OpenAI CEO Calls for Collaboration With China to Counter AI Risks
As the U.S. seeks to contain China’s progress in artificial intelligence through sanctions, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is choosing engagement.
Dialing in from overseas to a packed conference in Beijing on Saturday to widespread cheers in the audience, Altman emphasized the importance of collaboration between American and Chinese researchers to mitigate the risks of AI systems, against a backdrop of escalating competition between Washington and Beijing to lead in the technology.
“China has some of the best AI talent in the world,” Altman said. “So I really hope Chinese AI researchers will make great contributions here.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/openai-ceo-calls-for-collaboration-with-china-to-counter-ai-risks-eda903fe
Virtual Beings Summit: How AI simulations will change entertainment
... “The thesis this year is that single agent chatbots have reached their peak,” Saatchi said. “They’re commoditized and there are hundreds of them. And it’s just ultimately boring. ...
For the chatbots, Saatchi believed that the virtual beings created to talk with us deserved to have real lives. ...
“That’s different from just a backstory, where you write up their world in like a page of text, and then that’s who they are,” Saatchi said. “They actually need to have existed in virtual life, to exist in space and time, and they need to exist in context of a society like families. And they need to be given the respect to actually have autonomy within those worlds. Now the technology is there.” ...
Saatchi’s leaders at Fable Studio — Jessica Shamash, Frank Carey and Pete Billington — spoke at our recent GamesBeat Summit 2023 event about The Simulation, a new game they’re putting together where players train AI characters and then set them loose in a virtual world. ... And if you leave them in there long enough, they might become sapient. This is just part of a new AI movement that the Virtual Beings Summit aims to capture. ...
“The goal of the Virtual Beings Summit is to move the conversation on to ‘simulated virtual beings,’ or AIs that live rich 24/7 lives in 3D simulations, with families, coworkers, neighbors and friends – with no need for human relationships and emergent intelligence.” ...
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/games/virtual-beings-summit-features-ai-simulations-are-changing-entertainment-june-7-in-sf/
Designing the extraordinary at Walt Disney Imagineering
Over a 30-year career in theme park design, Disney’s Scott Trowbridge has been the creative force behind some of the world’s most successful and ground-breaking theme park attractions. ...
In the early 90s, Trowbridge gained a place at the University of Southern California’s prestigious School of Cinematic Arts (SCA). ...
At SCA, aside from learning “so much about what not to do”, Trowbridge says he learned the importance of storytelling. “I think it’s at the heart of who we are as humans. We experience the world through narrative examples … that’s just how we’re wired”. ...
“At Disney, we’re there to entertain our guests. We’re not there to challenge them. That ability to put yourself in the story, to become a character or a version of a character that you want to play in one of our immersive experiences is amazing. And when we have given our guests (and our cast too) the opportunity to be more of a participant in these stories and not just a spectator, they have really, really, sparked that. ...
Not only are we talking to them, but our fan base is very, very vocal and lets us know what they’re thinking about what we do all the time, every day.” ...
“We went into this knowing that nothing like this had ever been done before. But we thought we’re never going to get good at this kind of thing if we don’t start. I’m so proud to have been part of the team that brought Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser to life. We’ve learned a ton. And we’re already thinking about what we might do next”. ...
See the full article with embedded video here; https://blooloop.com/theme-park/in-depth/scott-trowbridge-disney-imagineering/?fbclid=IwAR0gXSy8_VAYQ72ocVpKkL4YC99l1H4twZDRFml4jiSLWvODAIasf6TYdkg
U.S. Congress to consider two new bills on artificial intelligence
U.S. senators on Thursday introduced two separate bipartisan artificial intelligence bills on Thursday amid growing interest in addressing issues surrounding the technology.
One would require the U.S. government to be transparent when using AI to interact with people and another would establish an office to determine if the United States is remaining competitive in the latest technologies. ...
See the full story here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-congress-consider-two-new-bills-artificial-intelligence-2023-06-08/
KAGAMI Live Mixed Realty Show Begins Limited Theatrical Run
A new performance opened at The Shed’s Griffin Theater in New York this week, KAGAMI, which blends theater, music, film and Magic Leap 2 mixed reality headsets. The fifty minute experience is built around a volumetric capture of late composer and performer Ryuichi Sakamoto. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for New York audiences to see the mixed reality future of live performance. ...
As the show begins, we’re advised we can move around if we choose. No one does, at first. Sakamoto’s hologram, seated at the piano, materializes in the middle of the room and begins to play the first piece. A few of us rise and move toward the performer. Soon, others follow. Slowly, effects start to flow around us. Augmented by the theatrical lighting in the room, the music, effects, and images create a world moving and morphing around us. When Sakamoto, well, his hologram, ends a piece, there is silence. One person claps before they realize this is not a live performance. ...
See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2023/06/10/kagami-live-mixed-realty-show-begins-limited-run/?sh=1278e5153be5
Renaissance algorithm meets augmented reality at Venice Biennale
When most visitors contemplate the magnificent domes of Florence’s Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, they see a triumph of early Renaissance architecture and artistry. But Sigrid Adriaenssens, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, sees something more: an algorithm that holds the key to building techniques that can minimize waste and unlock beautiful new forms of architecture.
For Adriaenssens, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Florence dome is invisible to the naked eye. Behind the decorated veneer, the dome’s bricks are arranged in a special pattern that allowed builder Filippo Brunelleschi to construct his famous dome without external support. In 2020, Adriaenssens and her colleagues published a paper that revealed how Brunelleschi arranged these bricks to support the massive Florence dome all on their own. Now, she has resurrected this Renaissance algorithm to build an installation for the Venice architecture biennale exhibition, Time Space Existence, which blended classical mason techniques with modern technologies such as augmented reality. ...
But these masons have a technological advantage that Brunelleschi could have never dreamed of. They built the arch using a HoloLens, a commercial augmented reality system that shows them exactly how to place individual bricks during the building process. ...
Adriaenssens says the biennale project also has important philosophical implications for how we think about innovation. For example, Giuseppe Taramelli, one of the Italian masons working on the vaulted arch has historically found it difficult to recruit young apprentices, who often see the profession as boring and antiquated. “He wants to use this project to attract young people to masonry, which seems like a very old-fashioned career where nothing new is happening,” says Adriaenssens. “So now he’s making a movie about this project to show how exciting this field can be with new technologies.” ...
See the full story here: https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2023/06/07/renaissance-algorithm-meets-augmented-reality-venice-biennale
Is it real or made by AI? Europe wants a label for that as it fights disinformation
The European Union is pushing online platforms like Google and Meta to step up the fight against false information by adding labels to text, photos and other content generated by artificial intelligence, a top official said Monday.
EU Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said the ability of a new generation of AI chatbots to create complex content and visuals in seconds raises “fresh challenges for the fight against disinformation.” ...
The swift rise of generative AI technology, which has the capability to produce human-like text, images and video, has amazed many and alarmed others with its potential to transform many aspects of daily life. Europe has taken a lead role in the global movement to regulate artificial intelligence with its AI Act, but the legislation still needs final approval and won’t take effect for several years. ...
See the full story here: https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-disinformation-europe-58a61973645ee0c36dddd1cbea81a42e
