philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The future of international education is brighter than ever

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The pandemic disrupted international education in unprecedented ways. Programmes were suspended, students were sent home and universities worked urgently to adapt. Yet, amidst the challenges, new opportunities emerged, reshaping the landscape of international learning and engagement.

Institutions quickly pivoted to alternative modalities, such as virtual internships and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). Virtual internships gave students the chance to gain international work experience without leaving their homes. Similarly, COIL evolved from a niche initiative into a widely adopted modality, connecting students across continents through shared coursework and cultural exchange.

Such modalities allowed students to remain engaged during a time of immense uncertainty. More importantly, they democratized access, creating opportunities for learners previously excluded due to financial or geographical barriers. ...

See the full story here: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2025011808104177

Official Trump Coin: How Did We Get Here?

In a move that perfectly encapsulates the peculiarities of our times, Donald Trump launched a meme coin on January 17th, 2025, just a few days before his presidential inauguration. Within less than 24 hours it has reached a staggering market capitalization of $4.8 billion and a fully diluted valuation of $24.3 billion. "Trump Coin" has taken the cryptocurrency world by storm, potentially positioning itself to challenge Dogecoin's supremacy in the meme coin ecosystem.

... What's different this time isn't the strategy, but the medium – and ironically, the regulatory environment that made it possible. ...

The strict interpretation of securities laws that follows from Gensler’s school of thought, while intended to protect investors, may have inadvertently pushed cryptocurrency innovation toward meme coins rather than utility tokens. ...

This dynamic has created what might be called "the regulatory safe harbor of absurdity" – the more explicitly a token positions itself as a meme with no serious utility, the safer it becomes from securities regulation. This perverse incentive structure has contributed to the proliferation of meme coins, which now represent a significant portion of the cryptocurrency market cap. ...

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/01/18/official-trump-coin-how-did-we-get-here/

Philosophy Eats AI

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Philosophy is eating AI: As a discipline, data set, and sensibility, philosophy increasingly determines how digital technologies reason, predict, create, generate, and innovate. The critical enterprise challenge is whether leaders will possess the self-awareness and rigor to use philosophy as a resource for creating value with AI or default to tacit, unarticulated philosophical principles for their AI deployments. Either way — for better and worse — philosophy eats AI. For strategy-conscious executives, that metaphor needs to be top of mind.

While ethics and responsible AI currently dominate philosophy’s perceived role in developing and deploying AI solutions, those themes represent a small part of the philosophical perspectives informing and guiding AI’s production, utility, and use. Privileging ethical guidelines and guardrails undervalues philosophy’s true impact and influence. Philosophical perspectives on what AI models should achieve (teleology), what counts as knowledge (epistemology), and how AI represents reality (ontology) also shape value creation. Without thoughtful and rigorous cultivation of philosophical insight, organizations will fail to reap superior returns and competitive advantage from their generative and predictive AI investments. 

This argument increasingly enjoys both empirical and technical support. ...

See the full story at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/philosophy-eats-ai/

AI researcher François Chollet founds a new AI lab focused on AGI

François Chollet, an influential AI researcher, is launching a new startup that aims to build frontier AI systems with novel designs. 

The startup, Ndea, will consist of an AI research and science lab. It’s looking to “develop and operationalize” AGI. ...

“We’re betting on a different path to build AI capable of true invention, adaptation, and innovation,” Chollet wrote in a series of posts on X. “We believe we have a small but real chance of achieving a breakthrough — creating AI that can learn at least as efficiently as people, and that can keep improving over time with no bottlenecks in sight.”

Ndea plans to use a technique called program synthesis, in tandem with other technical approaches, to unlock AGI. Chollet thinks that program synthesis, which allows AI to generalize problems it hasn’t seen before from only a few examples, can help to overcome the most intractable problems in AI research.

Program synthesis is traditionally computing-intensive. But Chollet thinks this limitation can be overcome — and that overcoming it will help accelerate scientific progress.

“[W]e are not alone in recognizing the potential of program synthesis — it’s a technique every frontier AI lab is now starting to explore,” reads a blog post on Ndea’s website. “We are at the crest of a pivotal moment in scientific history and the world deserves every possible direct, unique attempt to build AGI.” ...

But even more exciting is the chance to metaphorically time-travel into the future: learn, invent, and discover things that would not organically happen for decades or even centuries.” ...

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/15/ai-researcher-francois-chollet-founds-a-new-ai-lab-focused-on-agi

Fame King Sheeraz Hasan Dominates 1 Billion Followers Summit Amid Buzz over Hollywood.ai and Bollywood.ai

... Hasan, celebrated for catapulting the careers of stars like Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Zendaya, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Priyanka Chopra, Jake & Logan Paul, and Lindsay Lohan, has consistently put Dubai on the global map. From shutting down the Dubai Mall with Logan Paul for one of the largest meet-and-greets in history to hosting an even larger crowd for a historic Kim Kardashian appearance covered by every major outlet worldwide, Hasan’s mark on the UAE’s entertainment scene is undeniable. All eyes were on Sheeraz Hasan’s master stroke involving Hollywood.ai and Bollywood.ai, as top creators and business moguls at the summit engaged in discussions to explore the potential of these groundbreaking domains. His innovative approach and impressive track record captured the attention of industry leaders who recognize the enormous possibilities these platforms hold for reshaping global entertainment. ...

See the full story at https://www.reuters.com/press-releases/fame-king-sheeraz-hasan-dominates-1-billion-followers-summit-amid-buzz-over-hollywood-ai-and-bollywood-ai-2025-01-13/

Shelly Palmer “think about this”

Lawmakers stop worrying about AI’s existential risk and instead embrace its economic potential

... This vibe shift is perhaps most notable in the U.K., where I live. The previous Conservative Party-led British government tried to make a name for itself on AI policy by hosting an international conference aimed at addressing AI’s potential doomsday risks. The AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November 2023 brought together the heads of leading AI companies along with diplomats from 28 nations to discuss a shared approach to identifying AI risks and building mechanisms to prevent them. Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also created the world’s first AI Safety Institute to test leading AI models for potential dangers. But yesterday, the Labour Party government of Keir Starmer, which was elected in July, endorsed an “AI Opportunities Action Plan” that is all about how the country can move at speed to embrace AI and hopefully use it to boost Britain’s moribund economy. In fact, in its official announcement, Starmer’s government said the plan “mainlines AI into the veins” of the U.K. economy. ...

See the full story here: https://fortune.com/2025/01/14/keir-starmer-ai-action-plan-ai-policy-vibe-shift-away-from-x-risk/

Top 10 Web3/Blockchain Legal Developments of 2024

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Conclusion

The days when the federal government is actively hostile to crypto are likely to be numbered, but how this plays out is open to significant speculation. Will Congress bring regulatory clarity? Will the SEC drop some of its existing enforcement actions and take a more laissez-faire approach to policing the industry? Will we get last-minute surprises from the current administration, such as the final crypto DeFi broker rules issued by the Department of Treasury, dropped on Christmas Eve, or events such as the Ripple lawsuit, filed while Jay Clayton was a lame duck as Chairman of the SEC? The year 2025 brings with it cautious optimism, but companies in the blockchain space should prepare now for potential changes, and there may be significant opportunity for traditional finance services companies to enter the digital assets space.

See the full story here: https://natlawreview.com/article/top-10-web3blockchain-legal-developments-2024

Cohere co-founder sees big AI opportunity in enterprise, happy to stay out of ChatGPT’s way

• Cohere on Thursday debuted its early access program for its AI agent platform called North, deepening its focus on the enterprise.
• Co-founder Nick Frosst indicated that he’s happy to cede the consumer market to OpenAI, Google and others, while Cohere sticks with generative AI businesses.
• “I’m in meetings with companies in health care, banking and IT all the time,” he said.

See the full story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/09/cohere-sees-big-ai-opportunity-in-enterprise-away-from-chatgpt.html

At the Intersection of A.I. and Spirituality

... Rabbi Fixler is among a growing number of religious leaders experimenting with A.I. in their work, spurring an industry of faith-based tech companies that offer A.I. tools, from assistants that can do theological research to chatbots that can help write sermons. ...

But the ethical questions around using generative A.I. for religious tasks have become more complicated as the technology has improved, religious leaders say. While most agree that using A.I. for tasks like research or marketing is acceptable, other uses for the technology, like sermon writing, are seen by some as a step too far. ...

Jay Cooper, a pastor in Austin, Texas, used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate an entire service for his church as an experiment in 2023. He marketed it using posters of robots, and the service drew in some curious new attendees — “gamer types,” Mr. Cooper said — who had never before been to his congregation. ...

On a recent afternoon at his synagogue, Rabbi Hayon recalled taking a picture of his bookshelf and asking his A.I. assistant which of the books he had not quoted in his recent sermons. Before A.I., he would have pulled down the titles themselves, taking the time to read through their indexes, carefully checking them against his own work.

“I was a little sad to miss that part of the process that is so fruitful and so joyful and rich and enlightening, that gives fuel to the life of the Spirit,” Rabbi Hayon said. “Using A.I. does get you to an answer quicker, but you’ve certainly lost something along the way.”

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/technology/ai-religious-leaders.html