OpenAI Launches a Task Force to Control Superintelligent AI

OpenAI believes artificial intelligence exceeding human intelligence “could arrive this decade.” Calling the massive compute power “superintelligence rather than AGI to stress a much higher capability level,” the company warns that even though this new cognition holds great promise it will not necessarily be benevolent. Preparing for the worst, OpenAI has formed an internal unit charged with developing ways to keep superintelligent AI in check. Led by OpenAI’s Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, the Superalignment Team will work toward “steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI and preventing it from going rogue.” Continue reading OpenAI Launches a Task Force to Control Superintelligent AI

AWS Invests $100 Million in Generative AI Innovation Center

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is investing $100 million to fund a global AI accelerator, aiming to link its machine learning initiatives with experts, customers and partners worldwide. Twilio, Highspot, Lonely Planet and Ryanair are among the first companies to get onboard with the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center to develop new applications. “Through free workshops, engagements and training, AWS will help customers imagine and scope the use cases that will create the greatest value for their businesses, based on best practices and industry expertise,” the company explains. Continue reading AWS Invests $100 Million in Generative AI Innovation Center

MAGE AI Unifies Generative and Recognition Image Training

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have introduced a computer vision system that combines image recognition and image generation technology into one training model instead of two. The result, MAGE (short for MAsked Generative Encoder) holds promise for a wide variety of use cases and is expected to reduce costs through unified training, according to the team. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first model that achieves close to state-of-the-art results for both tasks using the same data and training paradigm,” the researchers said. Continue reading MAGE AI Unifies Generative and Recognition Image Training

Meta Creates Voicebox Generative AI Model for Audio Synth

Meta Platforms has unveiled Voicebox, an AI model that can produce high-quality audio clips and edit pre-recorded audio. It also uses artificial intelligence for speech generation efforts, using what Meta calls “in-context learning” to accomplish tasks it was not specifically trained for. The company says Voicebox is first in class with this type of generalized learning for audio. Untrained tasks include sampling, stylizing and editing. As an editor, it can isolate and remove sounds like car horns and background animal noise while preserving the content and style of the source audio. The multilingual model generates speech in six languages. Continue reading Meta Creates Voicebox Generative AI Model for Audio Synth

European Union Takes Steps to Regulate Artificial Intelligence

The European Parliament on Wednesday took a major step to legislate artificial intelligence, passing a draft of the AI Act, which puts restrictions on many of what are believed to be the technology’s riskiest uses. The EU has been leading the world in advancing AI regulation, and observers are already citing this developing law as a model framework for global policymakers eager to place guardrails on this rapidly advancing technology. Among the Act’s key tenets: it will dramatically curtail use of facial recognition software and require AI firms such as OpenAI to disclose more about their training data. Continue reading European Union Takes Steps to Regulate Artificial Intelligence

Meta Develops Computer Vision AI That Learns Like Humans

Meta Platforms continues to make progress on a mission to develop artificial intelligence that can teach itself to learn how the world works. Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun has taken a special interest in developing the new model, called Image Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture, or I-JEPA, which learns by building an internal representation of the outside world and analyzing image abstracts instead of comparing pixels. The approach allows AI techto learn more like humans do, with their ability to figure out complex tasks and adapt to new situations. Continue reading Meta Develops Computer Vision AI That Learns Like Humans

Microsoft Study: GPT-4 Nearing Artificial General Intelligence

A March research paper by Microsoft has reopened discussion as to whether artificial intelligence is inching toward human reasoning, as the industry grapples with how an AI system can assimilate training data in a way that allows it to generate answers and promulgate ideas that weren’t programmed into it. Asked for a stable way to stack a book, nine eggs, a laptop, a bottle and a nail, the Microsoft AI generated a response researchers say hinted at artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a term used to connote an as yet theoretical type of machine learning that can duplicate human reasoning. Continue reading Microsoft Study: GPT-4 Nearing Artificial General Intelligence

PwC’s $1 Billion Investment in AI Includes Microsoft, OpenAI

PricewaterhouseCoopers U.S. will invest $1 billion to expand and scale its artificial intelligence capabilities over the next three years. The accounting giant will work with Microsoft and OpenAI to automate parts of its tax, audit and consulting services. In addition to scouting for AI software acquisitions, the investment will also fund training for its staff of 65,000 and recruitment of new talent. PwC predicts generative AI will “change business models and reinvent entire industries,” contributing up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Continue reading PwC’s $1 Billion Investment in AI Includes Microsoft, OpenAI

OpenAI Previews ChatGPT Business, Unveils Privacy Controls

OpenAI is readying ChatGPT Business, a new subscription tier “for professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.” Pricing plans have yet to be disclosed for ChatGPT Business, which will be rolling out in the coming months, but OpenAI said it will adhere to the company’s API’s data usage policies, which means that by default end users’ data would not be used to train its models. The business plan was mentioned as part of an announcement disclosing that all ChatGPT users now have the ability to turn off their chat history. Continue reading OpenAI Previews ChatGPT Business, Unveils Privacy Controls

EU Considers Technology Updates for Next Draft of the AI Act

The European Union, which has been working on artificial intelligence legislation for the past two years, is playing last minute catch-up with rapidly evolving technology as it retools a final draft law that can be adopted, possibly by the end of the year. While the European Council in December thought it had completed its framework in all but the details, that version largely deferred attaching specific rules to generative AI, which having since exploded, has triggered a movement among member states to add those guardrails along with rules for general purpose AI. Continue reading EU Considers Technology Updates for Next Draft of the AI Act

Nvidia Chief Suggests ChatGPT Marks an AI Inflection Point

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has declared OpenAI’s ChatGPT as creating an “iPhone moment for artificial intelligence.” Speaking at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, Huang suggested that ChatGPT is revolutionary for engaging the imagination of millions and opening their eyes to the possibilities the technology holds, much as Apple’s iPhone did for mobile computing, ushering in a new era. ChatGPT has taken the world by storm, and it is the diversity of use that Huang feels makes it special — with some putting it to work to create code, while others use it to write fiction or plan meals and much more. Continue reading Nvidia Chief Suggests ChatGPT Marks an AI Inflection Point

Google’s MusicLM AI Can Generate Tunes from Text Prompts

Google is introducing a new artificial intelligence app called MusicLM that creates music in any style or genre based on text prompts and can translate a whistled melody or casually hummed snipped into instrument sounds. TechCrunch calls the technology “impressive” but says the Alphabet company “fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it,” in recognition of the controversy surrounding AI models trained using copyrighted material. MusicLM was created using a dataset of 280,000 musical hours, resulting in the ability to generate minutes-long songs of “significant complexity.” Continue reading Google’s MusicLM AI Can Generate Tunes from Text Prompts

CES: Generative AI Is Having Its ‘War of the Worlds’ Moment

ChatGPT came too late (end of November) to make a significant impact on CES this year, but the cacophony of opinions about the generative AI model definitely made its way to Vegas. The timing was perfect. Just as the crypto crash left the hype industry paralyzed, OpenAI launched ChatGPT in what now feels like a nerdy and frustrating tech version of the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert in ’69 (with computer scientists as the Hells Angels). Make no mistake: this is a landmark achievement in machine learning — perhaps the single greatest since the 2006 paper by Hinton, Salakhutdinov, Osindero and Teh on backpropagation in deep neural networks. However, it’s critical that industries, including M&E, distinguish between hype and reality. Continue reading CES: Generative AI Is Having Its ‘War of the Worlds’ Moment

CES: Dimension X Demos Bonfire Virtual Story Creation Tools

For the most part, exhibitors in the Gaming and Metaverse areas at CES 2023 didn’t touch on the latent problems with consumer adoption of the metaverse. While worlds like “Fortnite” and “Roblox” that draw consistently high MAUs do so because they offer fun mechanics, the many metaverse platforms on exhibit generally did not provide compelling reasons for why companies — much less consumers — should spend time in their worlds. Dimension X’s booth was a standout on the floor, however, as it showcased Bonfire, a soon-to-be-released tool to enable the seamless creation of narrative mechanics within virtual worlds. Continue reading CES: Dimension X Demos Bonfire Virtual Story Creation Tools

CES: Startup Leverages AI to Address Problematic Acoustics

There are a growing number of companies working on technologies that strive to make a person’s voice more intelligible to the listener over speakers, headphones, hearing aids and other consumer audio devices. Augmented Hearing, a Danish startup launched two years ago, is one of the more interesting companies at CES 2023 focusing on this space. The firm’s software-based solution runs on iOS, Windows and other CE operating systems. Their solution could mitigate the current trend of people across all age groups turning on closed captioning because they often find video dialogue difficult to understand. Continue reading CES: Startup Leverages AI to Address Problematic Acoustics