Week 29: What's Happening in AI

Below: The EU AI Act passes, Grok is open-sourced, AI-created researchers, and more.

Welcome to this week’s edition of What's Happening in AI - a collection of what we’re reading on AI policy, development, deployment, and the future.

Policy

Europe

The European Parliament passed the EU AI Act on March 13th. It still needs formal approval by member countries in May. More information below:

Key points

• Compliance deadline: 2026 (unless building a prohibited technology)

• Applies to all companies in the EU or operating in the EU

• We’ll have to wait for cases brought by the European Parliament to bring more clarity on definition
  → Overview of the act here.

Compliance resources

• EU AI Act compliance checker

• Do foundation model providers comply with the draft EU AI Act?

• The EU’s AI Act and how companies can achieve compliance

More policy developments

• The US is in talks with allies to curb Chinese AI development

• China is raising a $27B chip fund from state enterprises and province governments to curb impact from new US rules

• The UAE announced a new $100B fund (MGX) to invest in AI and semiconductors.

• Brazil convened top officials and experts to discuss AI policy

AI development + deployment

Elections

• AI meme wars hit India election, test social platforms

• Google won’t let you use its Gemini AI to answer questions about an upcoming election in your country

Governance

• OpenAI’s GPT is a recruiter’s dream tool. Tests show there’s racial bias

• Elon Musk says xAI will open-source Grok this week

• OpenAI announces new board members, reinstates CEO Sam Altman

• Midjourney bans all Stability AI employees over alleged data scraping

Security

• Ex-Google engineer arrested for stealing AI technology secrets for China

• Dozens of top scientists sign effort to prevent AI bioweapons

• Listen: AI and making the supply chain more robust

More

• Selective forgetting can help AI learn better

• Singapore startup to invest €3.2B in Italian chips factory

Where AI is going

New applications

• Hong Kong research centre launches AI tool to assist in complex brain surgery procedures

• China puts trust in AI to maintain largest high-speed rail network on Earth

• Researchers hope to create ‘real AI scientists’ through ‘informed machine learning’

• Startup taps AI to bolster nuclear power development

Raises

Empathy closes $47M for AI to help with the practical and emotional bereavement process, Applied Intuition lands $6B valuation for AI-powered autonomous vehicle software, Chinese generative AI start-up Alsphere, raises US$14 million

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

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