philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Sony Launches Blockchain to Boost Web3 in Entertainment and Gaming

• Sony announced its blockchain, “Soneium.”
• Soneium will be a public blockchain for developers to build their experiences.
• Sony will enable developers to incorporate cryptocurrency transactions for purchases of assets in games, NFTs, entertainment products, etc.

See the full story here: https://www.techopedia.com/news/sony-launches-blockchain-to-boost-web3-in-entertainment-and-gaming

THERE’S A HUMONGOUS PROBLEM WITH AI MODELS: THEY NEED TO BE ENTIRELY REBUILT EVERY TIME THEY’RE UPDATED

... In other words, if you want to teach an existing deep learning model something new, you'll likely have to retrain it from the ground up — otherwise, according to the research, the artificial neurons in their proverbial minds will sink to a value of zero. This results in a loss of "plasticity," or their ability to learn at all. ...

And training advanced AI models, as the researchers point out, is a cumbersome and wildly expensive process — making this a major financial obstacle for AI companies, which burn through a ton of cash as it is. ...

This phenomenon of plasticity loss is also a major moat between current AI models and the imagined "artificial general intelligence," or a theoretical AI that would be considered generally as intelligent as humans.  ...

"A solution to continual learning is literally a billion-dollar question," Dohare told New Scientist. "A real, comprehensive solution that would allow you to continuously update a model would reduce the cost of training these models significantly."

See the full story here: https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-models-rebuilding-problem

AI researchers call for ‘personhood credentials’ as bots get smarter

... In the paper, published online last week but not yet peer-reviewed, a group of 32 researchers from OpenAI, Microsoft, Harvard and other institutions call on technologists and policymakers to develop new ways to verify humans without sacrificing people’s privacy or anonymity. They propose a system of “personhood credentials” by which people prove offline that they physically exist as humans and receive an encrypted credential that they can use to log in to a wide range of online services. ...

But the authors argue that existing systems for proving one’s humanity, such as requiring users to submit a selfie or solve a CAPTCHA puzzle, are increasingly “inadequate against sophisticated AI.” In the near future, they add, even holding a video chat with someone may not be enough to tell whether they’re the person they claim to be, another person disguising themselves with AI or “even a complete AI simulation of a real or fictitious person.” ...

The researchers propose instead that personhood credentials should allow people to interact online anonymously without their activities being tracked. ...

In an emailed statement via an OpenAI representative, Adler said the paper’s goal is to establish the value of personhood credentials in general, while highlighting the criteria and design challenges that any such system should take into account. ...

If artificial intelligence systems can convincingly impersonate humans, he mused, presumably they could also hire humans to do their bidding. ...

Chris Gilliard, an independent privacy researcher and surveillance scholar,  said it’s worth asking why the onus should be on individuals to prove their humanity rather than on the AI companies to prevent their bots from impersonating humans, as some experts have suggested. ...

See the full story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/21/human-bot-personhood-credentials-worldcoin/

Prompt hacking is an Achilles’ heel for AI

• "Prompt hacking" is becoming a concern as hackers figure out how to manipulate LLMs to retrieve restricted information
• Outsmarting an LLM in many environments can be done with little to no hacking experience
• New security measures need to be put in place and LLMs themselves will have to adapt

See the full story here; https://www.fierce-network.com/cloud/how-hackable-your-llm

Fake celebrity endorsements become latest weapon in misinformation wars

... Roughly 1 in 10 viral posts analyzed by the News Literacy Project contained fake endorsements, according to data provided exclusively to CNN. Those posts described supposed endorsements - or alternatively, public snubs - from celebrities including NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, actor Morgan Freeman, musician Bruce Springsteen, and political figures like former First Lady Michelle Obama. ...

Experts say the problem has been exacerbated by X's AI-powered chatbot, Grok, which has already drawn the ire of election officials for spreading false information about Harris' eligibility in the 2024 election. Last week, X began allowing users to use Grok to create AI-generated images from text prompts, unleashing a flood of fake content about Trump and Harris.

"Going forward, Grok is likely to be one of the main sources of these sorts of images because it generates high-quality images, is easily available, and was intentionally made to have a low refusal rate," Hansen said, adding that he was able to use Grok to create images of "Swifties for Trump" that closely resemble the ones Trump shared. ...

See the full story here: https://abc11.com/post/fake-celebrity-endorsements-become-latest-weapon-misinformation-wars-sowing-confusion-ahead-2024-election/15218719/

TCL Names Finalists for AI TV/Film Accelerator Program

... “This is a pivotal moment of realignment in the industry and TCL is leading the way of demystifying the use of AI tools through our production initiatives,“ TCL North America chief content officer Chris Regina said. ...

See the full story here: https://www.nexttv.com/news/tcl-names-finalists-for-ai-tvfilm-accelerator-program

Inconsistent Safeguards in AI Chatbots Can Lead to Health Disinformation

A study published earlier this year in BMJ evaluated how well large language models (LLMs) could prevent users from prompting chatbots to create health disinformation. It found that while some AI chatbots consistently avoided creating false information, other models frequently created false health claims, especially when prompted with ambiguous or complex health scenarios. In addition, the study found that the safeguards were inconsistent – some models provided accurate information in one instance but not in others under similar conditions. The researchers criticized the lack of transparency from AI developers, who often did not disclose the specific measures they had taken to mitigate these challenges.

Source: Menz, B. D., Kuderer, N. M., Bacchi, S., Modi, N. D., Chin-Yee, B., Hu, T., ... & Hopkins, A. M. (2024). Current safeguards, risk mitigation, and transparency measures of large language models against the generation of health disinformation: repeated cross-sectional analysis. BMJ, 384.

Sony Unveils Web3 Division and Layer 2 Network

...

Announced on Aug. 23, the newly created Sony Block Solutions Labs (Sony SBL) will lead all of Sony’s blockchain and web3 initiatives. Sony also revealed that the division is developing Soneium, a public Ethereum Layer 2 network, in partnership with Startale Labs, the development team behind Astar Network.

The network leveragesOptimism’s OP Stack and supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts. Soneium is currently preparing to launch its forthcoming testnet, and plans to release technical documentation and software development kits “in the coming weeks.”

“The new blockchain unites leading web3 projects and infrastructure pioneers, including Astar Network, Circle, Chainlink, Alchemy, and The Graph… to bridge the gap between decentralized innovation and everyday consumer applications in entertainment, gaming, and finance,” Sony SBL said.

Sony SBL said it is exploring new mechanisms for profit-sharing between creators and fans, protecting creator-generated content, and fostering interoperability across digital and real-world environments. ...

See the full story here: https://thedefiant.io/news/blockchains/sony-unveils-web3-division-and-layer-2-network

An ‘AI Scientist’ Is Inventing and Running Its Own Experiments

... This week, Clune’s lab revealed its latest open-ended learning project: an AI program that invents and builds AI agents. The AI-designed agents outperform human-designed agents in some tasks, such as math and reading comprehension. The next step will be devising ways to prevent such a system from generating agents that misbehave. “It's potentially dangerous,” Clune says of this work. “We need to get it right, but I think it's possible.”

See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-scientist-ubc-lab/

Decentralized Web3 AI firm Theoriq joins Google startup accelerator

... Theoriq’s primary product, its AI Agent Base Layer, is a decentralized, blockchain-based platform for developing and managing AI agent collectives. Essentially, it allows developers to deploy AI agents — models specifically designed to complete directed tasks — throughout their Web3 stack. ...

See the full story here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/decentralized-web3-ai-firm-theoriq-joins-google-startup-accelerator