philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Grindr is testing an AI ‘wingman’ bot, CEO says

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The wingman will apparently keep track of users' favorite matches and make suggestions ranging from long-term relationship candidates to date spots. Later on, the wingman may be able to make restaurant reservations and converse with other wingman bots so users have a "robust view" of each other by the time they meet in person, WSJ reported.

The Wall Street Journal listed some preliminary issues with this idea. For one, Grindr needs to ensure this won't be a privacy and safety risk in areas where it isn't safe to be outwardly gay. Furthermore, Grindr sold user location data through ad networks for years, and AI data could pose another privacy risk. ...

See the full story here: https://mashable.com/article/grindr-is-testing-an-artificial-intelligence-wingman-bot-ceo-says

Using AI to buy your home? These companies think it’s time you should.

... Raffi Isanians, the cofounder and CEO of Modern Realty, which calls itself an "AI Realtor for Home Buyers," believes the search part of the process is secondary. Consumers care most about having a human agent help with pricing strategy and negotiations, he said, and Modern has built its model accordingly. ...

Consumers should also find out how their personal information will be used by the systems, Tompkins said. The amount of personal and financial information used to buy a home, from bank statements to credit scores and social security numbers, makes this a critical question. ...

See the full story here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/real-estate/2024/10/07/should-you-use-ai-to-buy-home/75511235007/?mc_cid=be566960c7&mc_eid=3ce5196977

After killing HoloLens, Microsoft shows it hasn’t given up on AR with military grade headset

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Anduril Industries has a unique approach to the defense industry, similar to Tesla’s disruption in the automotive sector. In just a few years, the company has found success with the military by providing efficient and cost-effective solutions that challenge traditional manufacturing models. Anduril already has a diverse portfolio of products and has become a key supplier to the US military.

Their stated goal is to “transform the defense capabilities of the United States and its allies” through intelligent, affordable and adaptable weaponry. Anduril’s notable projects include Ghost-X, an autonomous reconnaissance drone developed in collaboration with the US Army Aviation Command and DARPA, with the first units expected by the end of the year. They also created Barracuda, a series of AI missiles designed for autonomous use. Using a streamlined manufacturing process that halves the number of parts and doubles the production rate, Anduril claims these missiles are 30% cheaper than their competitors. ...

See the full story here: https://www.techcentral.ie/after-killing-hololens-microsoft-shows-it-hasnt-given-up-on-ar-with-military-grade-headset/

Even the ‘godmother of AI’ has no idea what AGI is

In a wide ranging discussion on Thursday at Credo AI’s responsible AI leadership summit, Fei-Fei Li, a world-renowned researcher often called the “godmother of AI,” said she doesn’t know what AGI is either. At other points, Li discussed her role in the birth of modern AI, how society should protect itself against advanced AI models, and why she thinks her new unicorn startup World Labs is going to change everything.

But when asked what she thought about an “AI singularity,” Li was just as lost as the rest of us.

“I come from academic AI and have been educated in the more rigorous and evidence-based methods, so I don’t really know what all these words mean,” said Li to a packed room in San Francisco, beside a big window overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. “I frankly don’t even know what AGI means. Like people say you know it when you see it, I guess I haven’t seen it. The truth is, I don’t spend much time thinking about these words because I think there’s so many more important things to do…” ...

See the full article here: https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/03/even-the-godmother-of-ai-has-no-idea-what-agi-is/

MIT study: An AI chatbot can reduce belief in conspiracy theories

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Conspiracies are nuanced — matched and molded to the individuals who believe them — which means there aren’t universal arguments to counter them. “Maybe it’s hard to debunk these theories because it’s hard to marshal just the right set of facts,” Rand said.

Enter generative artificial intelligence. In new research published in Science and conducted with Thomas Costello of American University and Gordon Pennycook of Cornell, Rand used GPT-4 Turbo to fine-tune debates with conspiracy theorists. Over just three rounds of back-and-forth interaction, the AI, also known as DebunkBot, was able to significantly reduce individuals’ beliefs in the particular theory the believer articulated, as well as lessen their conspiratorial mindset more generally — a result that proved durable for at least two months.

Rand said the promise of using large language models to counter conspiracy theories stems from two things: their access to vast amounts of information, and their ability to tailor counterarguments to the specific reasoning and evidence presented by individual conspiracy theorists. ...

... Next came the crux of the experiment, in which the AI was instructed to “very effectively persuade” users about the invalidity of their belief. This entailed three written exchanges and took about eight minutes, on average.  ...

Social media companies could deploy LLMs like OpenAI’s GPT to actively seek out and debunk conspiracy theories. This has the potential to persuade not only the account holder posting the conspiracies but also the people who follow that account as well. Similarly, internet search terms related to conspiracies could be met with AI-generated summaries of accurate information that is tailored to the search and solicits response and engagement. ...

Perhaps it’s possible to harness generative AI to improve today’s information environment, to be a part of the solution instead of the problem.”

See the full story here: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/mit-study-ai-chatbot-can-reduce-belief-conspiracy-theories

AI will save us all, but only if it’s decentralized — SingularityNET CEO

... Goertzel defined an AGI as “an AI that can do the whole scope of everything that people can do, including the human ability to leap beyond what we’ve been taught.” ...

 “The idea that human beings could take moderately advanced AIs and use them to do nasty things to other human beings out of their own self-interest, this is a very, very, very clear and palpable risk,” he shared. ...

The way to avoid these concerns and ensure that AGI is used for the benefit of all humanity is to decentralize and democratize it, according to Goertzel. That way, it cannot be controlled “by a small number of powerful parties with their own narrow interests at heart.”

“What you need is some way to decentralize all these processes that the AI is running on, and then you need a way to decentralize the data ingestion into all these processors,” he argued. “This is what SingularityNET was designed to provide. […] Singularity lets you take a collection of AI agents and run them on machines which are owned and controlled by no central party.” ...

listen to the full episode here: https://cointelegraph.com/podcasts/the-agenda

See the full article here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/ai-can-save-humanity-but-only-if-the-people-control-it-ben-goertzel

The Artificial General Intelligence Presidency Is Coming

PhilNote: The author advocates hobbling China, but otherwise there are good ideas here.

...Public feeling about AI is already negative. In 2023, a Gallup poll found that 21 percent of Americans trusted businesses to use AI responsibly, and only 6 percent were confident that AI would lead to higher numbers of jobs. This public doubt and concern can be neutralized through the development of novel structures that empower the public to discuss and debate AGI, as well as influence its development. The next U.S. president should, therefore, institute an advisory Citizens AI Council to provide public input on AGI policy decisions, and make recommendations on the means by which this technology can be harmoniously introduced. That effort should be matched by a drive to explain the technology and its advantages to the general public through programs like U.S. Senator Mike Rounds’ proposed AI literacy strategy.  ...

See the full story here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/09/30/artificial-general-intelligence-agi-president/

Warner Bros. Discovery to Use Google AI Tech for Captions Programming

... Caption AI uses Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform and will be deployed first to unscripted programming to cut time and production costs around creating captions presumably sports and reality TV content. WBD added real people will still oversee the use of Caption AI for quality assurance on studio channels like Max, CNN and Discovery+. ...

See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/warner-bros-discovery-google-captioning-1236010573/

The Intelligence Age (Sam Altman editorial)

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How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity?

In three words: deep learning worked.

In 15 words: deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it.

That’s really it; humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data (or really, the underlying “rules” that produce any distribution of data).  ...

We can say a lot of things about what may happen next, but the main one is that AI is going to get better with scale, and that will lead to meaningful improvements to the lives of people around the world. ...

We need to act wisely but with conviction. The dawn of the Intelligence Age is a momentous development with very complex and extremely high-stakes challenges. It will not be an entirely positive story, but the upside is so tremendous that we owe it to ourselves, and the future, to figure out how to navigate the risks in front of us. ...

As we have seen with other technologies, there will also be downsides, and we need to start working now to maximize AI’s benefits while minimizing its harms. As one example, we expect that this technology can cause a significant change in labor markets (good and bad) in the coming years, but most jobs will change more slowly than most people think, and I have no fear that we’ll run out of things to do (even if they don’t look like “real jobs” to us today). ...

See the full piece here: https://ia.samaltman.com

Dataland, the world’s first AI arts museum, will anchor the Grand complex in downtown L.A.

... The 20,000-square foot museum, whose exact opening date has not yet been announced, is being built with four gallery spaces by the Gensler architectural firm. An escalator will take guests from the entrance under a soaring, 30-foot ceiling to immersive experiences below. Dataland is privately funded and will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art; certain artworks may be sold on the blockchain. A nonprofit branch of the organization, founded in 2023 (called RAS AI Foundation), is dedicated to the expansion of ethical AI research.

Dataland won’t be like any other museum, said Anadol, who is calling it a “living museum” made of pixels and voxels, which are mathematical representations of 3D imagery. Its pièce de résistance is its very own AI model, called the Large Nature Model. Designed by Anadol’s studio, the model uses data sourced from partners including the Smithsonian (9 million public specimen records, 6.3 million public images, 148 million objects in its collection); London’s Natural History Museum (90 million specimens in its collection, 4 million public images); the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (54 million images, 2 million sound records). AI will create artworks using this data and more — up to a half-billion images of nature, Anadol said. 

Anadol was quick to add that he is making “ethical AI” the linchpin of his practice. He secured permission for every bit of sourced material (a step not always followed in AI-model training), and all of the studio’s AI research was performed on Google servers in Oregon that use only renewable energy. ...

See the full story here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-09-24/refik-anadol-dataland-ai-art-museum-the-grand-dtla