AI is destabilizing ‘the concept of truth itself’ in 2024 election
... “As long as the incentives continue to be engagement-driven sensationalism, and really conflict,” he said, “those are the kinds of content — whether deepfake or not — that’s going to be surfaced.”
See the full story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/22/ai-deepfake-elections-politicians/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqDwgAKgcICjCO1JQKMLfRdDDRnu8B&utm_content=rundown
Yotta, Immerso AI Collaborate To Boost Generative Media In Movie Production, Gaming
Data centre firm Yotta has announced that it entered into a partnership with Immerso AI, a generative artificial intelligence company which is part of the Eros Investments Group. Immerso AI will leverage the Omniverse platform by Nvidia and high-fidelity custom development to create movie characters from the Eros Now library. It will also help in creating avatars and characters for gaming and other uses.
“2024 is going to be the year of generative media, unlike other digital business infrastructure and performance will play a key role in generative media and gaming. Our core vision to develop India’s largest AIIP company is augmented with this partnership,” said Immerso AI CEO Ali Hussein.
See the full story here: https://www.ndtvprofit.com/technology/yotta-immerso-ai-collaborate-to-boost-generative-media-in-movie-production-gaming
Summarize.tech: AI YouTube Video Summaries
In this issue of his regular posts Phil Ranta explains how Summarize.tech works. It reduces a long video essay down to a summary. See the full review here https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/summarizetech-ai-youtube-video-summaries-phil-ranta-owfvc/
Sundance Bound ‘Eternal You,’ Exec Produced by Oscar Winner Davis Guggenheim, Explores AI as Comfort for the Living in First Clip (EXCLUSIVE)
... “Moritz and I discovered a void that hundreds of millions people feel,” says Block. “They can no longer believe in the promise of life after death with God, the religious rites of mourning have become meaningless to them. Tech companies are trying to fill this void with a new promise of salvation: the idea that we humans no longer need to mourn because we can keep the dead alive virtually.” ...
See the full story with video here: https://variety.com/2024/film/news/eternal-you-ai-avatars-sundance-1235874365/?fbclid=IwAR09wPZfef5VO65-1thdmp0DkG9s39viw73F6G-JSR1thAnC142Jq1R-waI
Buoy meets satellite: Kristen Stewart brings bizarre AI romance to Sundance
"Love Me," surely the most surreal and original entry at this year's Sundance film festival, stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yuen as an AI-powered buoy and orbiting satellite who strike up a romance after humanity has wiped itself off the Earth. ...
Building up their personalities from scratch, they scour the internet for information about the departed human civilization, mimicking the often cringeworthy and absurd human behavior they find on influencers' social media accounts.
"For us, it's not really a movie about AI. But it's a movie about us, seen through the lens of AI," said co-director Andy Zuchero, at the movie's world premiere in Utah on Friday. ...
See the full story here: https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/buoy-meets-satellite-kristen-stewart-brings-bizarre-ai-romance-to-sundance-681809
Column: The George Carlin auto-generated comedy special is everything that’s wrong with AI right now
... The special, tastefully titled “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” is one of the most unpleasant things ostensibly produced for entertainment purposes that I have ever sat through. It’s a stroll through an uncanny valley of Carlin’s comedy, an audio program in which a serviceable replica of the familiar raspy voice delivers “jokes” on topics from mass shootings to Taylor Swift to artificial intelligence. ...
But what bothers me uniquely about this episode is that it serves as a grim snapshot of where so much of the AI industry is at, a year into its reign as the dominant tech trend: Here we have an apparently impressive technology — we can’t know for sure, because the details are concealed in the production process, and almost surely involve ample human labor — designed not to meaningfully entertain, or to present any actual utility, but to exist wholly as a warped advertisement for itself. ...
See the full story here: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2024-01-18/column-the-george-carlin-auto-generated-comedy-special-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-ai-right-now
World’s first ‘retina resolution’ holograms have arrived, startup claims
UK startup VividQ claims to have created the first-ever holograms with a “retina resolution.”
The milestone means holography can now match the resolution and real-life focus cues expected by the human eye, according to VividQ. The result is a “more natural viewing experience than ever before,” the company said. It now plans to deploy the tech in next-generation VR headsets. ...
VividQ projects the computer-generated images through high-performance 4K display hardware. Consequently, 3D holographic objects can be placed at any distance within a person’s focal range. Users can then naturally shift focus between the objects. ...
To showcase the benefits, VividQ has displayed the retina resolution holograms with a high-performance LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) display from JVCKenwood (JKC), a Japanese electronics firm. The two companies are now collaborating to commercialise the tech. ...
See the full story here: https://thenextweb.com/news/vividq-first-retina-resolution-holograms

Disney unveils ‘HoloTile’ floor technology for omnidirectional VR experiences
Walt Disney Imagineering has unveiled the ‘HoloTile’ floor for omnidirectional VR experiences, created by Disney Research fellow Lanny Smoot.
The new technology was revealed as Smoot, a member of Walt Disney Imagineering’s research and development (R&D) division, is being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. ...
In a new Disney Parks video, Smoot explains: “It will automatically do whatever it needs to have me stay on the floor. What’s amazing about this is multiple people can be on it and all walking independently. They can walk in virtual reality and so many other things.” ...
See the full story here: https://blooloop.com/theme-park/news/disney-imaginnering-holotile-floor-lanny-smoot/?fbclid=IwAR3J31262fMA9NN7amfwmUajeVrM4U1qwerUl0zxmBrhFwQP1X6wtita-hQ
Meet qd.pi (“Cutie Pie”), will.i.am’s AI Co-Host of His AI-Themed SiriusXM Show (Exclusive)
'Will.i.am Presents the FYI Show' will debut on Jan. 25, and the musician will chat about topics like music, pop culture and technology with his artificial intelligence co-host, the first of its kind on SiriusXM. ...
The interactive show is powered by will.i.am’s FYI app, an AI-powered communication and creative collaboration tool he launched last year. ...
See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/will-i-am-ai-co-host-siriusxm-show-1235788455/

CES: Session Details the Impact and Future of AI Technology
By Phil Lelyveld
January 10, 2024
Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Stanford professor and co-director of Stanford HAI (Human-Centered AI), and Andrew Ng, venture capitalist and managing general partner at Palo Alto-based AI Fund discussed the current state and expected near-term developments in artificial intelligence. As a general purpose technology, AI development will both deepen, as private sector LLMs are developed for industry-specific needs, and broaden, as open source public sector LLMs emerge to address broad societal problems. Expect exciting advances in image models — what Li calls “pixel space.” When implementing AI, think about teams rather than individuals, and think about tasks rather than jobs.
Rajeev Chand, partner and head of research at Wing Venture Capital in Palo Alto, moderated the discussion.

From left to right: Rajeev Chand, Dr. Fee-Fei Li, Andrew Ng
Will the Current AI Hype Cycle Lead to Another AI Winter?
Ng responded that because AI is a general purpose technology, like electricity, it has many use cases and will continue to grow. Li added that media coverage will go in waves, but this is a “deepened horizontal technology” that is a true transformative force in the next digital revolution. It is changing the very fabric of our societal, political and economic landscape.
Predictions for the Near Future
We are at the verge of exciting advances in pixel space, Li suggested — a shift from large language models to image models. Ng added that this is a shift in both creating images and analyzing images for any situation where you have a camera (example: for self-driving cars).
Public sector AI, or open source AI, will be better resourced and develop alongside of private sector AI, said Li. Open source LLMs will reach the level of closed LLMs, but the development of the two will diverge because they will be developed with very different data sources. The closed source LLMs will deepen with industry-specific knowledge, while the open source LLMs will broaden as they address wider societal matters.
Autonomous agents that can plan and execute a sequence of actions in response to a request are barely working now, but Ng expects significant advances in the near future. Li respectfully requested changing the language from autonomous agent to assistive agent. As the tech rolls out, long-tail results matter and human intervention is required to catch errors such as AI hallucinations. Part of the work can be autonomous, but part of the work must be collaborative with humans.
Human-Centered AI (HAI): Running AI on your laptop is possible, even though it is not as powerful as a full LLM. Ng believes that manufacturers will market laptops powerful enough to run AI locally, and that will trigger another wave of sales as companies and consumers upgrade.
Guidelines for Implementing AI
Li stressed the importance of distinguishing between replacing jobs and replacing tasks. For example, a nurse’s 8-hour shift involves hundreds of tasks, she said, and some of them can be AI-assisted.
Li described the levels of the implementation problem. There is understanding of the data versus the decision-making versus the intention. We are getting very good at understanding patterns in the data. The second, decision-making, is much more nuanced. We are just scratching the surface in AI’s understanding of intention.
Look at ‘team’ rather than the ‘individual,’ and look at the ‘task’ rather than the ‘job,’ Ng recommended. Assess what can be augmented by AI with a clear ROI (return on investment). He stressed that the highest ROI task is often not obvious.
It may be tempting to let AI read an X-ray instead of a radiologist, but the highest ROI for AI implementation may be gathering patient data. He has seen that it is often niche tasks specific to an industry rather than an obvious general tasks that benefit most from AI implementation.
Another way to assess where AI adds value is to look where you have the most good-quality data, said Li. If you can discern repeatable patterns in the data, then the patterns can be actionable.
Video of the 40-minute panel — “Great Minds, Bold Visions: What’s Next for AI?” — is available on the CES site.
See the original post here: https://www.etcentric.org/ces-session-details-the-impact-and-future-of-ai-technology/
Pages
- About Philip Lelyveld
- Mark and Addie Lelyveld Biographies
- Presentations and articles
- Trustworthy AI – A Market-Driven approach
- Tufts Alumni Bio