Weekly bulletin from AIport, issue #17

Scarlett Johansson claims OpenAI stole Her voice, UK’s Automated Vehicles Act is enacted into law, South Korea hosts AI Seoul Summit, and much more.

Hello and welcome to the latest issue of our AI bulletin! As always, have fun reading about the latest events and developments in the world of machine learning and data science. Don’t forget to give us a thumbs-up and have a lovely weekend!

North America:

• Humane is looking for someone to buy the company after its debut product, the Humane AI Pin, receives overwhelmingly negative reviews from users and experts alike.

• Anthropic publishes a seminal paper in which the authors attempt to “map the mind” and discover the inner workings of today’s AI models.

• MIT Technology Review explains five ways modern criminals are utilizing GenAI to line their pockets at our expense. 

• Scarlett Johansson expresses her distress over GPT-4o’s voice, which sounds eerily similar to the film star’s voice in “Her” from 2013, leading to speculation about an impending lawsuit.

• The US Secretary of Commerce releases the nation’s strategic vision for AI safety, while the Justice Department arrests a Wisconsin man for using AI to generate sexually explicit images involving minors.  

Europe:

• In Brussels, the European Council gives its final approval to implement the widely publicized EU AI Act and subsequently reaches a new agreement for the creation of special “factories” with supercomputers to facilitate the Union’s AI development.

• In the UK, the Automated Vehicles Act becomes law, with AI-backed self-driving cars expected to appear on roads across the nation by 2026. 

• Finland receives a 1-billion-euro investment from Alphabet to enhance its AI capabilities in the European market.

Asia:

• Following last week’s move by ByteDance, both Alibaba and Baidu slash their LLM prices by as much as 97%, initiating a full-blown price war in China’s highly competitive AI market.

• AI Seoul Summit, co-hosted by the UK, concludes in South Korea, with 16 global tech companies making commitments to pursue transparency and accountability in AI.

• Indonesian startups are working to digitize texts and train local LLMs using the Southeast Asian nation’s 700 tribal languages. 

Africa:

• Telecom Egypt declares it will host Huawei’s cloud services in Cairo, supported by the Chinese company’s new Arabic LLM — the first project of its kind in Northern Africa. 

Australia:

• In the defense sector, the Royal Australian Navy announces a new initiative to equip all of its warships with predictive AI to counter underwater threats. In healthcare, the Australian National University develops a new AI tool to help diagnose brain tumors, while a Sydney-based startup introduces a promising AI solution for treating mental illness.