philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Democrats and Republicans see role for government in development of AI

... “Government cannot govern AI if it does not understand AI,” said Daniel Ho, a professor at Stanford Law School, at the hearing. ...

President Biden’s Oct. 30 executive order on AI lays out 150 requirements, as tracked by Stanford, meaning there are major workforce demands for implementation. Yet among other persistent skills gaps in cyber and IT, Ho said that fewer than 1% of AI PhDs pursue a career in public service. ...

Read the full story here: https://www.federaltimes.com/federal-oversight/congress/2023/12/07/democrats-and-republicans-see-role-for-government-in-development-of-ai/

AI And A-listers: Sundance Festival Line-up Unveiled

Kristen Stewart is among several Hollywood stars heading to next month's Sundance festival. But artificial intelligence -- the subject of, and technology behind, several new films -- could steal the show.

Among the line-up for Utah's influential indie movie fest are a "generative" music film that plays differently on each viewing, two documentaries about loved ones using AI to communicate after death, and an interactive "digital griot" that will teach audiences how to vogue.

"One of the things that was striking to see, as we were going through these films and talking about them as a team, was how AI just kept popping up," Sundance director of programming Kim Yutani told AFP.

"Whether it be in a documentary, whether it be influencing a documentary... that's going to be a really interesting part of the festival this year." ...

Among Sundance's new offerings are "Eno," which explores musician Brian Eno's career and creative process, using a "generative engine" to mesh together near-infinite different versions of a film from hundreds of possible scenes.

The technology uses prompts and keywords to find and create associations between scenes, changing or reshuffling the lineup each night, just as a touring band might do at each new gig...

See the full story here: https://www.barrons.com/articles/ai-and-a-listers-sundance-festival-line-up-unveiled-1628627f

The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

... Instead, there’s one 5G use case where the big three networks are finding traction, and it comes up over and over again in their earnings reports: fixed wireless access, or FWA. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s internet that comes to your house over radio waves rather than a cable. T-Mobile and Verizon have aggressively expanded their FWA offerings over the past couple of years, and even “fiber is everything” AT&T is getting in on the action with Internet Air. ...

https://www.theverge.com/23991136/5g-network-att-verizon-tmobile-cost-competition

Google Gemini gets us closer to the AI of our imagination, and it’s going to change everything

... What matters here is that Google is finally showing what you can do when you have the world's information and industry-leading AI development. Microsoft and OpenAI have the best-known AI, but they've never had access to the same kind of data and knowledge graph as Google. I always assumed that was an advantage; and now, it seems, Google has finally figured that out, too. ...

Watch a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIZAiXYceBI

See the full story here: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/google-gemini-gets-us-closer-to-the-ai-of-our-imagination-and-its-going-to-change-everything

Experts on A.I. Agree That It Needs Regulation. That’s the Easy Part.

...

In October, the White House issued a lengthy executive order on A.I., but without an enforcement mechanism, something Mr. Benifei sees as necessary. “Obviously, it’s a delicate topic,” he said. “There is a lot of concern from the business sector, I think rightly so, that we do not overregulate before we fully understand all the challenges.” But, he said, “we cannot just rely on self-regulation.” The development and use of A.I., he added, must be “enforceable and explainable to our citizens.”

Other task force members were far more reluctant to embrace such broad regulation. Questions abound, such as who is responsible if something goes wrong — the original developer? A third-party vendor? The end user? ...

Transparency is key, all agreed, and so are partnerships between government, industry and university research. “If you are not very transparent, then academia gets left behind and no researchers will come out of academia,” said Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist at Amazon Artificial General Intelligence. ...

In addition, she said, “It’s not just about regulation. It really has to do with investment in the public sector in a deep and profound way,” noting that she has directly pleaded with Congress and President Biden to support universities in this area. Academia, she said, can serve as a trusted neutral platform in this field, but “right now we have completely starved the public sector.” ...

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/business/dealbook/artificial-intelligence-regulation.html

Runway ML and Getty Images set their sights on Hollywood

Runway ML, a leading AI video creation platform, has joined forces with Getty Images, the world’s premier visual content provider, to develop innovative AI video models tailored for the entertainment and advertising industries.

The collaboration of Runway ML and Getty Images aims to develop cutting-edge AI video models that will empower Hollywood studios, advertising agencies, and media companies to produce high-quality, captivating video content at an unprecedented scale. ...

Yes, this collaboration is really exciting but it has two big main problems: Not being able to appeal to a wide audience and using Art and AI in the same sentence. ...

See the full story here: https://dataconomy.com/2023/12/05/runway-ml-and-getty-images-ai-hollywood/

Rapper Bad Bunny lashes out over viral AI copycat hits

Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny's voice quickly went viral last month. However, the songs circulating did not belong to him. ...

Chilean artist Maurico Bustos launched the trend with the song NostalgIA - a play on the Spanish abbreviation for AI. It was written and recorded by Bustos using artificial intelligence to modify Bad Bunny's vocals, producing a viral track that prompted parodies and copycat versions on TikTok.

Bad Bunny told his 20 million WhatsApp followers to leave if they liked "this shitty song that is viral on TikTok ... I don't want you on tour either." ...

See the full story here: https://www.wionews.com/entertainment-news/rapper-bad-bunny-lashes-out-over-viral-ai-copycat-hits-666653

AI Is Testing the Limits of Corporate Governance

... Can AI safety research shed any light on old corporate governance problems? And can the law and economics of corporate governance help us frame the new problems of AI safety? I identify five lessons — and one dire warning — on the corporate governance of AI that the corporate turmoil at OpenAI has made vivid.

1. Companies cannot rely on traditional corporate governance to protect the social good.

... Anthropic is organized as a public benefit corporation (PBC), with the specific mission to “responsibly develop and maintain advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.” ...

2. Even creative governance structures will struggle to tame the profit motive.

This phenomenon has been in full display during the OpenAI governance war. ...

In an influential paper, economists Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales argued that, in an unrestricted market for corporate control, a profit-driven buyer can easily hijack the social mission of a firm. They called this phenomenon “amoral drift.” ...

3. Independence and social responsibility do not necessarily converge.

An important concept in AI safety is the so-called “orthogonality thesis,” which posits that AI’s intelligence and its final goals are not necessarily correlated. We can have unintelligent machines that serve us well and super-intelligent machines that harm us. Intelligence alone does not guarantee against harmful behavior.

Corporate governance experts should borrow this helpful concept. ...

4. Corporate governance should try to solve for the alignment of profit and safety.

One crucial problem in AI safety is the so-called “alignment problem”: Superintelligent AI might have values and goals that are incompatible with human well-being. ...

The AI alignment problem is quite similar to the central problem of corporate governance. ...

Our most successful institutional designs, from liberal constitutions to capitalist institutions, do not depend on suppressing greed and ambition. Instead, they focus on harnessing these passions for the greater good. ...

5. AI companies’ boards must maintain a delicate balance in cognitive distance.

 ... This difference between how AI safety experts and outsiders interpret and understand the world is what some scholars have termed “cognitive distance.” ...

Was the drastic and sudden decision to fire Sam Altman, with little or no warning to major investors and no explanations to the public, the product of too little cognitive distance? ...

Corporate boards are complex social systems. The ideal decision-making dynamic in the boardroom should be one in which directors with different backgrounds, competences, and point of views discuss vigorously and intelligently, willing to contribute their insights but also to learn and change their minds when appropriate. Real-world boardrooms often fail to live up to this standard. ...

A Warning: Corporate Governance Cannot Handle Catastrophic Risk

... Many AI experts, however, believe that there is a small but non negligible chance that AI will be catastrophic for humanity. ...

While corporate governance might help mitigate serious risks, it is not good at handling existential risk, even when corporate decision-makers have the strongest commitment to the common good. ...

Top AI experts and commentators have already invoked a Manhattan Project for AI, in which the U.S. government would mobilize thousands of scientists and private actors, fund research that would be uneconomic for business firms, and make safety an absolute priority. ...

While good corporate governance can help in the transitional phase, the government should quickly recognize its inevitable role in AI safety and step up to the historic task.

See the full article here: https://hbr.org/2023/12/ai-is-testing-the-limits-of-corporate-governance

SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT STRIKES DEVELOPMENT DEAL WITH THE GUARDIAN

... Under the deal, SPE will have access to the Guardian’s current and developing news stories, and to the Guardian archive, containing 200 years of history across articles, blogs, columns, videos and podcasts. ...

The Guardian picked up the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for the film Colette in 2021, following a nomination in the same category for the film Black Sheep in 2019. ...

See the full story here: https://www.ibc.org/news/sony-pictures-entertainment-strikes-development-deal-with-the-guardian/10564.article

Rizz named word of the year 2023 by Oxford University Press

...

According to Oxford University Press [OUP], which publishes the Oxford English Dictionary [OED], it is defined as style, charm, or attractiveness, and the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.

The term is thought to be a shortened form of the word "charisma". ...

See the full story here: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67602699