TG-AI-F! Notes and links from the week in AI
'Twas the weekend before Christmas, and the AI world was still stirring...
Everyone is getting ready for the holiday weekend, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop — GPT-5 on Christmas Eve, perhaps? Santa on his sleigh, yelling “ho-ho-ho, open source AI for good boys and girls”?
I’m hoping for a more peaceful, news-free holiday, but as I prepare to log off until Tuesday, here are a few notes and links:
📒 Reporting notes
I spoke to Pam Dixon and Kate Kaye and the World Privacy Forum about their new study AI governance tools, which found that many used by governments and multilateral organizations include “faulty fixes.” That is, the tools and techniques meant to evaluate and measure AI systems, particularly for fairness and explainability, were found to be problematic or ineffective. My piece led to some back and forth discussion on X.
I spent all of last weekend obsessing over the missing pieces in this story I wrote about securing LLM model weights, so I did more reporting and wrote this follow-up: The widening web of effective altruism in AI security. Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun wrote a meme-friendly X post in response.
I have covered issues related to LAION datasets this year and last, so I tried to put this week’s news in context: A free AI image dataset, removed for child sex abuse images, has come under fire before
📰 5 AI headlines of the week
Midjourney V6 is here with in-image text and completely overhauled prompting (VentureBeat)
AI cannot be patent 'inventor', UK Supreme Court rules in landmark case (Reuters)
Apple wants AI to run directly on its hardware instead of in the cloud (Ars Technica)
Rite Aid Banned From AI Facial Recognition by FTC After Misuse (Bloomberg)
Anthropic to Raise $750 Million in Menlo Ventures-Led Deal (The Information)
👀 4 cool AI articles I read
Steven Levy, WIRED: How Not to Be Stupid About AI, With Yann LeCun
Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review: These six questions will dictate the future of generative AI
Patrick Coffee, Wall Street Journal: An anticipated wave of AI specialist jobs has yet to arrive (Wall Street Journal)
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Breaking Defense: Ethical Terminators, or how DoD learned to stop worrying and love AI: 2023 Year in Review
Happy holidays!
Sharon ☃️❄️