the US tech giant's market power. ?Microsoft president Brad Smith said the principles aim "in part to address Microsoft's growing role and responsibility as an AI innovator and a market leader", adding: "By publishing these principles, we are committing ourselves to providing the broad technology access needed to empower organisations and individuals around the world to develop and use AI in ways that will serve the public good."
Analyst rejects idea of chip valuations crash
Bernstein chip analyst Stacy Rasgon played down speculation that the current boom in AI chip valuations could give way to a crash akin to the one which hit fibre optic equipment manufacturers in the early 2000s, saying: "The fibre was put in the ground [in the 1990s] before it was needed. That’s not the case with AI chips, they aren’t being put in a warehouse somewhere."
Reports: Apple cancels 10-year EV project, will shift funding to Gen AI
Apple?has reportedly cancelled plans to build electric vehicles and it is understood the iPhone maker will instead shift research funding into generative AI. Apple has never publicly acknowledged the EV project, which it is thought to have been working on for a decade. Many employees from the project will be moved to Apple's AI division, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news. Ray Wang, founder and chief executive of consultancy Constellation Research, told the BBC: "This is a smart and long-awaited decision. The market demand for EVs is not there and AI is where all the action is."
UK news groups demand protection from AI copyright infringement
Executives from The?Guardian,?News UK,?Financial Times?and?DMG Media?called for regulatory action to protect news groups from copyright infringement by AI companies, telling the Lords 'future of news' inquiry that it should be impossible to train large language models without licensing agreements.?DMG Media editor emeritus Peter Wright warned generative AI could become "the dog that eats its own tail”, saying: "If it develops in the way it looks as though AI developers want it to develop – where they basically just appropriate all our work without any compensation at all – they will destroy the very news content on which their models are trained. You will end up with generative AI producing answers to users’ prompts that are fuelled entirely by other generative AI, and inaccuracy and bias will just multiply.”
Ex-Twitter engineers launch multi-perspective news reading app
A group of former?Twitter engineers has beta launched Particle.news, a “multi-perspective” news reading app which says it will use AI to summarise stories and ensure publishers are faily compensated. Early investor April Underwood said: "We believe AI is going to touch every aspect of people’s digital lives at work and at home. Couple that with the pre-existing conditions at play here - it’s hard to find breaking news from sources you can trust, and the social media landscape is rapidly evolving - and you have to believe that the way people consume news is going to be different a few years from now."
BBC trials Gen AI to boost newsroom efficiency
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?The BBC said it is trialling generative AI to boost efficiency within its newsroom, including a 'headline helper' tool and translation tools which can convert news articles into multiple languages.
AI 'could be elusive killer app to unlock 5G value'
Nvidia global head of business development for telco, Chris Penrose, said he believes AI could prove to be the elusive 'killer app' which enables mobile operators to unlock the value of 5G. He said: "Every single application that exists will have generative AI as part of its user interface going forward. And this really is now an opportunity, whether you're bringing Infrastructure as a Service, you're bringing Training as a Service, Inferencing as a Service or even AI applications, this is a whole new opportunity powered by generative AI that the telcos can really lean into and hopefully tap and get some additional revenues to make it to pay for that investment and leverage that 5G infrastructure in a way that we all want it to be leveraged.”
Engineer: 'Embarrassingly hard to get Gemini to acknowledge that white people exist'?
Former?Google?engineer Debarghya Das said "it's embarrassingly hard to get Google Gemini to acknowledge that white people exist", after its Gemini AI tool was criticised for returning images including black Nazis and American Indian Vikings. Google said: "We're already working to address recent issues with Gemini's image generation feature. While we do this, we're going to pause the image generation of people."
Analyst: Zoom doubling down on long-term AI strategy
Needham and Co senior equity analyst Ryan Koontz noted that video-conferencing provider Zoom is "doubling down on its long-term strategy to integrate generative AI rather than risk its massive cash holdings on a start-up that might more immediately drive topline growth", after better-than-expected Q4 results suggested the company's bid to integrate AI into its products had paid off. CFO Kelly Steckelberg said the company's Zoom AI companion, which was introduced during the third quarter, saw more than 510,000 accounts enabled in the past five months.
Pichai hails important tool in fight against cyber attacks
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he believes AI can prove an important tool in the fight against cyber attacks, despite concerns that it could be a boon for hackers. He told the Munich Security Conference: "We are right to be worried about the impact on cybersecurity. But AI, I think actually, counterintuitively, strengthens our defence on cybersecurity... AI is at a definitive crossroads - one where policymakers, security professionals and civil society have the chance to finally tilt the cybersecurity balance from attackers to cyber defenders."
Meta AI tools 'make advertisers more confident'
Meta?vice-president for the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Northern Europe,?Derya Matras, said the group's AI tools have made advertisers “more efficient, more productive, and more confident”, after they drove an average 32% uplift in ROI.
Samsung Galaxy innovations 'unlock power of mobile AI'?
Samsung Electronics president and head of mobile experience, TM Roh, told the Mobile World Congress: “Our latest Galaxy products and innovations unlock the power of mobile AI to empower users in their everyday lives to open up new possibilities.” He went on: “At MWC this year, we’re excited to showcase Galaxy AI across our portfolio, including Galaxy S24 series, proving just how powerful these devices are in enabling a better, more intelligent and connected future.”