Last update: Monday 3/18/24
A. TL;DR ... Top 4 stories in past week ...
1) EU approves AI regulations
As per the headline in Bloomberg's article: "World’s Most Extensive AI Rules Approved in EU Despite Criticism". More specifically, the EU parliament approved these new regulations; but the regs don't go into effect until all of the European Union's member states give their approval ... which is usually a formality, so their approval is expected soon.
Bloomberg's article asserts that:
- "The new law is intended to address worries about bias, privacy and other risks from the rapidly evolving technology. The legislation would ban the use of AI for detecting emotions in workplaces and schools, as well as limit how it can be used in high-stakes situations like sorting job applications. It would also place the first restrictions on generative AI tools, which captured the world’s attention last year with the popularity of ChatGPT ...
- ... "As talks reached the final stretch last year, the French and German governments pushed back against some of the strictest ideas for regulating generative AI, arguing that the rules will hurt European startups like France’s Mistral AI and Germany’s Aleph Alpha GmbH. Civil society groups like Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) raised concerns about the influence that Big Tech and European companies had in shaping the final text."
So the resulting set of regulations is a compromise.
2) Google blocks Gemini responses to election queries everywhere
Google announced its decision to prevent Gemini, its genAI chatbot, from responding to queries about elections in eveery country in which elections are being held this year. All election queries will be forwarded to its search engine which will merely return its usual lists of links to websites. Google's decision is understandable given (1) widespread fear that elections might be contaminated by AI-based misinformation, and (2) Google's recent embarrassment caused its "woke" chatbot returning racially diverse images when prompted for images of the Founding Fathers, Nazi soldiers, etc.
Nevertheless, Google's efforts may produce another backlash due to bias built into its search results. In other words, Google search has no "understanding" of a query; so it merely returns links to popular websites whose content is related to key words in the query. For example, when the editor of this blog submitted the politically controversial query "Is Biden too old to be president?" on Monday 3/18/24 at 4 pm, the top link returned by Google search was the most popular site related to "Biden" "too old" "president".
- "Overwhelming majority of Americans think Biden is too old for another term", Meredith Deliso, ABC, 3/11/24
Who could doubt that these springtime polls are the voice of the people? They express the preferences of an overwhelming majority of the people, preferences that the majority will continue to express in their votes comes this November. Trump himself could not have said it better. Indeed, that's what Trump has been saying for four years. We can't let them steal it again, right? Hmmmmmmm
3) OpenAI freaks out Wall Street Journal with Sora's videos
The Wall Street Journal provided a few very simple prompts that Sora converted in another set of dazzling videos. If you haven't seen them yet, give yourself a treat by clicking on the links to the videos in the Journal's article ... Then remember DALL-E's images ... also dazzling ... but never quite what was requested if the requests had the most minimal levels of specificity.
Readers of this blog may recall its editor's requests to DALL-E via ChatGPT reported in a TL;DR two weeks ago for a picture of five young white men in mid-twenties seated around a table. All should be seated and all should be wearing sandals. Nevertheless, DALL-E returned a picture of five seated white men, two of whom were clearly in their 40s, two were wearing sneakers, and three more men were standing behind the five seated at the table.
4) Does generative AI really boost profits?
The well-connected publication The Information provided another exclusive report based on interviews with well-connected insiders at the major Big Tech providers of GenAI.
- "In the past year, major technology firms have championed generative artificial intelligence as the next big thing, boosting the stock market to new highs. But behind the scenes, representatives of major cloud providers and other firms that sell the technology are tempering expectations with their salespeople, saying the hype about the technology has gotten ahead of what it can actually do for customers at a reasonable price.
Several executives, product managers and salespeople at the major cloud providers, such as Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google, also privately said most of their customers are being cautious or “deliberate” about increasing spending on new AI services, given the high price of running the software, its shortcomings in terms of accuracy and the difficulty of determining how much value they’ll get out of it. ...
... Customers of such software are “struggling with [questions of,] is it providing value? How do you know if it’s giving good answers? How do you evaluate how it’s doing?” he said. “Generative AI is in the first inning.”
In other words, generative AI may be at the initial peak of a Gartner hype cycle wherein the promise of a new technology greatly exceeds its demonstrated valua. The peak is usually followed by a dramatic collapse of demand.
That's the bad news. Fortunately there is one undeniable exception to the "peak hype" assessment. The resounding success of GitHub Copilot reflects its enthusiastic endorsement by the software development community. GitHub Copilot really helps professional developers produce better code in substantially less time.
B. Top 4 stories in past week ...
- Public Policy
"World’s Most Extensive AI Rules Approved in EU Despite Criticism", Jillian Deutsch, Bloomberg, 3/13/24 ***
-- This story also covered by TechCrunch, BBC, Wall StreetJournal, VentureBeat, The Information, Mashable ... and European Parliament - Google
"Google won’t let you use its Gemini AI to answer questions about an upcoming election in your country", Jagmeet Singh, TechCrunch, 3/13/24 ***
-- This story also covered by Ars Technica, BBC, Reuters, Engadget, - OpenAI
"OpenAI Made AI Videos for Us. These Clips Are Good Enough to Freak Us Out.", Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal, 3/13/24 ***
-- See also "The 12 OpenAI Sora TikToks That Broke Our Brains", Maxwell Zeff. Gizmodo, 3/14/24 - Misc
"Amazon, Google Quietly Tamp Down Generative AI Expectations", Aaron Holmes and Anissa Gardizy, The Information, 3/12/24 ***
This page contains links to responses by Google's Bard chatbot running Gemini Pro to 12 questions that should be asked more frequently, but aren't. As consequence, too many readily understood AI terms have become meaningless buzzwords in the media.
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