Week 26: What's Happening in AI

In this week's edition, we cover FTC rule changes to combat deepfakes, a new announcement from large AI companies committed to fighting election misinformation, and more.

Policy

United States

Federal Regulation

The FTC announced its intention to modify impersonation rules to combat deepfakes. The rule seeks to
“make it unlawful for a GenAI platform to provide goods or services that they know or have reason to know are being used to harm consumers through impersonation.”  And, a new bipartisan AI working group in the U.S. House of Representatives will coordinate with the Senate on AI policy. 

U.S. State Regulation

N.Y. governor wants to criminalize deceptive AI. And, an interesting opinion piece from Vox: Can California show the way forward on AI safety?

Europe

European Union 

Concerned about competition, E.U. antitrust chief aims to scrutinize AI-related M&A deals. ICYMI this is part of a larger regulatory trend in the E.U. - last month, the E.U. announced investigations into large company investments in AI startups.

Asia

As US-China tensions rise, Japan is investing $67B in semiconductors to insulate the Japanese economy. And Hong Kong is reviewing copyright law to include creators who use AI. 

AI development + deployment

Chips

• Microsoft Develops AI Server Gear to Lessen Reliance on Nvidia

• Recogni Nabs $102 Million to Design AI Chip

• SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son is reportedly seeking $100B to build new AI chip venture 

Governance

• Tech giants sign voluntary pledge to fight election-related deepfakes
  More here and here

• Google’s AI Boss Says Scale Only Gets You So Far

• Google DeepMind forms a new org focused on AI safety

• Anthropic takes steps to prevent election misinformation

Where AI is going

Security

• Hackers for China, Russia and Others Used OpenAI Systems, Report Says

Future of Work

• The Skilled Workers Training AI to Take Their Job

• Hong Kong team develops AI-equipped trolley to ease strain on workers

New applications

• OpenAI Unveils A.I. That Instantly Generates Eye-Popping Videos

• Google’s Chess Experiments Reveal How to Boost the Power of AI

• "Open" software needs an AI rethink

• AI drives explosion in edge computing

Competition

• Google, Microsoft Will Dominate AI as Computing Costs Surge

• This Tiny Website Is Google’s First Line of Defense in the Patent Wars

Raises and releases

• Raises: Bioptimus raises $35 million seed round to develop AI foundational model focused on biology, Moonshot AI raises US$1 billion in funding round led by Alibaba and VC HongShan

• Releases: Google’s Flagship AI Model Gets a Mighty Fast Upgrade, Google releases 'open' AI models after Meta

Thanks for reading. Feel free to get in touch with your questions, thoughts, or recommendations for next time.

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