Warren Buffet compares AI to the development of the Atom Bomb, Geoffrey Hinton one of the leading contributors to modern AI thinks it may be more dangerous than climate change and a team of Greek PhD students may have found a way to make processors that are 50 times faster to run neural networks. And if that’s not enough – Facebook is no longer cool.
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These top tech news stories and more for Tuesday, May 9th, 2023, I’m your host Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada, and Tech News Day in the US.
Warren Buffet is the latest to raise concerns about the development of AI – comparing it to the creation of the atom bomb at his company’s annual meeting in Omaha Nebraska.
Buffet was introduced to the concept of AI by none other than his friend Bill Gates and reportedly, Buffet was impressed but worried.
He said, “When something can do all kinds of things, I get a little bit worried. Because I know we won’t be able to un-invent it.”
His comments follow on warnings from Geoffrey Hinton, who many see as one of the creators of modern AI who told Reuters last Friday that Artificial Intelligence could pose a “more urgent” threat to humanity than climate change.
Hinton left his job at Google to be free to speak out about what he sees are the dangers of AI.
The atom bomb? Climate change? Now AI? Good thing our politicians know how to manage technological change. Otherwise we could be in real trouble.
Sources include: NDTV
And speaking of politicians and technological change OpenAI’s Sam Altman attended the White House summit last week to discuss how AI companies could help to address the growing concerns about safety that have arisen with the rapid growth of AI systems.
According to reports in Axios, one of the most important conversations in the summit at the White House was around “laws so that people know if they are talking to an AI.”
But Altman also indicated that his company is working on addressing another key issue that may spell trouble for AI systems and developers – copyright.
Generative AI has taken the world by storm with its ability to write content in a variety of forms from marketing to music, from fiction to academic writing and from the visual to, in the very near future, even the performing arts.
But it has done this not by being “creative” but by ingesting the work, often the copyrighted work, of millions of original creators. It reduces these elements to fundamental building blocks which it later reassembles.
Its creations are just that, the reassembly of components of content using generative AIs ability to predict the most likely pattern of works or other elements and to assemble these into complete works of literature, music or even art.
It’s not simply inspired by other works, it’s using them. It may mix them up and reassemble these literary lego blocks, but it is assembling based on an algorithm and not creating. And it does this with no compensation for the original creators or copyright owners of the original material.
We did a story previously which showed the sources that had been ingested by AI systems – many publications, including our own – companies that are struggling already to find ways to be compensated for the use of their content. In that same week, two publishers – Buzzfeed and Vice announced that they were closing their publications.
Altman is apparently trying to find a way to address these concerns by working on new ChatGPT models that respects copyright. “We’re trying to work on new models where if an AI system is using your content, or if it’s using your style, you get paid for that.”
Sources include: Axios
It was the birthplace of democracy and now, maybe it’s also it has also given birth to the fastest ever AI processor harnessing light.
The Greek Reporter said that the fastest Artificial Intelligence processor in the world, one that uses photonic neurons and that works with light instead of electricity was created by a team of PhD candidates at the Department of Informatics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki which goes by the shortened name AUTH.
The new computer is capable of speeds of up to 50GHz which is 25 times faster than the speed of the modern GPU processors used in AI today.
The ability to operate at these speeds makes it invaluable in trying to emulate neural networks which may even one day be able to mimic the functioning of the human brain.
And a big bonus is that it is also reported to use 10 times less power.
Sources include: Greek Reporter
Facebook wants you to know that it’s not just a place where old people hang out.
It may feel it could get a bit of a break as the darling of the “younger generation” TikTok faces government scrutiny, sanctions and threats of banning the wildly popular site.
But even if TikTok were to disappear would young people go back to Facebook? Not likely.
Facebook may have been born in a university dorm in 2004, but it’s 20 years older today.
To be fair, Facebook still has a huge audience. 3 billion people check it each month and that’s a third of the world’s population. According to a CBS news report, 2 billion people log in every day.
But it’s definitely lost its “cool factor.” TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and others are capturing the younger market.
As one young adult said about Facebook, in that same CBS report, “I don’t even remember the last time I logged in. It must have been years ago.” Today, she checks Instagram (owned by Facebook’s parent) about five or six times a day. Then she moves over to spend an hour or more a day on TikTok.
She can’t imagine going back to Facebook. She says, “It’s the branding, right? When I think of Facebook, I think, ugh, like cheugy, older people.” (Cheugy, older people?)
So even with its vast numbers, Facebook is sounding a lot like some the companies that it once supplanted – like My Space.
That’s enough to drive you to drink. But if you do,you’re your at my place use that coaster over there – the one that says AOL. No, not LoL – AOL – what is it. Never mind.
Sources include: CBS News
That’s the top tech news for today. We go to air with a daily newscast five days a week, as well as a special weekend interview with an expert on topics relevant to today’s tech news.
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I’m your host, Jim Love. Have a Terrific Tuesday!