AI Weekly Digest - September 4 2023

MPs: Legislation vital now if UK to take global lead on AI regulation

MPs on the Commons Technology Committee said the UK's ambitions to take the global lead on AI regulation will not succeed unless the government introduces new legislation in the King's Speech on November 7. The UK is to host an international AI summit at the beginning of the month. ?

The?MPs also said the UK should partner with “like-minded countries who share liberal, democratic values, to ensure mutual protection against those actors - state and otherwise - who are enemies of these values and would use AI to achieve their ends". Technology committee chairman Greg Clark said China should be invited to November's AI summit “to have as many voices there as possible", while adding: “But it needs to be accompanied with the caveat that we don’t expect that some of the security aspects to be resolved at that level. Our recommendation would be that we’d need a more trusted forum for that.”

OpenAI launches corporate version of AI-powered ChatGPT

OpenAI?has launched?ChatGPT Enterprise, a corporate version of its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, as it seeks to boost?monetisation. COO Brad Lightcap said: “We’ve really tried to build the best version of ChatGPT. That was the mandate for the team: How do we build something that’s the ultimate productivity enhancer?”

Ministers must 'sit up and take notice' over AI trained on artists' work

The Commons culture committee said ministers had shown a "clear lack of understanding of the needs of the UK's creative industries", after they initially backed the Intellectual Property Office's proposal for a "text and data mining" exception to copyright law. The measures would have enabled AI companies to train their models on artists' work. The committee said: "The government must work to regain the trust of the creative industries following its abortive attempt to introduce a broad text and data mining exemption. It should consider how creatives can ensure transparency and recourse and redress if they suspect that AI developers are wrongfully using their works. The government's initial handling of the text and data mining exemption to copyright for AI development, though eventually correct, shows a clear lack of understanding of the needs of the UK's creative industries."

OpenAI 'on track for $1bn annual turnover'

Sources told Bloomberg that ChatGPT developer OpenAI is currently generating monthly revenues of $80m, putting it on track to achieve annual turnover of $1bn.

Google aims to be one-stop shop for generative AI

Google?announced it is to add Meta's Llama 2 large language model and AI startup?Anthropic’s Claude 2 chatbot to its cloud platform, seeking to position itself as a one-stop shop for generative AI. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said: "We are in an entirely new era of digital transformation, fuelled by gen AI. This technology is already improving how businesses operate and how humans interact with one another.”

Meanwhile, Google said more than half of venture-backed generative AI startups are Google Cloud?customers, including 70% of those with $1bn-plus valuations.

Microsoft president Brad Smith calls for 'regulatory blueprint'

Microsoft?president Brad Smith called for the creation of a "regulatory blueprint" to cover AI globally, telling a summit in India: "We are creating what feels like part of science fiction, we need companies and regulators to focus on that."

Meanwhile, Brad Smith said AI needs human oversight to “slow things down or turn things off", warning it has “the potential to become both a tool and a weapon". Source:

UK Cyber Security Centre warns groups over integrating AI-driven bots

The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned organisations over integrating AI-driven chatbots into their businesses. It said research increasingly shown that these can be tricked into performing harmful tasks. The NCSC will say that experts are yet to get to grips with potential security problems tied to algorithms which generate human-sounding interactions - large language models (LLMs).

An NCSC blog post warned: "Organisations building services that use LLMs need to be careful, in the same way they would be if they were using a product or code library that was in beta... They might not let that product be involved in making transactions on the customer's behalf, and hopefully wouldn't fully trust it. Similar caution should apply to LLMs."

Biden set to miss Sunak's key AI summit

US president Joe Biden is reportedly set to miss PM?Rishi Sunak's flagship AI conference this autumn. The Telegraph reported that a high-ranking representative, possibly vice-president Kamala Harris, will take his place. The report said?Biden's non-attendance would be 'seen as a blow to the Tory leader', who has flagged up the?importance of the conference to devise global rules on the rapidly advancing technology.

Tech titans to attend Senate policy forum

Senate majority leader Chuck?Schumer's office said Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai are among tech leaders who have agreed to attend the Senate's first AI policy forum next month.

Meta releases Llama key coding tool

Meta has released Code Llama, an open-source artificial intelligence coding tool which will compete with OpenAI.

China gives green light to AI chatbot public releases

Four Chinese tech groups have launched their artificial intelligence chatbots to the public after gaining government approval.?Baidu,?SenseTime,?Baichuan Intelligent Technology?and?Zhipu AI Group?all released their ChatGPT-like bots, with Baidu confirming its Ernie Bot was now fully accessible to all. SenseTime's SenseChat is also now "fully available to serve all users", a group spokesman said. Shares in all four groups jumped this morning in early trading.

AI 'set to result in four-day week'

Generative AI resources such as ChatGPT will quickly herald a four-day week, according to Jean "JC" Townend, the president of one of the world's biggest recruiters. The Adecco UK and Ireland chief said chatbots are set to deliver significant productivity gains which could see the working week shortened. She said: "I would put my money on ChatGPT giving us a four-day week. If you can get computers to do the really repetitive, boring parts of jobs that humans don't like to do, then you can put the human on top to do the really creative, interesting parts."

Sunak urged to protect UK creative industries' intellectual property rights

The Publishers Association has written to PM?Rishi Sunak urging the government to safeguard the creative industries' intellectual property rights from artificial intelligence. Chief executive Dan Conway said training AI systems “should be done transparently, with the consent of, and in a manner that credits and fairly compensates, the creator or IP rights holder”.

Christmas lectures aimed at 'demystifying' AI

Professor Michael Wooldridge, who will deliver this year's Royal Institution Christmas lectures, said he wanted to use the prestigious presentations to demystify AI: "This is the year that, for the first time, we had mass market, general purpose AI tools, by which I mean ChatGPT. It's the first time that we had AI that feels like the AI that we were promised, that we've seen in movies, computer games and books." He insisted such tools are neither magical nor mystical, and added: "When people see how this technology actually works, they're going to be surprised at what's actually going on there... That's going to equip them much better to go into a world where this is another tool that they use, and so they won't regard it any differently than a pocket calculator or a computer."