philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Ant Digital’s Zan Aims to Lead in Global Web3 with Hong Kong Expansion

... Zan was initiated by Ant in September of the previous year, with a clear goal of establishing itself as a critical technology provider at the heart of the emerging Web3 landscape. The CEO of Zan, Cobe Zhang Chenguang, explained in a recent interview that the company intends to bring the extensive technology services that Ant Group has developed over the years, particularly in areas such as blockchain and financial compliance, to Web3 developers worldwide. The goal is to become a central figure in the Web3 industry by offering a comprehensive suite of technical solutions, including node provider services and know-your-customer (KYC) verification. Zan aims to capture the largest market share in the Asia-Pacific region within the next two to three years. ...

Ant Group, known for its affiliation with the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, operates AntChain, which is currently the largest enterprise-facing blockchain platform in China. ... Despite its dominance in mainland China, Ant recognized the need to establish Zan in Hong Kong to further expand its blockchain services on a global scale. ...

See the full story here; https://www.cointrust.com/market-news/ant-digitals-zan-aims-to-lead-in-global-web3-with-hong-kong-expansion

Artificial Intelligence ‘Must Serve Humanity Equitably, Safely’, Secretary-General Stresses, in Message for International Day of Democracy

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This year’s Democracy Day focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for good governance.

Left unchecked, the dangers posed by artificial intelligence could have serious implications for democracy, peace and stability.  This can start with the proliferation of mis- and disinformation, the spread of hate speech and the use of so-called deepfakes. 

Yet, AI has the potential to promote and enhance full and active public participation, equality, security and human development.  It can boost education on democratic processes, and shape more inclusive civic spaces where people have a say in decisions and can hold decision-makers to account. ...

This month’s Summit of the Future offers a crucial opportunity to strengthen international cooperation, build trust, and safeguard current and future generations. ...

See the full story here: https://press.un.org/en/2024/sgsm22347.doc.htm

Magic Raises $320 Million to Develop AI Coworker for Coding

Magic raised $320 million from a group of investors that includes former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to build an artificial intelligence coworker for AI research and code generation, the company said in a Thursday (Aug. 29) blog post.

The investment brings the total amount the company has raised to $465 million, according to the post.

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“We believe the most promising path to safe [artificial general intelligence (AGI)] is to automate AI research and code generation to improve models and solve alignment more reliably than humans can alone,” Magic said on its website. 

Magic also said in its blog post that it will build its next two supercomputers on Google Cloud. ... 

See the full story here: https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2024/magic-raises-320-million-dollars-develop-ai-coworker-coding/

Oprah Winfrey Lines Up AI Heavy Hitters for ABC Special

Winfrey will host an ABC special titled AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special on Sept. 12, in which she’ll talk to some leading figures in the artificial-intelligence space, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and OpenAI head Sam Altman, as well as FBI Director Christopher Wray and a couple of skeptical voices. ...

In addition to Gates, Altman and Wray, the special will feature interviews with technologist and widely followed YouTube tech reviewer Marcus Brownlee; Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology who warn of the risks of AI growing too powerful, too fast; and author Marilynne Robinson, who “reflects on AI’s threat to human values and the ways in which humans might resist the convenience of AI,” per ABC’s description. 

The goal of the hour, according to ABC, is to “provide a serious, entertaining and meaningful base for every viewer to understand AI, and empowers everyone to be a part of one of the most important global conversations of the 21st century.” ...

See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/oprah-winfrey-abc-special-ai-1235987248/

Post-apocalyptic education

What comes after the Homework Apocalypse

... As of eight months ago, a representative survey in the US found that 82% of undergraduates and 72% of K12 students had used AI for school. ...

[Cheating on homework] is not a new problem. One of the first uses of any new technology has always been to get help with homework. A study of thousands of students at Rutgers found that when they did their homework in 2008, it improved test grades for 86% of them (see, homework really does help!), but homework only helped 45% of students in 2017. Why? The rise of the Internet. By 2017, a majority of students were copying internet answers, rather than doing the work themselves. ...

The Homework Apocalypse has already happened and may even have happened before generative AI! Why are more people not seeing this as an emergency? I think it has to do with two illusions. ...

Detection Illusion: teachers believe they can still easily detect AI use, and therefore can prevent it from being used in schoolwork. ...

While teachers grapple with the Detection Illusion, students face their own misconception: Illusory Knowledge. They don’t actually realize that getting help with homework is undermining their learning. ... As the authors of the study at Rutgers wrote: “There is no reason to believe that the students are aware that their homework strategy lowers their exam score... they make the commonsense inference that any study strategy that raises their homework quiz score raises their exam score as well.” ...

We know that almost three-quarters of teachers are already using AI for work, but we have just started to learn the most effective ways for teachers to use AI. ...

See the full article here: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/post-apocalyptic-education

Sony Drops New Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid

... Sony says there's advanced sound technology in the C20, with a feature that prioritizes speech clarity while maintaining awareness of surrounding noises. 

The new C20 hearing aids will retail for $1,000. With the new model on the market, the C10 will have a suggested retail of $800; the E10 hearing aids, which resemble earbuds and -- like the new C20 -- are rechargeable, will be priced at $1,100. They'll be available through Sony and at Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, CVS, HearUSC  and through some hearing care places. ...

See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/sony-drops-new-over-the-counter-hearing-aid/

Sony Pictures and Music to Help Launch Incubator for Web3 Push

The company wants to "catalyze ecosystem growth and accelerate adoption by leveraging its vast global reach and technological expertise across entertainment, gaming, and consumer electronics."

Sony Group is looking for its Sony Pictures and Sony Music units and a new global incubator to help it with a push into the blockchain and Web3 space.

“Web3” is a term that describes a vision for a decentralized internet that is built on blockchaintechnology and communally controlled by its users.

Last week, Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint venture between the Japanese conglomerate’s former Sony Network Communications Labs unit and Startale Labs, a Sony company established for the express purpose of “building new network infrastructure using blockchain technology, said that it has developed the Soneium blockchain as the infrastructure network on which the company wants “to accelerate Web3 innovation.” ...

On Wednesday morning Tokyo time, early L.A. evening time, Sony said it was launching the “Soneium Minato” public testnet and an “ambitious” developer incubation program dubbed “Soneium Spark” to “catalyze ecosystem growth and accelerate adoption by leveraging its vast global reach and technological expertise across [the] entertainment, gaming, and consumer electronics sectors.” ...

Importantly, Sony subsidiaries, such as its film and music units, will participate in the incubation program. “We have opened our testnet as a first step to foster a fan community centered on creators that can connect diverse values through Soneium,” said Jun Watanabe, chairman of Sony Block Solution Labs. “Let’s work together to create new value in Web3 toward a world where Web3 services are used in people’s daily life.”

Among Web3 apps that have attracted users include the likes of Flickplay, which allows users to unlock digital assets and create videos with them using augmented reality (AR). ...

See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sony-pictures-music-web3-blockchain-sonieum-initiative-1235984907/

Elon Musk voices support for California bill requiring safety tests on AI models

... "For over 20 years, I have been an advocate for AI regulation, just as we regulate any product/technology that is a potential risk to the public," Musk said in a post, opens new tab on X, while calling on the state to pass the SB 1047 bill.

California state lawmakers attempted to introduce 65 bills touching on AI this legislative season, according to the state’s legislative database, including measures to ensure all algorithmic decisions are proven unbiased and protect the intellectual property of deceased individuals from exploitation by AI companies. Many of the bills are already dead.

Earlier in the day, Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab backed OpenAI voiced support for another AI bill from California, called AB 3211, that would require tech companies to label AI-generated content, which can range from harmless memes to deepfakes aimed at spreading misinformation about political candidates. ...

See the full story here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/elon-musk-voices-support-california-bill-requiring-safety-tests-ai-models-2024-08-27/

This AI Learns Continuously From New Experiences—Without Forgetting Its Past

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Tackling a new task sometimes requires a whole new round of training and learning, which erases what came before and costs millions of dollars. For ChatGPT and other AI tools, this means they become increasingly outdated over time.

This week, Dohare and colleagues found a way to solve the problem. The key is to selectively reset some artificial neurons after a task, but without substantially changing the entire network—a bit like what happens in the brain as we sleep. ...

Called continual back propagation, the strategy is “among the first of a large and fast-growing set of methods” to deal with the continuous learning problem, wrote Drs. Clare Lyle and Razvan Pascanu at Google DeepMind, who were not involved in the study. ...

It still uses back propagation, but with a small difference. A tiny portion of artificial neurons are wiped clean during learning in every cycle. To prevent disrupting whole networks, only artificial neurons that are used less get reset. The upgrade allowed the algorithm to tackle up to 5,000 different image recognition tasks with over 90 percent accuracy throughout. ...

AI networks that can no longer learn could also be due to network interactions that destabilize the way the AI learns. Scientists are still only scratching the surface of the phenomenon.

Meanwhile, for practical uses, when it comes to AIs, “you want them to keep with the times,” said Dohare. ...

“These capabilities are crucial to the development of truly adaptive AI systems that can continue to train indefinitely, responding to changes in the world and learning new skills and abilities,” wrote Lyle and Pascanu.

See the full story here: https://singularityhub.com/2024/08/22/this-ai-learns-continuously-from-new-experiences-without-forgetting-its-past/

Stephen Wolfram thinks we need philosophers working on big questions around AI

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For example, when you start talking about how to put guardrails on AI, these are essentially philosophical questions. “Sometimes in the tech industry, when people talk about how we should set up this or that thing with AI, some may say, ‘Well, let’s just get AI to do the right thing.’ And that leads to, ‘Well, what is the right thing?’” And determining moral choices is a philosophical exercise.

He says he has had “horrifying discussions” with companies that are putting AI out into the world, clearly without thinking about this. “The attempted Socratic discussion about how you think about these kinds of issues, you would be shocked at the extent to which people are not thinking clearly about these issues. Now, I don’t know how to resolve these issues. That’s the challenge, but it’s a place where these kinds of philosophical questions, I think, are of current importance.” ...

 “Science is an incremental field where you’re not expecting that you’re going to be confronted with a major different way of thinking about things.” ...

“And this question of ‘if the AIs run the world, how do we want them to do that? How do we think about that process? What’s the kind of modernization of political philosophy in the time of AI?’ These kinds of things, this goes right back to foundational questions that Plato talked about,” he told students. ...

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/25/stephen-wolfram-thinks-we-need-philosophers-working-on-big-questions-around-ai