Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer unveiled his approach toward regulating artificial intelligence, beginning with nine listening sessions to explore topics including AI’s impact on the job market, copyright, national security and “doomsday scenarios.” Schumer’s plan — the SAFE (Security, Accountability, Foundations, Explainability) Innovation framework — isn’t proposed legislation, but a discovery roadmap. Set to begin in September, the panels will draw on members of industry, academia and civil society. “Experts aren’t even sure which questions policymakers should be asking,” said Schumer of the learning curve. “In many ways, we’re starting from scratch.” Continue reading Schumer Shares Plan for SAFE AI Senate Listening Sessions

Sam Altman continues to call for coordinated international regulation of artificial intelligence. The OpenAI co-founder and CEO visited Seoul this past weekend to meet with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who issued a statement saying it is important to act “with a sense of speed” in establishing international standards or face unwanted “side effects.” Altman also virtually delivered a keynote address to Chinese AI researchers at an annual conference hosted by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, calling on China to participate in global rulemaking. Continue reading Altman Calls on China to Participate in Global AI Rulemaking

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg received a letter this week from Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology & the Law that took the executive to task for an online leak of the company’s LLaMA artificial intelligence system. The 65-billion parameter language model, which is still under development, was open-sourced in February. Available on request through Meta’s GitHub portal, it wound up on 4chan and BitTorrent “making it available to anyone, anywhere in the world, without monitoring or oversight,” the senators wrote. Continue reading Senators Question Meta Platforms About Recent LLaMA Leak

Mitigating the risk of extinction due to AI must should be as much a global priority as pandemics and nuclear war, according to the non-profit Center for AI Safety, which this week released a warning that artificial intelligence systems may pose an existential threat to humanity. Among the more than 350 executives, researchers and engineers who signed the statement are the CEOs of three leading AI firms: OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. The statement comes as rapid advancements in large language models raise fears of societal disruption through job loss and widespread misinformation. Continue reading Industry Leaders Caution That AI Presents ‘Risk of Extinction’

A new government agency that licenses artificial intelligence above a certain capability, regular testing, and independent audits were some of the ideas to spring from a three-hour Senate judiciary subcommittee hearing to explore ways in which the government might regulate the nascent field. OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman advocated for all of the above, stressing the need for external validation by independent experts, strict cybersecurity, and a “whole of society approach” to combatting disinformation. While Altman emphasized AI’s advantages, he warned “if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.” Continue reading Politicians and Tech Leaders Gather to Discuss Regulating AI

For those worried about AI creep — the insidious influence of artificial intelligence over everything from school classwork to career aspirations — Princeton University undergrad Edward Tian has an app for that. Tian has received $3.5 million in funding for an invention called GPTZero, which analyzes text to identify the work of generative AI. The 10-person team claims the tool has a 99 percent accuracy rate for human text and can score at about 85 percent when it comes to text written by AI. The company is now talking to media leaders about partnerships for AI detection and analysis. Continue reading GPTZero Fights Online AI Disinformation, School Plagiarism

The Biden administration has committed $140 million to create seven new artificial intelligence research hubs, bringing the national total to 25. The announcement coincided with Vice President Kamala Harris’ Thursday meeting with representatives from Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI and new White House guidance on AI development. The developments are part of an effort to curtain security risks associated with AI and ensure that it is implemented responsibly. “The private sector has an ethical, moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products,” Harris said following the meeting, which included a drop-in by President Biden. Continue reading Biden Administration Hosts Tech Elite at White House AI Meet

Amidst calls to put the brakes on large language model development, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hit the global circuit to tout the advantages of artificial intelligence and commercial opportunities with his firm. Altman’s 17-city tour includes stops in Washington D.C., Toronto, Tokyo, Rio De Janeiro, Lagos, London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Munich, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Dubai, New Delhi, Jakarta, Seoul and Melbourne. On Monday, Altman met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and other government officials, vowing to collaborate on protecting user privacy and data protection. Continue reading OpenAI’s Altman Talks Up Machine Learning on Global Tour

AI startup Humane, founded by former Apple employees, has raised $100 million in a Series C round to fund its vision to deliver an “integrated device and cloud services platform” for artificial intelligence. That brings Humane’s total funding to $230 million from investors including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. This recent round, led by Kindred Ventures, includes Microsoft, SK Networks and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman. While Humane hasn’t been publicizing its plans, the company — founded by ex-Apple execs Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri — drew attention after hiring dozens of former Apple staffers. It now numbers about 200 employees. Continue reading AI Startup Led by Former Apple Execs Raises Its Next $100M

Artificial intelligence clearly is modeled after humans in that it has revealed itself to be imperfect. In the past week, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has mesmerized the public even as The New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose famously labeled it “unhinged.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is using the moment to clarify the company’s priorities, posting on Friday an apologia-cum-mission statement. If the company is successful at mass deployment of artificial general intelligence (AGI), it “could help us elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge,” Altman wrote. Continue reading OpenAI CEO Details the Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence

Google seems to view ChatGPT as a threat to its $149 billion annual search business. OpenAI’s chatbot is said to have amazed those who’ve seen its ability to grasp concepts and generate ideas, which Google execs are concerned might translate to “a compelling new search experience,” according to reporting by The New York Times. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, is said to have wrangled Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin for “several meetings” focused on ratcheting up Google’s AI development in an effort to overtake ChatGPT’s first-mover advantage. Continue reading Google Taps Page and Brin to Take on ChatGPT for AI Search

Microsoft plans to add OpenAI’s artificial intelligence app ChatGPT to its Azure OpenAI Service, which is now being made generally available after being offered to select enterprise customers in limited availability since November 2021. ChatGPT’s Azure debut expands on the existing relationship with OpenAI, in which Microsoft in 2019 invested $1 billion, a stake it is considering to expanding by another $10 billion. Microsoft couched the moves as a ”continued commitment to democratizing AI, and ongoing partnership with OpenAI.” Microsoft chief exec Satya Nadella also announced the company plans to eventually include AI tools like ChatGPT into all of its products. Continue reading Microsoft Adding ChatGPT to Wide Release of Azure OpenAI

OpenAI’s Codex, an AI system that translates natural language into code, was released via an API in private beta. Codex, trained on billions of lines of public code, can turn plain English commands into 12+ programming languages and also powers GitHub service Copilot that suggests whole lines of code within Microsoft Visual Studio and other development environments. OpenAI explained that Codex will be offered for free during an “initial period,” and invites “businesses and developers to build on top of it through the API.”

Continue reading OpenAI Debuts Tool to Translate Natural Language into Code

OpenAI unveiled a $100 million OpenAI Startup Fund to fund early-stage companies pursuing ways that AI can have a “transformative” impact on healthcare, education, climate change and other fields. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said the Fund will make “big, early bets” on no more than 10 such companies. OpenAI, with funding from Microsoft and others, will manage the Fund. Selected projects will get “early access” to future OpenAI systems, support from OpenAI’s team and credits for Microsoft Azure. Continue reading OpenAI and Microsoft Introduce $100 Million AI Startup Fund

OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), a general-purpose language algorithm for using machine learning to answer questions, translate text and predictively write it, is currently in its third version. GPT-3, first described in a research paper published in May, is now in a private beta with a select group of developers. The goal is to eventually launch it as a commercial cloud-based subscription service. Its predecessor, GPT-2, released last year, was able to create convincing text in several styles. Continue reading Beta Testers Give Thumbs Up to New OpenAI Text Generator