AI Weekly Digest - October 14 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.
Nobel prize winner: Artificial Intelligence poses 'existential risk' if it gets 'out of control'
British scientist Geoffrey?Hinton, dubbed the ‘godfather of AI’, warned the technology poses an “existential risk” if it gets “out of control” as he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. He said: "It will have a huge influence,?comparable with the industrial revolution. But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability... One thing governments can do is force the big companies to spend a lot more of their resources on safety research, so that for example, companies like OpenAI can’t just put safety research on the back burner.”
Microsoft shares fall on claims AI investor optimism misplaced
Shares in Microsoft dipped after Oppenheimer downgraded the stock to 'perform' from 'outperform', saying investor optimism over the near-term impact of AI is misplaced. It said: “The Street is likely overestimating near-term AI revenues as enterprise adoption and infrastructure remains a bottleneck. Enterprises have been slow to adopt AI and associated revenues will likely disappoint.”
'Godmother of AI': 'I don't know what artificial general intelligence means'
Legendary Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li - dubbed the godmother of AI - admitted "I frankly don’t even know what (artificial general intelligence) means", telling an AI safety conference: "Like people say you know it when you see it, I guess I haven’t seen it. The truth is, I don’t spend much time thinking about these words because I think there’s so many more important things to do.”
Meta's AI assistant UK launch on Facebook and Instagram
Meta’s AI assistant has launched in the UK on?Facebook and Instagram, along with AI-boosted Ray-Ban sunglasses. The chatbot, which has already been rolled out in the US and Australia, also made its debut in Brazil and the Philippines. It can generate text and images to social media users. The service remains unavailable in the EU due to the bloc's “unpredictable” regulatory environment. Users can access the Meta AI Assistant by tapping on an icon in their app or by buying a pair of ￡299 Ray-Bans and accessing its voice assistant. The app's celebrity voice assistant will not be rolled out in the UK, Meta added.
OpenAI: No plans to share SearchGPT?revenues with publishers
OpenAI’s?head of media partnerships Varun Shetty said the group has no plans to share?SearchGPT?revenues with publishers, arguing they will be compensated via “significant incremental traffic from new audiences”. He said: “This will be something that we’re thinking a lot about, but I think we’re going to start with this proposition of traffic. What we want to do is really balance the user experience of wanting to find an answer about recent events or information with the publisher need to be correctly attributed, sourced and have traffic driven back to their sites.”
OpenAI agrees Hearst content licensing deal
OpenAI has greed a content licensing deal with Hearst in the US, enabling ChatGPT to draw on articles from more than 20 magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Elle, and about 40 newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst Magazines president Debi Chirichella said: “Our partnership with?OpenAI will help us evolve the future of magazine content."
Reports: Google working on AI software mimicking the ability to reason
Google declined to comment on reports that it is working on artificial intelligence software that mimics the human ability to reason, moving closer to recent OpenAI release o1.
OpenAI calls on court to throw out Musk's 'blusterous' lawsuit
OpenAI has asked a US court to throw out a suit filed by Elon Musk which claims co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman persuaded him to invest in the start-up under false pretences, seeking to enrich themselves by subsequently establishing a for-profit subsidiary. The group said: "The suit is the latest move in Elon Musk’s increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage."
US judge blocks ban on deepfake political ads
A US federal judge has blocked a new California law that targets deepfake political campaign ads. A preliminary injunction was granted against the state’s Bill, which effectively prevents prohibition against individuals using AI to clone a candidate's image or voice, portraying them falsely without revealing that the images or words are fake. The injunction was sought by US conservative commentator Christopher Kohls, who has created several deepfake videos satirising Democrats ahead of the November presidential election.
Apple shares down amid 'premature' high AI expectations for new iPhones
Shares in Apple fell 2.3% after?Jefferies analysts said "the high expectations for iPhone 16/17 are premature", as “a lack of material new features and limited AI coverage mean high market expectations (5%-10% unit growth) are unlikely to be met". It added that "smartphone hardware needs rework before being capable of serious AI", with a “likely timeline of 2026/27".
Character.ai?scraps plan?to develop AI models after Google poaches founders?
Character.ai interim CEO Dominic Perella said the US start-up has abandoned plans to develop AI models after Google poached its founders in a $2.7bn deal. He said: “It got insanely expensive to train frontier models...?which is extremely difficult to finance on even a very large start-up budget. Our consumer products got incredible traction, and you had a bit of a dichotomy inside the company of folks who wanted to focus on training the most cutting-edge possible models versus folks who came from a consumer background seeing this product take off."
Report: Google DeepMind staff costs soar
London-based AI lab Google DeepMind saw staff costs soar in the past year, the Times reported, spending ￡826m on employees and related expenses. Rising staff costs at parent?Alphabet’s artificial intelligence laboratory saw total administrative spending up by ￡350m to ￡1.4bn. A DeepMind spokeswoman said it did not publicly share its staff numbers, and added: “Any attempt to calculate average employee salary using these figures would be highly inaccurate.” Accounts filed with Companies House for the year to December 2023 revealed revenue at the group rose by ￡450m to more than ￡1.5bn.
OpenAI?reportedly eyeing restructure to public benefit corporation
OpenAI?is reportedly considering restructuring as a public benefit corporation, a new and unusual structure designed to defend it from hostile takeovers and protect chief executive Sam?Altman from outsider interference. The “multipronged approach to fiduciary obligations”, which seeks to balance shareholder interests with public and stakeholder benefits, has already been adopted by AI rivals including Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI. The ChatGPT developer said: “We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone, and we are working with our board to ensure that we’re best positioned to succeed in our mission. The non-profit is core to our mission and will continue to exist and thrive."
Vodafone and Google expand partnership to 'bring most advanced AI products and services to millions'
Vodafone has announced a 10-year strategic expansion of its partnership with Google, promising "to bring new services, devices, and TV experiences to millions of Vodafone's customers across Europe and Africa, supported by Google Cloud and Google's Gemini models". CEO Margherita Della Valle said: "Together, Vodafone and Google will put new AI-powered content and devices into the hands of millions of more consumers. Using these services, our customers can discover new ways to learn, create and communicate, as well as consume TV, on a scale we haven't seen before." CEO Sundar Pichai said: "Our expanded partnership with Vodafone will help bring our most advanced AI products and services, including our Gemini models, to more people across Europe and Africa. I'm excited to see how Vodafone's consumers, small businesses and governments, will use generative AI and Google Cloud to transform the way they work and access information."
Report: No direct replacement for former OpenAI CTO
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reportedly consolidating his power at the group following the abrupt departure of CTO Mura Murati last month, telling staff he does not intend to appoint a direct replacement.
Haugen: 'Whistleblowing protections more important in the age of AI'
Former?Facebook?product manager Frances Haugen, who obtained the documents which formed the basis of the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series, said whistleblowing protections are more important in the age of AI as "the only people in the world who may understand how these systems work are the employees, who can see behind a curtain". She said: "You’re going to use AI systems, and the people who may see the consequences of how these systems are inappropriately designed may be front-line workers in healthcare or transportation. There are lots of these things where badly designed software is going to violate the law."
California governor criticised for AI safety act veto
US venture capital investor Bradley Tusk said he believes California governor Gavin Newsom was wrong "both politically and substantively" to veto the state's AI safety act, arguing “you’ve got to give the public some level of confidence that somebody is keeping an eye on this thing” if AI is to grow into a sustainable multibillion-dollar industry.
Demand for Nvidia’s?Blackwell chip tops expectations
Foxconn chairman Young Liu said he believes the boom in artificial intelligence investment “still has some time to go”, with demand for Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell chip - which Foxconn is manufacturing - “much better than we thought”. Expressing confidence that developers will achieve artificial general intelligence, he said: "If you divide [intelligence] into four different levels, we’re at level two. There’s still level three and level four to go."
Super Micro Computer shares soar 14% on graphics processor demand
Shares in AI server maker Super Micro Computer soared 14% after it announced it is currently shipping more than 100,000 graphics processors per quarter. A boom in Gen AI technology has seen a spike in demand for the hardware required to process the large amounts of data it uses, helping Super Micro, which makes servers featuring leading AI chips including market leader?Nvidia's.
Meta Movie Gen uses AI to create up to 16 seconds of video
Meta has unveiled new tool Meta Movie Gen, which uses AI to create up to 16 seconds of video at 16 frames a second. The Facebook and Instagram parent said Movie Gen can generate personalised AI videos using a single photo. The tool is still being tested ahead of a public launch, Meta added. A spokesperson said: “As we continue to improve our models and move toward a potential future release, we’ll work closely with filmmakers and creators to integrate their feedback.”