[News] The AI Thread!

Palantir, the company of billionaire Peter Thiel, is launching Palantir Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), software meant to run large language models like GPT-4 and alternatives on private networks. In one of its pitch videos, Palantir demos how a military might use AIP to fight a war. In the video, the operator uses a ChatGPT-style chatbot to order drone reconnaissance, generate several plans of attack, and organize the jamming of enemy communications.

In Palantir’s scenario, a “military operator responsible for monitoring activity within eastern Europe” receives an alert from AIP that an enemy is amassing military equipment near friendly forces. The operator then asks the chatbot to show them more details, gets a little more information, and then asks the AI to guess what the units might be.

“They ask what enemy units are in the region and leverage AI to build out a likely unit formation,” the video said. After getting the AI’s best guess as to what’s going on, the operator then asks the AI to take better pictures. It launches a Reaper MQ-9 drone to take photos and the operator discovers that there’s a T-80 tank, a Soviet-era Russia vehicle, near friendly forces.

Then the operator asks the robots what to do about it. “The operator uses AIP to generate three possible courses of action to target this enemy equipment,” the video said. “Next they use AIP to automatically send these options up the chain of command.” The options include attacking the tank with an F-16, long range artillery, or Javelin missiles. According to the video, the AI will even let everyone know if nearby troops have enough Javelins to conduct the mission and automate the jamming systems.

Palantir’s pitch is, of course, incredibly dangerous and weird. While there is a “human in the loop” in the AIP demo, they seem to do little more than ask the chatbot what to do and then approve its actions. Drone warfare has already abstracted warfare, making it easier for people to kill vast distances with the push of a button. The consequences of those systems are well documented. In Palantir’s vision of the military’s future, more systems would be automated and abstracted. A funny quirk of the video is that it calls its users “operators,” a term that in a military context is shorthand for bearded special forces of groups like Seal TEAM Six. In Palantir’s world, America’s elite forces share the same nickname as the keyboard cowboys asking a robot what to do about a Russian tank at the border.

I’m curious about how concerns around AI are affecting negotiations. According to the WGA, the AMPTP rejected its proposal to regulate AI use on projects, instead suggesting they meet annually to “discuss advancements in technology.” How does prospective technology fit into this puzzle?

It’s not the biggest issue, but it is figuring into the conversation more than one might think. When home video was introduced, the studios successfully argued for a formula for residuals that was very disadvantageous to writers, actors, and directors. The argument they made was that it was a nascent technology, saying, “It’s just emerging. We don’t know what the economics are going to look like, and it’s very expensive to make these videotapes.” The cost structure was high, but as manufacturing costs declined with videotape and then dropped precipitously with the introduction of disc technology, the formulas were never adjusted.

The writers feel that when it comes to new technology, Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. That was part of the ethos in 2007 when the studios at one point proposed a three-year study of new media rather than any actual contractual provisions. And now the AMPTP is proposing the same sort of study approach to AI. Well, it’s true we don’t know. We don’t know when and in what iteration ChatGPT will actually be able to do useful screenwriting work. I haven’t heard reports in this business, but people are getting use of it in the political business, marketing, and fundraising. But the Writers Guild was burned very severely by the studio approach to an emerging technology back in the ’80s. They don’t want to make the same mistake twice.

The Writers Guild of America said it wants Hollywood’s top studios and networks to regulate the use of AI on creative projects. The union's specific demand, according to a document released Monday, states: “AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material; and MBA-covered [contract-covered] material can’t be used to train AI.”

In a response that left many professional writers dispirited, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — the trade association that represents most of the industry’s big entertainment companies — rejected that proposal. (The WGA represents some of NBCUniversal’s news division employees.)

Instead, according to WGA leaders, the companies “countered by offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology” — a vague proposal that suggests industry leaders are not prepared to make any guarantees. (Comcast, the corporation that owns NBCUniversal, is represented by the trade group.)

More than 150 workers whose labor underpins the AI systems of Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT gathered in Nairobi on Monday and pledged to establish the first African Content Moderators Union, in a move that could have significant consequences for the businesses of some of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The current and former workers, all employed by third party outsourcing companies, have provided content moderation services for AI tools used by Meta, Bytedance, and OpenAI—the respective owners of Facebook, TikTok and the breakout AI chatbot ChatGPT. Despite the mental toll of the work, which has left many content moderators suffering from PTSD, their jobs are some of the lowest-paid in the global tech industry, with some workers earning as little as $1.50 per hour.

As news of the successful vote to register the union was read out, the packed room of workers at the Mövenpick Hotel in Nairobi burst into cheers and applause, a video from the event seen by TIME shows. Confetti fell onto the stage, and jubilant music began to play as the crowd continued to cheer.

Geoffrey Hinton recently quit Google warning of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Is AI really going to destroy us? And how long do we have to prevent it?

In trying to model how the human brain works, Hinton found himself one of the leaders in the field of “neural networking”, an approach to building computer systems that can learn from data and experience. Until recently, neural nets were a curiosity, requiring vast computer power to perform simple tasks worse than other approaches. But in the last decade, as the availability of processing power and vast datasets has exploded, the approach Hinton pioneered has ended up at the centre of a technological revolution.

“In trying to think about how the brain could implement the algorithm behind all these models, I decided that maybe it can’t – and maybe these big models are actually much better than the brain,” he says.

A “biological intelligence” such as ours, he says, has advantages. It runs at low power, “just 30 watts, even when you’re thinking”, and “every brain is a bit different”. That means we learn by mimicking others. But that approach is “very inefficient” in terms of information transfer. Digital intelligences, by contrast, have an enormous advantage: it’s trivial to share information between multiple copies. “You pay an enormous cost in terms of energy, but when one of them learns something, all of them know it, and you can easily store more copies. So the good news is, we’ve discovered the secret of immortality. The bad news is, it’s not for us.”

Once he accepted that we were building intelligences with the potential to outthink humanity, the more alarming conclusions followed. “I thought it would happen eventually, but we had plenty of time: 30 to 50 years. I don’t think that any more. And I don’t know any examples of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things – at least, not since Biden got elected.

“You need to imagine something more intelligent than us by the same difference that we’re more intelligent than a frog. And it’s going to learn from the web, it’s going to have read every single book that’s every been written on how to manipulate people, and also seen it in practice.”

He now thinks the crunch time will come in the next five to 20 years, he says. “But I wouldn’t rule out a year or two. And I still wouldn’t rule out 100 years – it’s just that my confidence that this wasn’t coming for quite a while has been shaken by the realisation that biological intelligence and digital intelligence are very different, and digital intelligence is probably much better.”

There’s still hope, of sorts, that AI’s potential could prove to be over-stated. “I’ve got huge uncertainty at present. It is possible that large language models,” the technology that underpins systems such as ChatGPT, “having consumed all the documents on the web, won’t be able to go much further unless they can get access to all our private data as well. I don’t want to rule things like that out – I think people who are confident in this situation are crazy.” Nonetheless, he says, the right way to think about the odds of disaster is closer to a simple coin toss than we might like.

Spotify has removed 7% of songs created with AI-generated music service Boomy from its website, equating to “tens of thousands,” after Universal Music Group flagged Boomy for allegedly using bots to boost its streaming numbers, according to a Financial Times report.

Boomy’s music was removed due to suspected “artificial streaming,” which is the use of bots posed as people to increase streaming and audience numbers of songs.

The company helps users release their AI-generated songs and albums on streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify while taking a cut of the royalty distribution fees.

According to the Financial Times report, Boomy resumed submitting tracks to Spotify and the two companies are in negotiations to reinstate the removed songs.

Boomy claims its users have created over 14 million songs, totaling about 13.83% of “the world's recorded music.”