Category Archives: Artificial intelligence (AI)

Starmer praises Abbott and hails diverse Commons in first speech to parliament as PM – as it happened

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Parliament the most diverse by race and gender the country has ever seen, says Starmer, with the largest cohort of LGBT+ MPs in the world

Downing Street has released a full version of what Keir Starmer said in his opening remarks to the metro mayors at their meeting this morning. It is not on the No 10 website, so I will post it here.

Having this meeting four days after I was invited by the King to form a government is a real statement of intent on my part, on our part.

Because as we have said over and over again, economy and growth is the number one mission of this Labour government in 2024.

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Chinese developers scramble as OpenAI blocks access in China

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US firm’s move, amid Beijing-Washington tensions, sparks rush to lure users to homegrown models

At the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week, one of China’s leading artificial intelligence companies, SenseTime, unveiled its latest model, SenseNova 5.5.

The model showed off its ability to identify and describe a stuffed toy puppy (wearing a SenseTime cap), offered feedback on a drawing of a rabbit, and instantly read and summarised a page of text. According to SenseTime, SenseNova 5.5 is comparable with GPT-4o, the flagship artificial intelligence model of the Microsoft-backed US company OpenAI.

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NHS urged to prioritise cancer care basics over tech and AI ‘magic bullets’

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Health service is at tipping point, say experts, and ‘novel solutions’ have been wrongly hyped

The NHS must concentrate on the basics of cancer treatment rather than the “magic bullets” of novel technologies and artificial intelligence, or risk the health of thousands of patients, experts have warned.

In a paper published in the journal Lancet Oncology, nine leading cancer doctors and academics say the NHS is at a tipping point in cancer care with survival rates lagging behind many other developed countries.

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Photos of Australian children used in dataset to train AI, human rights group says

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Human Rights Watch found links to 190 photos of kids that were scraped off internet without families’ consent

Photos of Australian children have been included in the dataset used by several AI image-generating tools without the knowledge or consent of them or their families, research by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.

An analysis of less than 0.0001% of the 5.85bn images contained in the Laion-5B dataset, used by services such as Stable Diffusion creator Stability AI and Midjourney, found 190 photos of Australian children scraped from the internet.

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Cheap AI voice clones may wipe out jobs of 5,000 Australian actors

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Industry group says rise of vocal technology could upend many creative fields, including audiobooks – the canary in the coalmine for voice actors

Voice actors say they’re on the precipice of their work being replaced completely by artificial intelligence, with corporate and radio roles already beginning to be replaced by cheap generative AI clones.

While a high-profile actor like Scarlett Johansson can make the most prominent AI company in the world back down within a day from using her voice likeness in their AI products, everyday actors working on commercials, audiobook and video games worry they risk having their own voices cloned, or miss out on work entirely due to the rise of AI voice clones.

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UK needs system for recording AI misuse and malfunctions, thinktank says

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Centre for Long-Term Resilience calls on next government to log incidents to mitigate risks

The UK needs a system for recording misuse and malfunctions in artificial intelligence or ministers risk being unaware of alarming incidents involving the technology, according to a report.

The next government should create a system for logging incidents involving AI in public services and should consider building a central hub for collating AI-related episodes across the UK, said the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR), a thinktank.

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Geologists raise concerns over possible censorship and bias in Chinese chatbot

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GeoGPT developed as part of Chinese-funded earth sciences programme aimed at researchers in global south

Geologists have raised concerns about potential Chinese censorship and bias in a chatbot being developed with the backing of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), one of the world’s largest scientific organisations and a Unesco partner.

The GeoGPT chatbot is aimed at geoscientists and researchers, particularly in the global south, to help them develop their understanding of earth sciences by drawing on swaths of data and research on billions of years of the planet’s history.

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Apple delays launch of AI-powered features in Europe, blaming EU rules

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Apple says competition rules that require functionality with rival products would compromise privacy and security

Apple will delay launching three new artificial intelligence features in Europe because European Union competition rules require the company ensure that rival products and services can function with its devices. The features will launch in the fall in the US but will not arrive in Europe until 2025.

The company said on Friday three features – Phone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence – will not be rolled out to EU users this year because of regulatory uncertainties due to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).

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Bacchus Marsh Grammar: Victorian premier blasts ‘disgraceful’ conduct after AI fake nude photo allegations

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Jacinta Allan says no place for ‘misogynistic conduct’ as police investigate allegations fake nude images of students circulated online

Victoria’s premier has said there is no place for “misogynistic conduct” in the state following allegations deepfakes depicting about 50 female students from a private school in regional Victoria were circulated online.

Police are investigating the “incredibly graphic” nude images which appeared to have been created using artificial intelligence and photos of the girls’ faces taken from social media sites, and then circulated online.

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First NHS physiotherapy clinic run by AI to start this year

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Exclusive: New platform to provide same-day appointments with digital physiotherapist in effort to cut waiting times

The first NHS AI-run physiotherapy clinic is to be rolled out this year in an effort to cut waiting times amid growing demand and staff shortages.

The new platform will provide same-day automated video appointments with a digital physiotherapist via an app that responds to information provided by a patient in real time.

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Deepfakes of Australian politicians including Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher used in investment scams

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Exclusive: AI-generated footage of former PM Scott Morrison also used in more than a dozen Facebook ads that reached thousands of Australians

Images of the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, and the foreign minister, Penny Wong, have been used in deepfake investment scam videos in the latest examples of a concerning trend of politicians being used in online fraud.

The Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie and the former prime minister Scott Morrison have also had their faces used in scams through Facebook videos that appear to be generated by AI, with more than a dozen examples this week of paid ads reaching thousands of Australians before being removed.

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Nvidia hits $3tn and surpasses Apple as world’s second most valuable company

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AI chipmaker’s stock has surged 147% so far in 2024, underscoring shift in tech world as demand for its processors far outstrip supply

Shares of Nvidia rallied to record highs on Wednesday, with the artificial-intelligence chipmaker’s stock market valuation hitting the $3tn mark and overtaking Apple to become the world’s second most valuable company.

The chipmaker’s stock was up 5.16% at $1,224.40, giving Nvidia a market value of $3.01tn at market close. Apple’s market capitalization was at $3.00tn at market close as its stock climbed 0.78%.

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US cites AI deepfakes as reason to keep Biden recording with Robert Hur secret

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DoJ filing says president’s interview with special counsel about handling of classified documents could be ‘improperly altered’

The US Department of Justice is making a novel legal argument to keep a recording of an interview with Joe Biden from becoming public. In a filing late last week, the bureau cited the risk of AI-generated deepfakes as one of the reasons it refuses to release audio of the president’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. The conversation about Biden’s handling of classified documents is a source of heated political contention, with Republicans pushing for release of the recordings and the White House moving to block them.

The justice department’s filing, which it released late on Friday night, argues that the recording should not be released on a variety of grounds including privacy interests and executive privilege. One section of the filing, however, is specifically dedicated to the threat of deepfakes and disinformation, stating that there is substantial risk people could maliciously manipulate the audio if it were to be made public.

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AI hardware firm Nvidia unveils next-gen products at Taiwan tech expo

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CEO Jensen Huang tells packed stadium in Taipei ‘next Industrial Revolution has begun’

Nvidia has unveiled new products and plans to accelerate the advance of artificial intelligence, with the AI hardware company’s chief executive telling a packed stadium in Taipei on Sunday that “the next Industrial Revolution has begun”.

Jensen Huang is in Taiwan for the island’s leading tech expo, Computex, along with the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest semiconductor companies – including AMD, Intel and Qualcomm – and their plans for a tech industry dominated by AI are top of the agenda.

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$10m prize launched for team that can truly talk to the animals

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AI expected to help researchers unlock two-way communication, say team that includes Tel Aviv University

In the Dr Dolittle books and films, the ability to “talk to the animals” captured the imagination. Now scientists are being offered a $10m prize to create real conversations.

The Coller Dolittle Challenge for Interspecies Two-Way Communication has been launched by the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University. While the use of AI is not obligatory, the team say the technology can boost almost all proposals.

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Argentinian president to meet Silicon Valley CEOs in bid to court tech titans

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Javier Milei to hold private talks with Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman as Argentina faces worst economic crisis in decades

Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, is set to meet with the leaders of some of the world’s largest tech companies in Silicon Valley this week. The far-right libertarian leader will hold private talks with Sundar Pichai of Google, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Tim Cook of Apple.

Milei also met last month with Elon Musk, who has become one of the South American president’s most prominent cheerleaders and repeatedly shared his pro-deregulation, anti-social justice message on X (formerly Twitter). Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, has also twice visited Milei, flying to Buenos Aires to speak with him in February and May of this year.

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Consultant behind deepfaked Biden robocall fined $6m as new charges filed

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Steve Kramer charged in New Hampshire for AI-generated impersonation of Biden that urged residents not to vote in primary

Steve Kramer, a political consultant who admitted that he deepfaked Joe Biden’s voice in a robocall that was sent out to thousands of US voters in January 2024, has been indicted and fined $6m.

The robocall, which went out ahead of the first Democratic presidential primary in the US in New Hampshire, used artificial intelligence to fake Biden’s voice telling voters to stay home and “save” their votes for the November general election.

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Nvidia reports stratospheric growth as AI boom shows no sign of stopping

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Chipmaker reports strong demand and higher-than-expected revenue even as other companies spend to develop their own chips

Nvidia reported record quarterly revenue Wednesday on the back of the explosion in corporate appetite for artificial intelligence.

“The next industrial revolution has begun – companies and countries are partnering with Nvidia … to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.

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First companies sign up to AI safety standards on eve of Seoul summit

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Rishi Sunak says 16 international firms have committed, but standards have been criticised for lacking teeth

The first 16 companies have signed up to voluntary artificial intelligence safety standards introduced at the Bletchley Park summit, Rishi Sunak has said on the eve of the follow-up event in Seoul.

The standards, however, have been criticised for lacking teeth, with signatories committing only to work toward information sharing, invest in cybersecurity and prioritise research into societal risks.

Amazon

Anthropic

Cohere

Google / Google DeepMind

G42

IBM

Inflection AI

Meta

Microsoft

Mistral AI

Naver

Open AI

Samsung Electronics

Technology Innovation Institute

xAI

Zhipu.ai

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Productivity soars in sectors of global economy most exposed to AI, says report

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Employers in UK, one of 15 countries studied, willing to pay 14% wage premium for jobs requiring AI skills

The sectors of the global economy most heavily exposed to artificial intelligence (AI) are witnessing a marked productivity increase and command a significant wage premium, according to a report.

Boosting hopes that AI might help lift the global economy out of a 15-year, low-growth trough, a PwC study found productivity growth was almost five times as rapid in parts of the economy where AI penetration was highest than in less exposed sectors.

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