AI @ Noon | August 16

CNN: Elon Musk’s AI photo tool is generating realistic, fake images of Trump, Harris, and Biden

See how AI detection works, and fails, to catch election deepfakes WP

Crypto Democrats rally behind Harris campaign in push for policy revamp: Reuters reports billionaire Mark Cuban, Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci and congressman Adam Schiff were among a group of cryptocurrency advocates who called on Kamala Harris to reset the Democratic party's policy on digital assets ahead of the November election.

Kamala Harris should not cave to overtures from the crypto crowd: Industry lobby groups are seeking the lighter touch of the CFTC regulation rather than SEC oversight. Dennis Kelleher

Crypto: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer aims to get cryptocurrency rules in the US passed into law this year.

California’s AI safety bill is a mask-off moment for the industry: AI’s top industrialists say they want regulation—until someone tries to regulate them. The Nation

AP: Wyoming reporter caught using artificial intelligence to create fake quotes and stories

Nvidia scraped millions of YouTube videos without the consent of creators to train and develop its AI model that generates video content, according to a new federal lawsuit.

Google’s antitrust defeat could shape AI markets: Court ruling on search could prevent companies from dominating newer markets. Richard Waters

Google’s AI search gives sites dire choice: Share data or die: Bloomberg reports publishers say blocking the company’s AI bot could also prevent their sites from showing up in search.

Eric Schmidt walks back claim Google is behind on AI because of remote work: Ex-Google CEO had said the tech company’s work-life balance was ‘more important than winning.’ WSJ

Sahara AI, a startup co-founded by a University of Southern California associate professor, has raised $43 million as it seeks to address thorny copyright and privacy issues surrounding artificial intelligence technology.

Lenovo is the latest company to get an AI boost to earnings.

Apple pushes ahead with a tabletop robot.

Musk’s ‘fun’ AI image chatbot serves up Nazi Mickey Mouse and Taylor Swift deepfakes: Guardian reports Grok doesn’t reject prompts depicting violent and explicit content as X owner calls it ‘the most fun AI in the world!’

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | August 15

US said to consider a breakup of Google to address search monopoly: NYT reports the Justice Department and state attorneys general are discussing various scenarios to remedy Google’s dominance in online search, including a breakup of the company.

Crypto PAC will spend $12M backing Republican in Ohio race that could flip Senate: Politico reports a crypto super PAC will also go on the air backing the Democratic Senate candidates Ruben Gallego in Arizona and Elisa Slotkin in Michigan.

A California bill to regulate AI causes alarm in Silicon Valley: California state senator Scott Wiener wants to stop the creation of dangerous AI. But critics say he is jumping the gun. NYT

AI as snake oil: Software billionaire Dan O’Dowd is launching a new offensive in the NYT and WSJ that paint AI technology as “snake oil” being peddled by high-powered grifters. O’Dowd’s latest ads are more derisive than alarmist. They argue that tech scions have “added trillions to their market caps by stoking Artificial Intelligence hype” but that the technologies themselves are flawed — and shouldn’t be trusted for use in critical infrastructure. See the ad here.

+ O’Dowd said he’s supportive of efforts to regulate the sector, including state Sen. Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 1047, but said there needs to be more done to mitigate what he sees as a lack of reliability in AI tools.

8.8 million of the PCs shipped in Q2 2024 were AI-capable. That's 14% of all PCs shipped globally. 

Fashionable AI eyewear has been having a moment lately, with Meta Platforms Inc.’s newest Ray-Ban smart glasses being the most prominent example. 

Elon Musk’s xAI launches Grok-2 in race to catch ChatGPT: FT reports the latest chatbot ranks in top 5 models, according to independent benchmark sites, and will be available to X subscribers.

Deep-live-cam goes viral, allowing anyone to become a digital doppelganger: ARS Tech reports using one photo and free software, someone can impersonate your appearance in a video chat.

How ‘deepfake Elon Musk’ became the internet’s biggest scammer: An AI-powered version of Musk has appeared in thousands of inauthentic ads, contributing to billions in fraud. NYT

AI could ruin kids’ critical-thinking skills Jessica Grose

Google’s Gemini Live AI sounds so human, I almost forgot it was a bot Joanna Stern

Can the mobile wave help us navigate the AI wave? Tech experts from Wharton and Forrester look back on the advent of the iPhone, identifying key lessons that leaders today can apply to AI. K@W

Is now the right time to appoint a chief AI officer? The rapid advance of GenAI has been bewildering. No wonder many business leaders are considering whether they’d benefit from the guidance of a strategic-level expert in the field. Raconteur

Why AI risks are keeping board members up at night: Company directors are trying to get a handle on artificial intelligence as its use soars, bringing potential productivity gains—but also raising the prospect of employee blunders. WSJ

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | August 14

Huawei readies new chip to challenge Nvidia, surmounting US sanctions: WSJ reports the Chinese tech company is looking for AI business with the Ascend series but still faces production problems.

Vietnam turns chip sector magnet with affordable, quality talent pool: US, Taiwan, South Korean players beat path to Vietnam though boom strains resources. Nikkei

The sleepy Czech town helping Europe compete in the global chip war: A $2 billion investment by a US company promises to create a tech hub and help modernize the country’s stagnating economy. Bloomberg

Microsoft + Palantir are teaming up to offer a range of artificial intelligence services for classified government use.

Bloomberg: US considers a rare antitrust move: Breaking up Google

Bloomberg: Google launches Pixel 9 phones, Pixel Watch 3 in renewed push to sell AI

Google’s Gemini live AI sounds so human, I almost forgot it was a bot: Google’s Android chief told our columnist the voice assistant was designed to impersonate humans, but he doesn’t want anyone getting romantic with it. WSJ

Gemini is replacing Google Assistant on Pixel phones, and it’s a trainwreck: FC reprts Google is throwing out a perfectly good voice assistant for one that frequently fails at basic tasks.

Why are there so many AI ads? Shira Ovide

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Australian arm will invest A$11.5 million ($7.6 million) over the next year to bolster its artificial intelligence capabilities.

A group of illustrators + visual artists suing Stability AI, Midjourney, and other AI image generators for copyright infringement advanced a novel theory that their images have been “compressed” inside of AI models.

Jobhunters flood recruiters with AI-generated CVs: FT reports about half of applicants are using tools such as ChatGPT to help write cover letters but, without editing, the language is ‘clunky.’

We’re entering an AI price-fixing dystopia: Algorithmic collusion appears to be spreading to more and more industries. And existing laws may not be equipped to stop it. Rogé Karma

LLMs will transform medicine, media and more: But not without a helping (human) hand. Economist

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | August 13

The problem is not AI. It’s the disbelief created by Trump. Zeynep Tufekci

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says her agency is doing everything it can to manage AI's massive energy demands.

"Made in America" chips: Two years ago, the US passed bipartisan legislation seeking to revitalize the country’s semiconductor manufacturing industry. Since then, the Biden administration has handed out almost $39 billion in grants, primarily to four companies to produce sophisticated chips.

AI industry leader expects early Air Force adoption of unmanned fighter jets: Unmanned fighter jets could be fielded "way" before the end of the decade, or sooner than the Air Force's planned timeline for operating Collaborative Combat Aircraft, Brandon Tseng, co-founder and president of ShieldAI, told Inside Defense.

Brands love influencers (until politics get involved): Marketing firms are using artificial intelligence to help analyze influencers and predict whether they will opine about the election. NYT

Bloomberg: TSMC sales soared 45% in July on strong AI demand, shares gain

+ World’s leading contract chipmaker accelerated growth in July

+ TSMC serves as bellwether for AI and mobile chip demand

Here’s how people are actually using AI: Something peculiar and slightly unexpected has happened: people have started forming relationships with AI systems. Melissa Heikkilä

Khosla Ventures backed the latest AI unicorn, DevRev Inc.

X hit with Austrian data use complaint over AI training: Reuters reports Austrian advocacy group NOYB on Monday filed a complaint against social media platform X accusing the Elon Musk-owned company of training its artificial intelligence (AI) with users' personal data without their consent in violation of EU privacy law.

The billionaire suing Facebook to remove his face from AI scams: Mining executive’s lawsuit is one of first to threaten tech immunity protections, alleges company’s AI-powered ad systems amplify scams. WSJ

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | August 12

China court rulings on AI accelerate race to set standards: Judges establish precedents on voice and images as Beijing embraces the tech. Nikkei

Democrats push Sam Altman on OpenAI’s safety record: Senators demanded answers about whistleblowers and conflicts of interest. The Verge

Google and Meta struck secret ads deal to target teenagers: FT reports the campaign on YouTube to boost Instagram’s appeal to young people skirted search group’s rules for marketing to under-18s.

Why Nvidia is still the undisputed king of AI Christopher Mims

The new AI deal: Buy everything but the company: Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have made deals with AI start-ups for their technology and top employees, but have shied from owning the firms. Here’s why. NYT

Where have OpenAI’s founders gone? Only two of 11 co-founders of ChatGPT maker are still active at the $86bn company after a series of exits this year. FT

How Microsoft spread its bets beyond OpenAI: The tech giant has worked to execute an AI strategy independent of Sam Altman’s start-up following a leadership crisis last year. FT

How Elon Musk is using his empire to kickstart xAI: WSJ reports the billionaire is mobilizing resources around artificial intelligence. Some Tesla shareholders are suing to make him stop

Bilingual dictation assistant Silvia understands ‘Spanglish’ and other language mixtures: TC reports natural language AI assistants tend to be excellent English speakers, and passable in other tongues — but if you are one of the millions who fluidly switch between two languages on the fly, they’re stumped. A new AI helper called Silvia, however, understands “Spanglish” just fine, with more language combos to come.

Can you be emotionally reliant on an AI voice? OpenAI says yes. NYT reports a report acknowledged that users of GPT-4o forms unusual bonds with the software’s voice response feature, which the company says warrants further study.

Tuesday: Made by Google event, launching Google’s latest devices, including the Pixel smartphone. 

+ A teaser video released in June said “AI . . . meet IX”

WSJ: Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki dies at age 56

Why schools are racing to ban student phones: As the new school year starts, a wave of new laws that aim to curb distracted learning is taking effect in Indiana, Louisiana, and other states. NYT

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | August 8

Analysis: Xi Jinping's draft internet ID law sparks '1984' fears: Online criticism goes viral, then disappears on eve of Beidaihe meeting. Nikkei

AI is coming for India’s famous tech hub: The country’s outsourcing companies have added urgency to shift to higher-end services. WSJ

“F*** these Trump-loving techies”: Hollywood takes on Silicon Valley in an epic presidential brawl: LA’s liberal moguls are coming after Elon Musk and the rest of the Silicon Valley billionaire boys club in a political clash of the titans: “People are putting up a lot of dough just to teach these dudes they can’t buy an election.” THR

Forty-eight hours at the MAGA-fied crypto lovefest: The crowd at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville hopes Trump can make crypto great again. Bloomberg

A booming industry of AI age scanners, aimed at children’s faces WP

Sound clashes are a thrilling reggae tradition. Will AI ruin them? The use of fake AI vocals – including those of Donald Trump – is sending shockwaves through this historic scene. At a Montego Bay clash, performers debate their culture’s future. Guardian

The Google decision is the right ruling — at the wrong time: The glacially slow process of reining in bad behavior by a powerful corporation lands just as AI takes off. Adam Lashinsky

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | August 7

Chuck Schumer eyes opportunities to pass deepfake and AI bills as 2024 elections near: In an interview with NBC News, Schumer suggested deepfake election bills could hitch a ride on a funding bill, while AI national security bills could be linked to a big defense policy package.

Sens. Rounds, Heinrich offer bicameral bill to test AI for financial services: Inside AI Policy reports Sens. Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) have unveiled bicameral legislation that would set up testing “sandboxes” at financial regulatory agencies to allow banks and other institutions to safely explore how AI could benefit consumers and the financial services industry.

MITRE urges government ‘red teaming’ of high-risk AI systems: Inside AI Policy reports the federal government should implement requirements for artificial intelligence “red teaming” to ensure AI products procured by agencies are secure, according to a memo from MITRE’s Center for Data-Driven Policy outlining AI security recommendations and advice for implementation.

‘The Godmother of AI’ says California’s well-intended AI bill will harm the US ecosystem Fei-Fei Li

Fortune: Monday’s stock market crash shows that the AI revolution isn’t quite here yet

A history-lover’s guide to the market panic over AI: Past technologies offer clues to what comes next. Economist

10 reasons why AI may be overrated Planet Money

When the AI bubble bursts: The boom in AI investment since ChatGPT’s launch has been accompanied by constant claims that the technology will transform our world. Will it? Will Dunn

Tencent + Alibaba have reportedly led a new funding round for Moonshot, a Chinese generative AI start-up, at a $3.3 billion valuation.

Yup, AI is basically just a homework-cheating machine: Two new reports confirm what we all know deep down: Lots of people are using Sam Altman's ChatGPT to "help" with their homework. BI

Fortune: Nvidia chip delays risk eroding its AI edge

Bloomberg: Super Micro's weak profit fuels AI server margin anxieties

+ Quarterly revenue, earnings miss analysts’ estimates

+ Company says it’s well-positioned to gain from AI investments

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

AI @ Noon | August 6

How TikTok bots and AI have powered a resurgence in UK far-right violence: Experts warn growth of extremist influencers and ‘micro-donations’ could create even bigger wave of unrest. Guardian

America isn’t ready for the wars of the future: And they’re already here. Mark A. Milley + Eric Schmidt

Silicon Valley’s Trump supporters are making a big mistake Michael Moritz

The Biden administration is betting this CHIPS Act program can revitalize communities from the ground up: The Recompete program, another example of the Biden’s administration’s commitment to ‘place-based’ economic development, is also a corrective to the trickle-down economics of the Trump years. FC

X's AI chatbot spread election misinformation, US officials say: AFP reports five US states sent an open letter Monday to Elon Musk, urging him to fix his social media platform X's AI chatbot after it shared misinformation about the upcoming presidential election.

+ Five secretaries of state plan to criticize Grok, the chatbot run by Musk’s xAI, for falsely suggesting that Kamala Harris wasn’t eligible to appear on the 2024 ballot.

Anti-AI lawsuits in the music industry pose novel questions for courts: FC reports country musician Tift Merritt’s most popular song on Spotify, “Traveling Alone,” is a ballad with lyrics evoking solitude and the open road. Prompted by Reuters to make “an Americana song in the style of Tift Merritt,” the artificial intelligence music website Udio instantly generated “Holy Grounds,” a ballad with lyrics about “driving old backroads” while […]

Bloomberg: Google monopolized search through illegal deals, judge rules

+ Google’s deals with Apple and others violate law, judge says

+ Google paid billions to make search engine default on phones

US judge rules Google broke antitrust law in search case: Reuters reports Alphabet's Google broke the law to cement its dominance over online searches and related ads, a federal judge ruled on Monday in the US Justice Department's first victory against a monopoly in more than 20 years.

‘Google is a monopolist,’ judge rules in landmark antitrust case: NYT reports the ruling on Google’s search dominance was the first antitrust decision of the modern internet era in a case against a technology giant.

Google is an illegal monopoly, federal court rules: WP reports the ruling hands the Justice Department its biggest victory in more than two decades in limiting the power of Big Tech companies to control and dominate the huge markets they have created.

Google loses its massive antitrust case against the DOJ: The court’s decision marks a new way of thinking about antitrust in the internet age. FC

Fortune: Forget Apple, the biggest loser in the Google search ruling could be Mozilla and its Firefox web browser

Why Apple could be a loser in Google's antitrust defeat BI

Bloomberg: Apple’s shift to AI is poised to soften blow from Google ruling

+ Judge’s decision puts Google payments to Apple in jeopardy

+ In future, Apple could handle searches via Siri and chatbots

Bloomberg: Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip rollout slowed by engineering snags

+ Stepped-up pace of product releases has added pressure

+ Company looks to extend its dominance in AI computing

Bloomberg: AI chip startup Groq gets $2.8 billion valuation in new funding round

+ Cisco and Samsung invested in the $640 million deal

Bloomberg: Xiaomi-backed AI chipmaker Black Sesame prices Hong Kong IPO at bottom of range

+ AI chipmaker raises $133 million at low end of price band

+ Listing marks second debut under city’s specialist tech regime

AI is changing the future of CAPTCHAs: FC reports CAPTCHA is one more battleground in the seemingly endless battle between AI and humans.

FT: Google hires founders of chatbot start-up Character AI

Bloomberg: OpenAI co-founders Schulman and Brockman step back

+ Researcher Schulman is leaving for rival startup Anthropic

+ OpenAI president Greg Brockman is going on extended leave

Musk revives lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman: WSJ reports billionaire Elon Musk alleged he was manipulated into believing the artificial-intelligence company he was helping launch was a nonprofit.

WP: Elon Musk renews legal war on OpenAI, two months after dropping lawsuit

Why AI researchers are worried about ‘model collapse’ Bloomberg

Bloomberg: Musk’s X to close San Francisco office, relocate workers

Colleges race to ready students for the AI workplace: WSJ reports non-techie students are learning basic generative-AI skills as schools revamp their course offerings to be more job-friendly.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc