philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Dr. Ben Goertzel Leverages Photorealistic Generative AI Avatar Technology from Twin Protocol at AI for Good Conference in Switzerland

Dr. Ben Goertzel, Founder of SingularityNET and Chief Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisor to Twin Protocol, will launch a video of his avatar addressing visitors to the AI for Good conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Use of the generative AI avatar technology by top AI scientist, Dr. Ben Goertzel, demonstrates the power of secure, ethically engineered AI to foster a culture of continuous knowledge sharing, innovation, and growth.

His avatar is the first of an ongoing series of digital twin modalities Dr. Goertzel and Twin Protocol will unveil over the coming months. Dr. Goertzel’s digital AI avatar is the ideal candidate to deliver insights on the future of artificial general intelligence (AGI) at AI for Good, exploring the ethical implications of AI and the transformative potential of decentralized networks. Dr. Goertzel’s digital AI avatar will also delve into his pioneering research on combining AI with blockchain technology to create a more secure and transparent digital ecosystem. ...

See the full story here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240529028325/en

Magic Leap is Google’s new mystery partner for XR headsets

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What does Google need that Magic Leap can provide?

Google Glass and Magic Leap were both among the biggest technology flops of the past decade — but could their underlying ideas power something worthy and new? We may find out because Google and Magic Leap now have a “multi-faceted strategic technology partnership” designed to “foster the future of the XR ecosystem with unique and innovative product offerings.”

It is not at all clear what the deal involves, but the press release does repeatedly boast about Magic Leap’s optics and manufacturing expertise — expertise that, it claims, produces “highly-precise eyepieces with incredibly high yield rates and quality at scale.”  ...

See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/30/24167283/google-magic-leap-deal-optics-manufacturing

OpenAI Says Russia and China Used Its A.I. in Covert Campaigns

OpenAI said on Thursday that it had identified and disrupted five online campaigns that used its generative artificial intelligence technologies to deceptively manipulate public opinion around the world and influence geopolitics.

The efforts were run by state actors and private companies in Russia, China, Iran and Israel, OpenAI said in a report about covert influence campaigns. The operations used OpenAI’s technology to generate social media posts, translate and edit articles, write headlines and debug computer programs, typically to win support for political campaigns or to swing public opinion in geopolitical conflicts. ...

Like Google, Meta and Microsoft, OpenAI offers online chatbots and other A.I. tools that can write social media posts, generate photorealistic images and write computer programs. In its report, the company said its tools had been used in influence campaigns that researchers had tracked for years, including a Russian campaign called Doppelganger and a Chinese campaign called Spamouflage.

The Doppelganger campaign used OpenAI’s technology to generate anti-Ukraine comments that were posted on X in English, French, German, Italian and Polish, OpenAI said. The company’s tools were also used to translate and edit articles that supported Russia in the war in Ukraine into English and French, and to convert anti-Ukraine news articles into Facebook posts. ...

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/technology/openai-influence-campaigns-report.html?mc_cid=e892866c6a&mc_eid=cf24d7da5b

Washington pushes for new AI rules protecting artists as Hollywood backlash mounts

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"We're going to have to do a national AI bill or the world will not be the same as we know it," Klobuchar said.

"Songwriters, actors, and our incredibly talented creative community deserve the right to own their voice, image, and likeness," added Blackburn, the leading Republican on the bill. ...

"We're going to have to try to figure out some way to create parameters and guardrails. We've seen artists already whose voices have been used after they've passed on. We're also seeing artists being used when they have nothing to do with something that's been put out, and that's terrifying." ...

A draft version of the bill would extend authorization for digital replication to the heirs, executors, or assignees of a deceased person for a period of 70 years, which is modeled after the equivalent term for copyright protection. ...

"It will take very careful drafting to accomplish the goal of addressing these harms without inadvertently chilling legitimate, constitutionally protected uses of technologies to enhance storytelling in our industry," Ben Sheffner, senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association, said on April 30 while testifying before the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. ...

See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/washington-pushes-for-new-ai-rules-protecting-artists-as-hollywood-backlash-mounts-080019112.html

Tech leaders question if society is ready for artificial general intelligence at Vatican conference

Keyun Ruan, chief information security officer at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, posed the question, “Why do we need AGI?” in reference to artificial general intelligence — AI systems that can match or exceed human intelligence across a wide range of situations.

Speaking at a conference on human flourishing and technology in the headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences May 23, Ruan said that determining AGI’s purpose and service to humanity is “a broader conversation that we have never really had at a global level.” ...

The development of AGI requires huge monetary investments, “and there is not an equal size of investments and funding in alignment, in ethics, in human flourishing,” she noted. “We want to get the equation balanced before we race into AGI.” ...

Dennis Snower, an economist and president of the Global Solutions Initiative, told Catholic News Service that today “artificial intelligence is driven largely by business interests with a focus on profits and shareholder value, and these don’t align properly with our needs to flourish both individually and socially.” ...

See the full story here: https://thedialog.org/vatican-news/tech-leaders-question-if-society-is-ready-for-artificial-general-intelligence-at-vatican-conference/

How a Decades-Old Technology and a Paper From Meta Created an AI Industry Standard

... Vector databases have been around for decades, but are now emerging as something of an industry standard for AI businesses to use alongside a technique called retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG.

When combined, businesses can link their private data with large-language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4, allowing the AI to perform data analysis, summarization and other tasks on their data. Without them, AI models are limited to what they have learned from their initial training on public data online, up to a certain point in time, and are more prone to factual errors called “hallucinations.”

New York-based startup Pinecone was an early entrant in the vector database AI space. ...

Vector databases are finding a new use by enterprise and AI developers because they power the RAG technique. Originating from a 2020 paper by an AI research group at Meta Platforms, RAG is commonly used by enterprises to build chatbots for employees to reference company policies, or for customer service and salespeople to pull information from knowledge bases.

Vector databases are different from traditional databases with columns and rows because they are designed to store a massive amount of data as “vectors,” or numerical representations of the raw data. That makes them ideal for RAG, the process where generative AI models pull from large amounts of vector data to improve their responses with the additional information.

RAG vs. fine-tuning

Compared with fine-tuning—a technique used to create a custom AI model based on an existing large language model—RAG is cheaper because it doesn’t require massive amounts of computing power and advanced AI expertise, and is easier and faster for developers to implement. Roughly 80% of enterprises are using RAG, compared with 20% using fine-tuning, Chandrasekaran said. ...

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-decades-old-technology-and-a-paper-from-meta-created-an-ai-industry-standard-354a810e

IMAX Reveals Their Ambitious 6-Year Plan to Expand Across the Globe

•  IMAX is expanding globally with plans to double its network of theaters over the next six years, focusing on markets like Australia. 
•  A new generation of IMAX cameras is in development, with upgrades such as quieter and lighter features to enhance the filmmaker experience. 
•  IMAX is exploring the potential of live events, including TV series premieres like the one they recently did for a show by Jonathan Nolan, using IMAX cameras for a unique viewing experience.

See the full story here: https://collider.com/imax-global-expansion-plans

IATSE welcomes release of bipartisan U.S. Senate roadmap for AI policy, urges Congressional action

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In the roadmap, on issues key to IATSE workers, the bipartisan working group encourages the relevant Senate committees to:

Ensure that stakeholders – from innovators and employers to civil society, unions, and other workforce perspectives – are consulted as AI is developed and then deployed by end users;

Consider developing legislation to establish a coherent approach to public-facing transparency requirements for AI systems;

Consider federal policy issues related to the data sets used by AI developers to train their models, including data sets that might contain sensitive personal data or are protected by copyright, and evaluate whether there is a need for transparency requirements; and

Review the results of existing and forthcoming reports from the U.S. Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on how AI impacts copyright and intellectual property law, and take action as deemed appropriate to ensure the U.S. continues to lead the world on this front. ...

See the full article here: https://iatse.net/iatse-welcomes-release-of-bipartisan-u-s-senate-roadmap-for-ai-policy-urges-congressional-action/

Hershey unveils latest series at Sweets & Snacks, including augmented reality initiative

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As the company explained, its AR system (pictured below) works on the basis of generating an image of what the product would like in a specific location. IR tracks the merchandise and its in-store location to gather insights on how placement impacts sales and the shopping experience.

Among the firm’s latest releases this year was its Reese’s Caramel Big Cup, KitKat Pink Lemonade, KitKat Vanilla, Hershey’s Crunchy Waffle Cone Bars, Ice Breakers Sparkling Mints Pineapple Mango Seltzer Flavour, Dot’s Homestyle Pretzels Parmesan Garlic Flavour, SkinnyPop Cheddar Jalapeño. ...

See the story here: https://www.confectioneryproduction.com/news/48266/hershey-unveils-latest-series-at-sweets-snacks-including-augmented-reality-initiative/

A former OpenAI leader says safety has ‘taken a backseat to shiny products’ at the AI company

... Jan Leike, who ran OpenAI's "Superalignment" team alongside a company co-founder who also resigned this week, wrote in a series of posts on the social media platform X that he joined the San Francisco-based company because he thought it would be the best place to do AI research.

"However, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company's core priorities for quite some time, until we finally reached a breaking point," wrote Leike, whose last day was Thursday. ...

He said building "smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor" and that the company "is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity." ...

The company also confirmed Friday that it had disbanded Leike's Superalignment team, which was launched last year to focus on AI risks, and is integrating the team's members across its research efforts. ...

See the full story here: https://techxplore.com/news/2024-05-openai-leader-safety-backseat-shiny.html