Tech Companies Plan to Combat Use of Fake AI in Elections

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As the threat of fake images and videos generated by artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially play a role in the coming 2024 elections and beyond, several tech companies have pledged to use their resources to combat misinformation as a result of such technology.

According to Politico, multiple companies are planning to cooperate through a so-called “Tech Accord” dictating several key goals and methods that will be used in the fight against false AI. The companies intend to expose and debunk any “deepfake” images or videos produced by AI, through various tactics such as watermarks and automatic detection technology.

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U.S. Firms Worked Covertly with Chinese Experts to Brainstorm AI Policy: Report

Leading American artificial intelligence (AI) companies have been secretly discussing how to regulate the advanced technology with Chinese experts, The Financial Times reported on Thursday.

U.S. companies OpenAI and Anthropic have partaken in these covert diplomatic discussions centering around addressing concerns regarding the risks of the technology, including so-called misinformation and social cohesion threats, the FT reported. Two meetings transpired in Geneva during July and October of 2023, bringing together scientists and policy experts from U.S. and Canadian AI organizations with counterparts from CCP-backed Tsinghua University as well as other state-supported establishments.

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New York Times Sues AI Giants for Alleged Copyright Violation

The New York Times sued artificial intelligence (AI) giants OpenAI and Microsoft on Wednesday for alleged copyright violation.

OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Chat are large language models that are trained on data from the internet and generate text based on prompts from users. The tech giants trained these chatbots with millions of the NYT’s copyrighted articles without permission, the outlet alleges in the complaint.

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China Ramps Up Crackdown on American Tech

Over the past few months, China has escalated its efforts to exert control over American technology companies by implementing new requirements, bans and restrictions.

The Chinese government is clamping down on American technology companies by throttling their already limited access to the country’s massive economy, according to new requirements, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The country has also challenged American technology dominance by developing rivals to the latest smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as announcing export limits to key metals in July.

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Commentary: The Way AI Fits into Broadly Rising Anti-Humanism

The future of humanity is becoming ever less human. The astounding capabilities of ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence have triggered fears about the coming age of machines leaving little place for human creativity or employment. Even the architects of this brave new world are sounding the alarm. Sam Altman, chairman and CEO of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, recently warned that artificial intelligence poses an “existential risk” to humanity and warned Congress that artificial intelligence “can go quite wrong.”  

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China Enters Artificial Intelligence Arms Race, Flops Disastrously

by Jason Cohen   China released its main Chat GPT competitor, developed by search engine giant Baidu, Thursday in Beijing, but its debut of the bot was a failure and led to the company’s shares falling, according to CNBC. During the unveiling, the bot named Ernie “summarized a science fiction novel and analyzed a Chinese idiom,” but in the middle of the presentation that Baidu promoted as live, CEO Robin Li, revealed the company prerecorded the presentation for time management purposes, according to The New York Times. Li also made clear that Ernie bot was not flawless and will get better when users provide feedback, according to CNBC. Baidu’s shares then plummeted at least 6.4 percent and as much as 10 percent in Hong Kong, in contrast to a previous rally when the giant announced it had been developing a ChatGPT competitor since 2019, according to the NYT. Baidu said 30,000 corporate clients signed up on the waitlist to access Ernie bot in less than an hour following its announcement, but media and the public did not get access, according to CNBC. Meanwhile, OpenAI announced ChatGPT-4 this week, as the updated version of the AI behind its highly popular and disruptive ChatGPT chatbot that the public has accessed…

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Popular AI Less Likely to Flag ‘Hateful Content’ That Targets Whites, Republicans, Men, Research Finds

OpenAI, the company behind the headline-grabbing artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, has an automated content moderation system designed to flag hateful speech, but the software treats speech differently depending on which demographic groups are insulted, according to a study conducted by research scientist David Rozado.

The content moderation system used in ChatGPT and other OpenAI products is designed to detect and block hate, threats, self-harm and sexual comments about minors, according to Rozado. The researcher fed various prompts to ChatGPT involving negative adjectives ascribed to various demographic groups based on race, gender, religion and various other markers and found that the software favors some demographic groups over others.

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LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman Played a Role in Creating Fake News Software, Nonprofit Confirms

by Chris White   The liberal billionaire who allegedly backed a misinformation campaign during the midterm elections played a significant role in funding a group responsible for creating a controversial fake news project. Reid Hoffman greatly increased his financial contributions to artificial intelligence research group OpenAI, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. The group recently developed software allowing people with the know-how to craft so-called “deepfake” news articles, The Guardian reported. “OpenAI has lots of co-founders, by the way, with most involved ones being our CTO Greg Brockman and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever,” Jack Clark, the nonprofit’s head of policy, told TheDCNF, referring to OpenAI executives Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever. Clark confirmed the LinkedIn founder stepped up his funding in 2018. News of Hoffman’s role in the project comes at a strange time for both OpenAI and the tech guru. The wealthy Democratic donor became embroiled in controversy after The New York Times and other outlets reported in December 2018 and January about his role in a false flag operation in Alabama. Hoffman, for his part, apologized for his role in the effort to troll voters. Hoffman-financed groups — New Knowledge (NK) and American Engagement Technologies (AET) — allegedly used social media in…

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