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Navigating AI: This Week's Business Highlights #14

Navigating AI: This Week's Business Highlights #14

June 28, 2024

Welcome to the AI Trailblazers Newsletter. It was another eventful week for AI, with news from Apple, Toys “R” Us, MIT, Meta, and more. Our curated list of the top stories is below. Please continue to share compelling AI business stories for potential inclusion in the newsletter.

Waiting on the Singularity?

The debate over AI surpassing human intelligence, known as the singularity, raises both exciting possibilities and serious risks. While some believe AI could solve global issues, others argue the required computational power is still far off. Despite advancements, achieving general AI remains challenging. Bernard Marr of Fortune explores both sides of this debate.

The singularity concept, popularized by Vernor Vinge, suggests machines might surpass human intelligence once they learn independently. AI's potential exponential growth could result in machines smarter than humans. This raises questions about AI's unpredictable consequences, trustworthiness, and potential risks to humanity.
Proponents believe AI could solve major global problems, potentially leading to technological advancements and even immortality. Ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity may occur between 2029 and 2045, but others like Rodney Brooks and Steve Pinker are skeptical. They argue the necessary computational power is far off and doubt if it will ever be possible.
Despite AI's impressive capabilities in narrow tasks, significant hurdles remain for achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI requires machines to apply learned knowledge across diverse tasks, mimicking human versatility and common sense. Current computational resources and AI's efficiency in data processing fall short of these requirements.
Preparing for the singularity involves ensuring AI aligns with human values, like respect for life, freedom, and diversity. Implementing safeguards against AI-induced societal harm, such as job losses, is crucial. Measures include reskilling, retraining, and exploring economic policies like universal basic income to mitigate AI's potential negative impacts.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: For decades, movies and books have sensationalized AI with tales of computers and robots dominating humans. The reality will likely be far different. No one knows for sure if artificial general intelligence is even possible, let alone when it might be achieved, but everyone is certainly wondering about it.

AI Creative Shortcomings

As AI technology advances, artists are learning to navigate its potential and limitations in creative fields. While AI can assist with initial drafts and mundane tasks, it falls short in generating truly original and humorous content as this MIT article discovers. Legal and ethical concerns about AI's impact on copyrighted work persist, but grassroots efforts and public awareness are empowering artists to protect their creative output.

Researchers from Google DeepMind asked professional comedians to use AI for writing jokes, resulting in mixed outcomes. While AI helped in producing initial drafts and structuring routines, it failed to generate original or funny content. Humor often relies on surprise and deviation from norms, which AI struggles to achieve.
At a major creative event in Hamburg, artists expressed that AI is too glitchy and unreliable to replace humans but can augment creativity. Following the rise of AI tools like DALL-E 2 in 2022, many artists protested against AI scraping their copyrighted work. Legal disputes continue over fair use, but public awareness of AI's harms has grown, and companies like Adobe promote ethical AI use.
Grassroots efforts aim to empower artists against AI data scraping. Tools like Nightshade and Glaze, developed by University of Chicago researchers, protect artists' work by disrupting AI models and masking personal styles. Platforms like Cara, which filter out AI-generated content, are gaining popularity among artists seeking control over their data.
AI's role in creative fields remains supportive rather than substitutive. The DeepMind study highlights AI's utility in handling mundane tasks while humans retain the ability to produce original, magical content. AI models are constrained by their training data, making them limited and eventually outdated.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: Creativity is inherently unique. While AI has the potential to exhibit uniqueness, the technology hasn't truly reached that point yet and, some argue, it may never fully do so. Human creativity involves irrationality, abstraction, daring, and inventiveness—qualities that are challenging to replicate and even harder to learn.

Toys “R” AI. A Good Idea?

CNN dives into the kerfuffle as Toys "R" Us showcased a groundbreaking AI-generated promo film at the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival, using OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool, Sora. This innovative project highlights AI's potential in digital entertainment while emphasizing the ongoing need for human creativity and oversight.

Toys “R” Us premiered a 66-second promotional film at the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival, created almost entirely using OpenAI’s text-to-video tool, Sora. The promo follows founder Charles Lazarus envisioning a toy store transformation with mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. Reactions were mixed, with some finding it fascinating and others calling it "creepy."
OpenAI’s Sora, introduced in February, can create realistic videos from text prompts, generating up to 60-second scenes with multiple characters and detailed backgrounds. Toys “R” Us believes it is the first brand to debut a film using this technology. The tool is still not publicly available.
The project involved collaboration between Toys “R” Us, creative agency Native Foreign, and substantial human involvement to refine the AI-generated content. Chief Creative Officer Nik Kleverov noted the challenge in perfecting character looks, emotions, and backgrounds, requiring multiple iterations. The process was educational, involving gut checks and human adjustments.
Kim Miller, CMO of Toys “R” Us Creative Studios, emphasized hands-on experience with AI to understand its potential. The company is exploring further advertising opportunities for the promo, potentially including a holiday version. OpenAI has not announced an official release date for Sora, but it may launch later this summer.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: We saw it, and it's not bad. It needs a lot of work, but you can definitely see where the future lies. In the hands of a creative, Sora will be a mega-powerful tool to accomplish a vision, much like Adobe Photoshop was. Whether it should be or not is a more complex question.

What is AI Trailblazers?

AI Trailblazers is a vibrant platform dedicated to uniting marketers, technologists, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI). We want to thank everyone who joined us for the incredibly successful AI Trailblazers Summit on June 6th in New York. We’ve compiled a short video for all to enjoy. See you at our next forum.

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