AI clones, robot spider arms and a ‘Google killer’: The wildest tech moments of the week

[ad_1]

This week’s tech news has been almost entirely devoured by a huge wave of coverage about the rapidly emerging changes promised by artificial intelligence. Sure, there were plenty of hot footage worth mulling over in the editorial sections of the big outlets. But amidst the ever-changing discourse and avalanche of AI news, we can break it down into a few key and must-haves: the most important is the emerging marriage between Microsoft and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Microsoft dumped more than $100 million into OpenAI, a report that has privacy advocates and technologists worried.

But before we sum up the existential dread of AI news, can we just take a moment to appreciate how incredibly cool it would be to have AI-powered robotic arms that can turn you into Spiderman’s Dr. Otto Octavius?

Because that’s what Japanese company Exii recently previewed with its Jizai Arms, a robotic arm bag, or “supernumerary robotic limb system” that allows humans to control six additional AI robotic limbs. Aside from the potential off-label use of the machine in LARPing, it’s a perfect example of how AI can be used to improve the lives of people with disabilities, a use that is rapidly emerging in medical technology, particularly for future benefit. of those suffering from paralysis. .

A dancer wears a robotic multi-arm backpack from Japanese company Jizai Arms, which she is able to control with the assistance of artificial intelligence. (Screenshot: Jizai Arms / Rae Hodge) Hope for humanity aside, though, let’s move on to Microsoft. The big news this week was that Microsoft announced that AI technology (including that of OpenAI) would be integrated into new computers, operating systems, and even some chips.

At the same time, OpenAI announced that it will start using Bing and not Google as the default search engine for ChatGPT, a move that is heating up the Search War between the two tech titans. But Google isn’t out of action just yet. Though they initially struggled to get their Bard AI assistant moving, the former OpenAI executives have just secured a jaw-dropping $450 million in funding for a Google-backed venture called Anthropic.

Microsoft caught fire this week, however, for funding its AI aspirations at the expense of freezing its workers’ pay for many, after already laying off 10,000 workers last month. According to the log, CEO Satya Nadella broke the bad news in an email, even as his pay increased by 10%, bringing his salary to $55 million.

Bill Gates, meanwhile, has said he thinks AI could kill Google Search and Amazon as we know them. Maybe, maybe not, but Google isn’t making friends with its latest ad that will allow businesses to place AI-generated ads in search results based on your data.

If you thought that nothing could be more soulless and mundane than the Internet’s largest data titan relying on the lack of US data privacy laws so that it can serve you AI-generated ads, then in the words of Billy Mays wait, there’s more! Like music generated by artificial intelligence. Congrats to Universal Music Group for making us all feel a little more dead inside this week when they announced a new deal with audio company AI Endel, as reported by Pitchfork.

The companies say they want to focus only on sleep and meditation soundscapes. But the cash quote in the Pitchfork piece comes from Endel’s co-founder and chief songwriter Dmitry Evgrafov, who said last year, “We’re able to create albums at the push of a button.”

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Sign up for Salon The Vulgar Scientist’s weekly newsletter.

Meanwhile, in commercial sectors where ‘content’ is ‘produced’ versus spheres where art, music or literature are the result of original creation, there is much talk of using AI as a ‘creative partner “. Given that an AI passed a Turing test this week, there may be more to that “partner” label than one would like to admit.

And even as industry leaders confirm that fears of job loss will soon become a reality due to the breakneck pace of AI deployment and development, there’s no stopping the emergence of products like Phoenix, a robot AI-based worker designed to look humanoid.

Without government and industry regulation, the exponential growth of AI already suggests that it will be all but inevitable in the foreseeable future. It is being used on students in schools and to create chaos online with fake terrorist events. The Opera browser has a new built-in generative AI assistant, and TikTok uses an AI chatbot. Now you can get an AI clone of someone and pretend she’s your girlfriend and there’s even a buzzy new AI paralegal on the scene called Casetext.

The spread is happening beyond the US, of course.

OpenAI’s app is now available in 10 more countries than last week, surpassing more than half a million installs in its first six days on the Apple Store and giving Apple a 30% cut in profits. Meanwhile, there’s a security hole at the heart of OpenAI’s ChatGPT (and Bing) that’s big enough to get through a MacBook truck.

One of those 10 new countries is the UK, which just this week finally said out loud that, yes, AI can indeed do some form of existential risk. As late as this statement is, it’s still more than what the US has put on paper until Congress, which doesn’t even include basic data privacy laws, much less a comprehensive AI governance document.

For now, the only AI regulations are those that appear to come from the industry itself such as those of OpenAI and Microsoft.

This week’s best reads on AI

Read more from the Salon

on artificial intelligence

[ad_2]