Bilal Chughtai and Josh Engels, who both worked on Deepmind’s AI safety team, left to join organizations dedicated to AI safety. “I now think that there’s a terrifying chance that AI systems cause immense harm in the next five years,” said Engels. “I earnestly believe that AI has the potential to kill us all,” wrote Chughtai.
[The Information]
The Pixel Watch 2 and later are getting Gemini Personalization, allowing the AI assistant to learn from past conversations and connected Google apps. The 3 and on also get new double-pinch gesture controls, while the 4 gets a performance bump to raise-to-talk. A similar September update is rolling out to Pixel phones too.
[Google Pixel Watch Community]
The EU Kids Act will be formally unveiled tomorrow where it will eventually be put to a vote by the 27-nation bloc. Parent-chaperoned “mini accounts” are proposed for children 13 to 15.
“I am aware that many perceive the power of Big Tech as overwhelming and impossible to roll back. I disagree,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We do not have to accept addictive features. We do not have to accept children being drawn into ever more extreme content. We do not have to accept that girls have their photos used for AI-generated sexualized images.”
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says AI safety is important, but agrees with Trump — the “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT” that removed the word “safety” from the AI Safety Institute — that capitalism’s invisible hand is enough to protect us:
“The fact that we need new laws, new antitrust laws, or new regulations, so that these companies could do their fundamental engineering and do it properly before they release products, that is just completely unnecessary. We have plenty of laws. We have plenty of regulations that govern the reliability and the functionality of products.”
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Elon Musk have tentatively agreed to slow their roll, but Meta seemingly isn’t aligned. Mark Zuckerberg just tweeted each company has its own individual responsibility “to move at the pace required to train its models safely,” and claims Meta is already doing so.
He also prominently links to his manifesto from August, which contains this quote: “Any policy that slows American model releases -- even by a month -- could add significant risk to American leadership while letting foreign models race ahead.”
The lawsuit claims DistroKid has created an “AI-slop pipeline” diverting listeners away from human artists. Universal Music Group, which is launching its own AI music platform, also alleges that DistroKid gives users the “false impression” that the music it distributes is “created and owned by real human artists,” not AI-generated music.
AI commentary is frothy this week! Obama chimed in with a series of posts on X saying he’s neither an AI “accelerationist” nor a “doomer.” In a familiar tone from the former president, he cautioned that choices we make about technology “should not be made just by the companies involved, but by all of us.”
“We need government — and specifically our leaders in Washington — to get proactive in coming up with concrete proposals, laws, and regulations that deal with serious safety concerns,” Obama said.
Over the next two years, the funding will go toward improving AI access in education, healthcare, and agriculture, and adding to AI’s “digital foundation.” That includes priorities like creating AI datasets in more languages and making access to AI more affordable.
Common Sense Media says the search alternative is just as bad as Google for kids, and largely treats minors as adults. It earned the Youth AI Safety Institute’s lowest rating after failing four out of five severe-harm Red Lines and doing poorly on all eight of its AI Principles. Examples cited include discussing pornography and engaging in romantic roleplay with accounts identified as minors, and often doing their homework despite being set to Academic mode.
[Youth AI Safety Institute]
Major AI companies want to ‘pace the frontier’ — but their proposed solutions need real teeth.
xAI’s original lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI alleged “anticompetitive conduct” over Apple and OpenAI’s deal to integrate ChatGPT into iOS. Monday’s dismissal filing, reported on by Reuters, specifies that X and SpaceXAI “do not seek to dismiss its claims against” OpenAI.
