AI @ Noon | July 26

China is closing the AI gap with the United States: In recent weeks, Chinese tech companies have unveiled technologies that rival American systems — and they are already in the hands of consumers and software developers. NYT

London, Seoul, and Washington warn of North Korea cyber op to steal military, nuclear secrets: The American Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warns that this ongoing threat remains a global concern, impacting various industrial sectors and affecting countries including India and Japan. Le Monde

How to ensure Africa is not left behind by the AI revolution: Weak digital infrastructure is holding the continent back. Economist

What Kamala Harris means for the future of AI policy: Harris played a key role in the Biden administration’s efforts around artificial intelligence. Bloomberg

Harris likely to combine Biden AI policies with Silicon Valley-informed approach: The vice president and soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee has been the voice for several White House AI actions and led on getting voluntary safety commitments from tech companies. FedScoop

Artificial intelligence: Trump and Vance want less regulation, more power, to counter China: When it comes to AI, the Republican presidential candidate and his vice presidential nominee appear determined to diverge from the Biden administration's regulatory approach. Le Monde

Kids’ online safety, privacy legislation advances in Senate: BGov reports The Senate took its first major step to regulate the technology industry in more than two decades, advancing bipartisan legislation that intends to improve safety and privacy protections for children on social media platforms.

Senate legislation to establish third-party AI audit guidelines is now bipartisan: FedScoop reports the bill would direct the Department of Commerce’s NIST to work with federal agencies and stakeholders on developing guidelines for third-party AI evaluations.

+ The legislation has early support from several policy and public interest organizations, including the Center for AI Policy, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Federation of American Scientists, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and the Software & Information Industry Association. Booz Allen also offered its support for the legislation.

Sen. Markey threatens to block AI bills that fail to address environmental impacts: Inside AI Policy reports Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) said he will block any upcoming legislation on artificial intelligence that fails to fully address the environmental consequences of the increasingly pervasive technology, particularly from the growth in energy demand driving data centers and creating climate change pollutants. “As Congress considers new legislation on AI, our climate and environment must be at the center of our policymaking, they cannot be an afterthought,” Markey said at a July 24 virtual webinar hosted by Public Citizen.

Bloomberg: FTC’s Khan backs open AI models in bid to avoid monopolies

+ Khan comments made at San Francisco event on AI startups

+ Agency is probing Microsoft, OpenAI over antitrust concerns

Start-ups like Wiz will have to learn the art of living longer: The decision of the Israeli-founded cyber security company and Google to call off their match has lessons for the tech sector. John Thornhill

Revolut, a fintech startup, secured a banking licence in Britain more than three years after applying. Regulatory breaches, late filing of its accounts and concerns over its corporate culture were the main reasons for the delay. 

Who will control the future of AI?: A democratic vision for artificial intelligence must prevail over an authoritarian one. Sam Altman - WP Oped

OpenAI tests new AI search features in direct challenge to Google: Bloomberg reports the AI startup will roll out SearchGPT prototype to a limited number of users.

OpenAI’s new SearchGPT takes aim at Google, Perplexity in the battle for AI search dominance. But will it win the war? Fortune

Why is Mark Zuckerberg giving away Meta’s crown jewels? Augustus Caesar goes on the open-source warpath. Economist

Video game performers will go on strike over artificial intelligence concerns: AP reports Hollywood’s video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | July 25

Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source: ZDNet reports the United States remains reluctant to work with open source, but European countries are bolder.

China is getting secretive about its supercomputers: Big machines are critical for developing weapons and AI, so scientists hunt for clues about Chinese progress. WSJ

A Kamala Harris presidency could mean more of the same on AI regulation: The presumptive Democratic nominee has won concessions from Big Tech leaders on AI, but she hasn’t successfully pushed Congress to regulate. NYT

In Silicon Valley, where Trump made inroads, Democrats are now invigorated: Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and others have endorsed Donald J. Trump. But President Biden’s withdrawal has re-energized Democrats across the tech industry and may blunt that momentum. WP

Donald Trump and cryptocurrencies: The underside of a recent love affair: A long-standing critic of crypto-assets, the former Republican president has made a 180-degree turn and is now an unconditional supporter of Bitcoin. Le Monde

The Securities and Exchange Commission gave the final signoff for ether-based exchange-traded funds to start trading.

The FTC demands to know more about how Mastercard, Chase, Accenture, and others are using AI to set dynamic pricing based on customer behavior. 

Congress calls for tech outage hearing to grill CrowdStrike CEO: The House Homeland Security Committee called on the chief executive of the cybersecurity firm to testify on the disruption. NYT

House committee calls on CrowdStrike CEO to testify on global outage: The software security company faces the prospect of a congressional grilling over a botched update that caused widespread havoc. WP

CrowdStrike says bug in quality control process led to botched update: Reuters reports a CrowdStrike software update that crashed computers globally last week hitting services from aviation to banking and healthcare was caused by a bug in the US cybersecurity firm's quality control mechanism, the company said on Wednesday.

+ US Fortune 500 companies, excluding Microsoft, will face $5.4 billion in financial losses from the recent CrowdStrike outage, insurer Parametrix said on Wednesday.

TC: CrowdStrike offers a $10 apology gift card to say sorry for outage

Mark Zuckerberg just intensified the battle for AI’s future Time

These are the 10 AI startups to watch in 2024: OpenAI, Perplexity, Suno, and more—Bloomberg’s second-annual leaderboard of AI upstarts. Bloomberg

Microsoft’s AI assistants will revolutionize the office — one day: Early adopters say deploying the company’s Copilot bots requires cleaning up corporate data and lots of employee training. Bloomberg

Bloomberg: Musk asks X users if Tesla should invest $5 billion in xAI

+ CEO takes poll on whether EV maker should back his startup

+ The two companies have intermingled on procurement, recruiting

FT: US markets suffer worst day since 2022 as Tesla and AI stocks fall

Tesla’s auto woes crash Elon Musk’s AI dreams: The electric-vehicle pioneer’s second-quarter results showed a challenged car business, while its CEO just wants investors to think about autonomy. WSJ

Big Tech says AI is booming. Wall Street is starting to see a bubble. The industry has rushed head-long into AI, and stock market investors are following them. But a growing number of analysts are skeptical. WP

+ OpenAI may lose $5 billion this year and may run out of cash in 12 months, unless they raise more cash, per analysis The Information.

Google fails to ‘wow’ as AI bills mount: WSJ reports the advertising business faces tough growth comparisons, while AI spending continues to surge.

Microsoft aims to boost AI workload capacity with Lumen partnership: Reuters reports Microsoft will use Lumen Technologies' network equipment to expand its capacity for AI workloads, the companies said on Wednesday, as the technology giant looks to meet growing demand at its data centers.

Reuters:  Facebook removes 63,000 accounts in Nigeria over 'sextortion' scams 

Apple is working on a foldable iPhone that could be released as early as 2026.

DW: Ferrari to accept cryptocurrency payments in Europe

Paris 2024: Controversial AI-led video surveillance put to the test during Olympics: Regional transport authorities are preparing to extend the use of so-called 'smart' algorithm-led video surveillance throughout the Games. These tools have already been tested in France, but their effectiveness has been questioned. Le Monde

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | July 24

China’s Xi Jinping bets on high tech for ‘great rejuvenation’: Communist party’s third plenum reinforces focus on self-sufficiency but fails to assuage fears about weak consumption or oversupply. FT

Washington’s most powerful interests don’t know whether to cheer Harris — or dread her: Would she bring continuity with Joe Biden’s policies? A more centrist vibe? A sharper progressive bite? Industries including tech, energy and pharma want to know. Politico

What Fortune 500 CEOs could expect from a Kamala Harris administration Fortune

Fortune: Kamala Harris could mean an end to Democrats’ hard line on crypto—but it’s too soon to say for sure

Here's where Kamala Harris stands on tech issues including AI, Big Tech, and crypto BI

Fortune: Elon Musk backs down from $45 million a month pledge to Trump, says he doesn’t ‘subscribe to cult of personality’

Senators demand OpenAI detail efforts to make its AI safe: Following a Washington Post report, five lawmakers ask the artificial intelligence start-up to describe how it will ensure its tools don’t cause harm. WP

AI firms will soon exhaust most of the internet’s data: Can they create more? Economist

Meta releases open-source AI model it says rivals OpenAI, Google tech: WP reports CEO Mark Zuckerberg says its Llama AI models, which are available to anyone, will surpass competitors next year. But the open approach has its critics too.

+ @AIatMeta: Starting today, open source is leading the way. Introducing Llama 3.1: Our most capable models yet. Today we’re releasing a collection of new Llama 3.1 models including our long awaited 405B. These models deliver improved reasoning capabilities, a larger 128K token context window and improved support for 8 languages among other improvements. Llama 3.1 405B rivals leading closed source models on state-of-the-art capabilities across a range of tasks in general knowledge, steerability, math, tool use and multilingual translation.

Zuckerberg aims to rival OpenAI, Google with new Llama AI model: The Meta CEO defends both his open source strategy and a massive investment in artificial intelligence. Bloomberg

Cloud and AI lift Google-parent quarterly profit: AFP reports Google-parent Alphabet on Tuesday reported profit and revenue that beat expectations as its AI-amped cloud and search ads businesses thrived.

Alphabet revenue jump shows no sign of AI denting search business: FT reports cloud computing growth shows continued demand as companies race to build large language models.

The rise of the AI gadget could free us from our smartphones. We just need to find the right device Fortune

Insurers’ losses from global IT outage could reach billions: FT reports disruption to companies’ systems estimated to be most significant loss event since NotPetya malware attacks of 2017.

Wiz turns down Google: Fortune reports cybersecurity startup Wiz, valued at $12 billion, is turning down Google’s offer to buy the company. Instead, Wiz will seek to go public via an IPO, according to an internal memo.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | July 23

Nvidia is working on a new AI chip for China that's compatible with US export controls and could ship in 2025, according to sources.

Europol warns of rise in AI child abuse imagery: AFP reports AI makes it more difficult to identify real-life victims and perpetrators, the agency said. It also warned of using so-called "deepfake" technology to mimic real people.

Microsoft blames EU rules for allowing world’s biggest IT outage to happen: The Telegraph reports that the European Commission deal prevented software giant from making security changes that would have blocked CrowdStrike update, claims tech giant.

+ Microsoft cannot block access to the Windows kernel because of a 2009 agreement with the European Commission meant it was unable to make security changes that would have blocked the CrowdStrike update that triggered widespread travel and healthcare chaos on Friday.

+ A Microsoft spokesman said it cannot legally wall off its operating system in the same way Apple does because of an understanding it reached with the European Commission following a complaint. In 2009, Microsoft agreed it would give makers of security software the same level of access to Windows that Microsoft gets.

+ Microsoft said in a blog post Saturday that 8.5 million Windows machines were hit, or less than 1% of its global footprint. That number was enough to bring down the operations of major businesses across industries including healthcare, media, and restaurants.

Europe’s rushed attempt to set the rules for AI: The EU says its pioneering legislation will protect humans from AI’s dangers. Critics say it is undercooked and will stifle innovation. FT

Here’s where Kamala Harris stands on Big Tech, AI, and the climate fight: One of her signature issues was curtailing the distribution of pornography on social media, particularly “revenge porn.” FC

Can Kamala Harris win Silicon Valley? Fortune

In Silicon Valley, where Trump made inroads, Democrats are now invigorated: Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and others have endorsed Donald J. Trump. But President Biden’s withdrawal has re-energized Democrats across the tech industry and may blunt that momentum. NYT

Has Silicon Valley gone MAGA? Some of America’s wealthiest tech investors have come out for Trump. But most Big Tech leaders are staying silent, for now. FT

How Biden’s AI policies pushed some Silicon Valley bigwigs toward Trump: Trump has promised VCs and AI companies a hands-off approach to AI regulation. FC

Big Tech's phony Trumpism: Why Marc Andreessen is wrong to support Trump, according to Marc Andreessen. BI

Microsoft, OpenAI push back on Republican AI strategy: Politico reports executives from Microsoft and OpenAI pushed for regulatory “rules of the road” on Friday. The two spoke as the Republican Party seems poised to undo Biden’s artificial intelligence executive order and take a light touch to restrictions on AI should former President Donald Trump be elected again.

+ “We do think we need some rules of the road. And also would prefer not to have this regulated at the state level. Fifty states regulating this will make business impossible." -- Teresa Hutson @ Microsoft

WP: Microsoft’s global sprawl comes under fire after historic outage

AI start-up Cohere raises $500mn as it seeks to take on OpenAI: FT reports funding round values Canadian group launched by Google alumni at $5.5bn.

An AI mafia is forming before our eyes: Here’s the definitive map: Ex-employees at places like OpenAI and Microsoft have gone on to form some of the most promising upstarts in the AI sector. FC

The first wave of AI innovation is over. Here’s what comes next: Businesses themselves, not closed-source AI companies, need ownership and control of their proprietary models. FC

The data that powers AI is disappearing fast: New research from the Data Provenance Initiative has found a dramatic drop in content made available to the collections used to build artificial intelligence. NYT

Elon Musk says Tesla to use humanoid robots next year: WSJ reports the CEO said the electric-vehicle maker would use the robots internally first before producing them for other companies.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | July 19

Schiff and other House members demand answers on how Google AI Overview works: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) doubled down on his efforts to expose how artificial intelligence programs work, demanding detailed information from Google about the back end of its experimental AI Overview search results feature. SFC

Bloomberg: OpenAI releases GPT-4o Mini, a cheaper version of flagship AI model

ChatGPT maker OpenAI goes smaller and cheaper with new AI tech: WSJ reports the company is releasing GPT-4o mini, part of an industry shift toward more efficient artificial-intelligence models.

OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic try building AI that can reason: As with so much of AI, the concept of reasoning is difficult to define and measure. Bloomberg

AI adoption in ad industry needs ‘non-optional mandates’, says Interpublic CEO Philippe Krakowsky Fortune

New technologies like AI let companies learn more about their customers—while raising privacy questions Fortune

Meta AI paused in Brazil: Disquiet over Meta’s exploiting user data to train its AI is spreading. After pausing its AI rollout in Europe, Meta has done the same in Brazil. Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority effectively blocked Meta’s AI-training practices earlier this month after the company tried to claim the right to train its AI with its users’ Instagram and Facebook data.

Samsung buys AI firm: Reuters reports that Samsung is buying a British AI startup called Oxford Semantic Technologies for an undisclosed amount. The company makes a “rules-based reasoning engine” that aims to provide truth transparently. 

AI’s insatiable need for energy is straining global power grids Bloomberg

OpenAI and Broadcom in talks about developing new AI chip: FT reports ChatGPT maker seeks ways to expand capacity as it aims to stay ahead of its rivals.

Reuters: TSMC rides AI demand to raise revenue forecast, says no to US joint venture

Bloomberg: More than half of TSMC’s sales are now high-end chips like AI

+ HPC division houses AI accelerators, servers and MacBook chips

+ TSMC’s key sales driver has shifted from smartphones to AI

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | July 18

US unveils Americas-wide plan to boost semiconductor production: AFP reports Secretary of State Antony Blinken unveiled Wednesday a new plan for countries in the Americas to boost production of semiconductors, which are critical just about everywhere in modern industry and a sector dominated by China.

US floats tougher trade rules to rein in China chip industry: Bloomberg reports the Biden administration, facing pushback to its chip crackdown on China, has told allies that it’s considering using the most severe trade restrictions available if companies such as Tokyo Electron Ltd. and ASML Holding NV continue giving the country access to advanced semiconductor technology.

+ The US is mulling whether to impose a measure called the foreign direct product rule, or FDPR. The rule lets the country impose controls on foreign-made products that use even the tiniest amount of American technology.

Microsoft’s hiring of Inflection AI staff probed by UK regulator: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had invited comments over tie-up as part of broader concerns about dealmaking in AI industry. FT

FTC seeking details on Amazon deal with AI startup Adept, source says: Reuters reports the request reflects the FTC's growing concern about how AI deals have been put together and follows a broader review of partnerships between Big Tech and prominent AI startups.
 
The death of the Chevron doctrine complicates US policymakers’ efforts to regulate AI—but there’s another way Dewey Murdick + Owen J. Daniels

A short history of AI: In the first of six weekly briefs, we ask how AI overcame decades of underdelivering. Economist

Anthropic and Menlo Ventures partner on $100 million AI fund: Bloomberg reports the VC firm’s new fund will back companies using Anthropic products with money, advice, and credits. 

‘Godmother of AI’ Fei-Fei Li builds $1bn start-up in 4 months: Stanford computer scientist’s ‘spatial intelligence’ venture wins backing from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. FT

Elon Musk wants his AI bot to deliver the news. It is struggling with the job: WSJ reports Grok posted incorrect information, amplified unverified claims, and failed to identify sarcasm as details of the Trump shooting unfolded.

Don’t blame AI for emissions: Earlier this month, Google disclosed that carbon emissions from its data centers rose by 13% in 2023, which the company blamed on the “AI transition.” But at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference, Google chief scientist Jeff Dean said that people are unfairly blaming the new technology, noting that AI makes up only a small part of data center usage.

Tiny Japanese startup is turning ‘Her’ AI dating into reality Bloomberg

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | July 17

Elon Musk has said he is committing around $45 million a month to a new pro-Trump super PAC: WSJ reports other backers of America PAC include Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins.

Bloomberg: Andreessen, Horowitz latest tech VCs to throw support to Trump

Silicon Valley’s tech titans line up to donate to Donald Trump: FT reports America PAC has raised over $8.7mn from backers including Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, Andreessen Horowitz founders and Sequoia’s Doug Leone.

Trump allies draft AI order to launch ‘Manhattan Projects’ for defense: The plan to ‘make America first in AI’ and roll back ‘burdensome regulations’ would favor Silicon Valley investors, who are now flocking to support the former president. WP

California AI bill SB-1047 sparks fierce debate; State senator likens it to ‘Jets vs. Sharks’ feud: A California state bill has emerged as a flashpoint between those who think AI should be regulated to ensure its safety and those who see regulation as potentially stifling innovation. The bill, which heads to its final vote in August, is sparking fiery debate and frantic pushback among leaders from across the AI industry—even from some companies and AI leaders who had previously called for the sector to be regulated. Fortune

After euphoria, fear of bubble grows around generative AI: Some analysts are warning that spending in the generative artificial intelligence sector, particularly on computing capacity, is far outstripping revenues. Le Monde

How Microsoft’s Satya Nadella became tech’s steely eyed AI gambler: Microsoft’s all-in moment on artificial intelligence has been defined by billions in spending and a CEO counting on technology with huge potential and risks. NYT

What messing with chatbots tells us about the future of AI John Herrman

Fujitsu invests in OpenAI rival Cohere, eyeing Japanese language model: Nikkei reports Japan tech group envisions model serving digitization in many industries.

Bloomberg: Apple’s India sales surge 33% to record in shift from China

+ Sales jump shows Apple is succeeding in winning users in India

+ Apple wants to challenge Android’s dominance in the country

Samsung’s ‘chip crisis’: AI ambitions hit by unprecedented worker unrest: FT reports the Korean tech giant risks losing disenchanted engineers to domestic rival SK Hynix.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | July 16

Crypto crashes the RNC: Crypto leaders at the Republican convention will make their case to GOP power brokers. Politico

Rep. Wexton, confronting degenerative disease, finds her voice through AI WP

Politico: Business groups call on Biden to halt rulemaking in light of Chevron deference decision

Nvidia could reach $50tn market cap in a decade, says top tech investor: FT reports early Tesla and Amazon backer James Anderson sees chipmaker’s potential scale as ‘way higher than I’ve ever seen.’

Samsung’s ‘chip crisis’: AI ambitions hit by unprecedented worker unrest: FT reports the Korean tech giant risks losing disenchanted engineers to domestic rival SK Hynix.

AI can make you more creative—but it has limits: Although it can boost individuals’ creativity, it seems to homogenize and flatten our collective output. Rhiannon Williams

Universities don’t want AI research to leave them behind: Outspent by Big Tech, some academics are focusing on research that requires less computing power, even as they try to build more of it. WSJ

Why AI is so expensive: The push for bigger AI models, and more chips and data centers to support building them, is driving up costs for technology companies. Bloomberg

No, AI won’t use all the electricity: Utilities’ projections of booming energy demand have a habit of not coming true. Justin Fox

Bloomberg: Apple is top pick at Morgan Stanley as AI seen driving iPhone, iPad upgrades

+ Shares have risen 17% since Apple Intelligence reveal

+ Analyst expects 500m iPhones to be shipped over two years

Bloomberg: Amazon brings Rufus AI shopping assistant to all US customers

A study in Scarlett: After avenging herself on Disney and OpenAI, Scarlett Johansson stars in a summer rom-com revolving around the race to the moon. NYT

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc