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U.S. Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) attends a news conference in the United States Capitol about the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, in Washington, U.S., May 18, 2021.
Rep. Don Beyer, a 73-year-old car dealership owner-turned-politician, is not your typical grad student. A Democrat who served as Virginia’s lieutenant governor in the 1990s and an ambassador during the Obama administration before getting elected to Congress in 2015, Beyer decided to go back to school in 2022 to pursue a master’s degree in machine learning at George Mason University.
Since then, Beyer has served as vice chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus and introduced a bill to provide transparency into the development of so-called foundation models.
GZERO spoke with Beyer about his studies, his concerns and hopes for the technology, and whether the US will catch up to Europe in regulating AI.
GZERO: Was there a specific moment when you realized that you were unprepared for the challenge of artificial intelligence and wanted to learn more? Why did you feel you needed to take the step of actually enrolling in a master’s program to get the education you needed?
Beyer: I was interested in AI long before I knew what it was that I was interested in, and this goes back a long time, to the early 1980s. I had read and heard several compelling discussions of the topic and got interested in pattern recognition and using technology and deep learning to make sense of big data sets. Going back to school arose first from opportunity, having a good school nearby that offered the coursework to finally tackle something that had interested me for a long time. I wasn’t sure it would work, but I have no regrets at all. And then part way through my course of study, it suddenly became a much bigger topic for the country and the Congress.
How have your professors and classmates reacted to having a sitting congressman in class?
Many of my classmates are unaware, which is just fine with me. Those who know have been tolerant and kind. I am just another student.
What are you learning in your classes?
Mostly math and coding, so far.
Do you feel more prepared to legislate around AI because of this education?
Yes, much more so. Even though I’m not a fully trained computer scientist, I at least have more than a generalist’s understanding of neural networks, large databases, the predictive and generative uses of computer science, and so on.
What are you most concerned about with the rise of artificial intelligence? What are you most excited about?
The big concerns in the short run for me are deepfakes, misinformation, and economic disruptions from job displacement. But there are very exciting prospects in areas like health care, scientific research, management and workflow, productivity, and much more.
Europe just passed the AI Act. Are you optimistic that Congress can pass comprehensive AI regulations anytime soon?
Congress is more likely to take an incremental than a comprehensive approach, at least in the near term, to solve specific problems rather than attempting a large overarching regulation like what the EU did. But we are working on legislation right now with every intention to pass laws.
Anything else you want to leave us with?
Most people associate Congress with chaos, dysfunction, and partisanship, but those of us working on AI have a refreshingly cooperative and collaborative spirit. This is important to get right. Few things have greater potential to change all our lives and the lives of future generations.
Hard Numbers: Google’s spending spree, Going corporate, Let’s see a movie, Court-ordered AI ban, Energy demands
Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind Technologies and developer of AlphaGO, attends the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, Britain, November 2, 2023.
100 billion: AI is a priority for many of Silicon Valley’s top companies — and it’s a costly one. Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said that the tech giant plans to spend more than $100 billion developing artificial intelligence. That’s the same amount that rival Microsoft is expected to spend in building an AI-powered supercomputer, nicknamed Stargate.
72.5: The free market is dominating the AI game: Of the foundation models released between 2019 and 2023, 72.5% of them originated from private industry, according to a new Staford report. 108 models were released by companies, as opposed to 28 from academia, nine from an industry-academia collaboration, and four from government. None at all were released through a collaboration between government and industry.
5: The A24 film Civil War has garnered considerable controversy for its content, but its promotion is under scrutiny as well. Five posters for the film were created using artificial intelligence and depict scenes that never occur in the narrative. That’s kicked off a debate about the ethics of using AI in film marketing as well as questions of whether this is false advertising for the movie itself.
1,000: A sex offender in the UK who was found to have created 1,000 indecent images of children was banned from using any “AI creating tools” for five years by a British court. It’s not clear if he was actually using AI to create the illegal images in question, or if the order is peremptory, but it could serve as a model for future punishment in UK cases in the future. Meanwhile, on April 23, a group of AI companies including Google, Meta, and OpenAI, pledged to better prevent their tools from creating sexualized images of children and other exploitative material.
4.5: Salesforce is calling on AI companies to disclose the energy efficiency and carbon footprint of their models, and asking legislators to pass new laws aimed at demanding transparency and reducing the total energy consumption of AI. Salesforce’s best estimates put the total power generation demands of global data centers at 1.5% but warn that that figure could increase to 4.5% in the coming years absent intervention.SUQIAN, CHINA - FEBRUARY 2, 2024 - Illustration Meta plans to increase AI investment in Suqian, Jiangsu Province, China, February 2, 2024.
If you use any Meta product — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger — buck up for an onslaught of AI. The social media giant is rolling out AI-powered assistants across its apps in unavoidable ways.
Meta’s AI, quite simply, will be everywhere: in your searches, conversations with friends, and chiming to conversations on Facebook groups. It’s powered by the company’s LLaMA 3 model, and is meant to help you answer questions or complete tasks — whatever you want, really. GZERO searched for Thai food on Instagram and instantly initiated a conversation with the Meta AI chatbot. (It gave five good options nearby.)
Meta has taken an open-source approach to developing artificial intelligence, releasing its powerful model for the world to use. That’s different from rivals like OpenAI, which charge consumers and companies to use their closed-source tech.
Now, it’s putting its models to use in a bid to ensure you spend as much time on its platforms as possible. Meta’s bread and butter, as an advertising giant, is attention. If you don’t need to leave Instagram to Google something, or write something with ChatGPT, that’ll quickly mean more money for Meta.
If users aren’t so horribly annoyed or creeped out that they disengage completely, that is. 404 Media reported that Meta’s AI told a parents group on Facebook that it has a disabled-yet-gifted child before the company received complaints and removed the comments. And, for people who want to opt out entirely, it doesn’t help that currently there’s no real way to turn the AI off either.There is no more disruptive or more remarkable technology than AI, but let’s face it, it is incredibly hard to keep up with the latest developments. Even more importantly, it’s almost impossible to understand what the latest AI innovations actually mean. How will AI affect your job? What do you need to know? Who will regulate it? How will it disrupt work, the economy, politics, war?
That's where our new weekly GZERO AI newsletter comes in to help. GZERO AI will give you the first key insights you need to know, putting perspective on the hype and context on the AI doomers and dreamers. Featuring the world class analysis that is the hallmark of GZERO and its founder, Ian Bremmer--who himself is a leading voice in the AI space--GZERO AI is the essential weekly read of the AI revolution.
Our goal is to deliver understanding as well as news, to turn information into perspective and data into insights. GZERO AI will feature some of the world’s most important voices on technology, such as our weekly data columnist Azeem Azhar, and our video columnists Marietje Schaake and Taylor Owen. GZERO AI is your essential tool to understanding the technology that...is understanding you!
Sign up now for GZERO AI (along with GZERO's other newsletters.)
World Health Organization (WHO) displayed on screen with pharmacy medical syringe and vaccine vial. Seen in this photo illustration, in Brussels, Belgium, on September 24, 2023.
The World Health Organization recently released Smart AI Resource Assistant for Health — or SARAH — an AI chatbot that’s able to answer basic health questions. SARAH is able to answer health questions in eight different languages, and the organization says she’s a tool to fight misinformation about mental health, cancer, and COVID, among other things.
The WHO bills SARAH, which appears as a female avatar with a voice and facial expressions, as a digital health “promoter” — not a provider — and, though SARAH hasn’t taken the Hippocratic Oath, it’s meant to fill in the gaps for people searching for health questions without access to proper health care providers. (They’ll still need a broadband connection.) You can speak through a microphone, and SARAH will respond, or you can type your answers to a similar effect.
But SARAH still struggles with plenty of basic queries, according to independent researchers who spoke to Bloomberg.
SARAH is trained on GPT-3.5, the model that OpenAI powers its free version of ChatGPT with, not the updated premium version (that’s GPT-4). Bloomberg found that SARAH repeatedly hallucinated — giving false and outdated medical information about drugs, medical advisories, or WHO’s own data. It incorrectly said that an Alzheimer’s drug was not approved, couldn’t provide details on where to get a mammogram, and couldn’t even recount the WHO’s finding about hepatitis cases worldwide.
When GZERO tested SARAH, it didn’t make any noticeable mistakes, but it basically refused to answer any questions, including a query about whether COVID is still dangerous. It responded, “I’m here to encourage you to live a healthy lifestyle, so I can't respond to that. Is there anything else health-related you'd like to discuss or any other questions I can help answer for you today?”
So maybe don’t cancel that appointment with your doctor just yet.
An F-16 Viper flies overhead during the Thunder Over Louisville airshow on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
The US Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, aka DARPA, have been tinkering with the latest aerial weapons. On April 17, DARPA confirmed that in military exercises with the Air Force last year, an AI-controlled jet was pitted against a human pilot in an in-air dogfight simulation.
The Air Force installed its autonomous pilot system in a modified F-16 relabelled as the X-62A back in 2021. Humans were aboard the autonomous aircraft during the dogfight experiment, with the ability to take control if necessary. The military didn’t specify whether the autonomous X-62A or the human-piloted opponent, an F-16 jet, “won” the duel, which took place in September 2023, though it did say the test was a success.
“The potential for autonomous air-to-air combat has been imaginable for decades, but the reality has remained a distant dream up until now,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall wrote in a statement. “This is a transformational moment.”
As we’ve written previously, militaries around the world are gearing up for autonomous warfare, with weapons systems able to identify and take out specific targets. The United Nations has meanwhile called the use of autonomous weapons on human targets a “moral line that we must not cross,” a signal that there will be a drumbeat of public criticism as the US and other militaries expand and deploy their AI-powered weapons.Microsoft has quickly become the most important investor in artificial intelligence technology, holding a $13 billion stake in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. It’s a peculiar deal with a revenue-sharing agreement that’s raised eyebrows from global regulators. But its latest billion-dollar investment is perhaps even more of an eyebrow-raiser.
The US tech giant announced last week that it would invest $1.5 billion in G42, a leading artificial intelligence holding company based in Abu Dhabi. The deal was “largely orchestrated” by the Biden administration, according to the New York Times, an effort to beat back China and gain influence in the Persian Gulf.
“There’s no question the investment was made to try and box out Chinese investment” in artificial intelligence in the Middle East, said Alexis Serfaty, a director in Eurasia Group’s geo-technology practice.
Under the terms of the new deal, Microsoft will let G42 sell its generative AI services and, in exchange, G42 will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud services. It also agreed to stricter assurances with the US government to further cut off China and remove their products and technology from use.
It’s not every day that the White House plays corporate dealmaker, but the administration hasn’t been shy about making AI — and the chips needed to power it — an economic and national security priority. Serfaty said the closest parallel he could think of was the proposed Trump administration deal to hand a stake of TikTok to the US software and cloud giant Oracle. (TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance never sold a stake of its social media app to Oracle, but it did strike a deal to host its US user data on Oracle servers). Plus, the US has recently given massive grants and favorable loans to global chip manufacturers—like TSMC and Samsung—for moving production to the US.
The Biden administration has imposed strict export controls on US-made chips going to China, especially powerful ones used to run artificial intelligence models. The goal: cut off China and hamper their ability to build powerful AI. Tech investments in the Persian Gulf have been something of a casualty of this Cold War over AI. G42 announced in December 2023 that it would cut ties with China in order to keep working with US industry.
“For better or worse, as a commercial company, we are in a position where we have to make a choice,” G42 CEO Peng Xiao told the Financial Times. “We cannot work with both sides. We can’t.”
Serfaty said that the deal signals that the US government is going to increasingly treat artificial intelligence like defense technology, and play a more hands-on role in its commercial affairs and investment.
“When it comes to emerging technology, you cannot be both in China’s camp and our camp,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told the Times.
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