🤖 BuzzFeed's AI pivot, microchip geopolitics, and OpenAI begs for regulation

Good morning and welcome to the latest issue of neonpulse!

Here are the AI headlines making waves:

🌊  BuzzFeed’s big AI pivot

🌊  OpenAI CEO testifies before Congress

🌊  The geopolitics of AI microchips

Let’s get into it!

BuzzFeed’s AI Pivot

Writing content is one of the simplest tasks that AI can help perform, leading many media companies to experiment with the new technology.

BuzzFeed, for example, has started using ChatGPT to help generate quizzes and other content for the site, a move that many in the company are not happy about.

Since ChatGPT was released BuzzFeed has gone through 2 rounds of layoffs, including shutting down its Pulitzer-winning news division.

And not only has the company been able to replace hundreds of its writing staff with a $20/month subscription to ChatGPT…

But the content created by ChatGPT is performing significantly better than human generated content on the site.

After analyzing human created content versus AI generated content, the company has found that users spend 40% more time interacting with the AI generated content, which is causing writers inside the company to panic.

BuzzFeed’s experience with AI echo’s the story we covered earlier this week, where an energy company introduced AI customer service representatives and found that the AI produced significantly better responses to customer questions than humans…

Leading many to wonder how much time we have before AI is capable of performing all of our jobs better than us.

OpenAI CEO Testifies on AI

In a recent congressional hearing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made headlines when he openly embraced the regulation of generative AI, a move that was regarded as “historic” given how few leaders of industry push for additional oversight over their own businesses.

“We think AI can be a printing press moment,” Altman said during his testimony. “But we have to work together to make it so.”

As lawmakers expressed concerns about the potential dangers of AI, including job disruption and election misinformation, Altman validated their concerns and argued for a balanced approach to regulation, one that would allow for continued innovation while also setting up necessary safeguards for the new technology.

Stating that his worst fear was AI “causing significant harm to the world,” Altman laid out a 3 point plan for how Congress could regulate the industry:

1. Create a federal agency that grants licenses to create AI models above a certain threshold of capabilities

2. Create safety standards for high-capability AI models

3. Require independent audits from independent experts to ensure that AI tools operate within the law

It’s not clear how long it might take the U.S. to introduce these types of regulations, but given the speed that AI is progressing, if lawmakers want to minimize the potential harms of AI, they better act fast.

You can check out the full hearing on YouTube here.

The Geopolitics of AI

One thing that the many people don’t know about AI is that almost all of the microchips powering the latest AI applications are produced in a single facility in Taiwan.

Described as “the world’s most important company that you’ve probably never heard of,” The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) makes an overwhelming majority of the worlds most advanced AI chips.

And not just for Nvidia, but for every major competitor in the space, including Google, AMD, Amazon, and Microsoft.

So why is this a problem?

With nations like the United States and China pushing hard to become the global leader in AI, microchips are becoming the latest arena for geopolitical competition…

And Taiwan isn’t exactly located in the safest of places.

Taiwan is located right next door to China and the two countries are closer to a full-blown conflict than they've been in a long time, with China conducting military drills on a scale and intensity never before seen.

Even Warren Buffett is concerned, recently selling his entire stake in TSMC over concerns of a potential conflict in the region.

But how soon could war break out?

Given that the United States is actively blocking China’s access to the latest AI microchip technology, many policymakers in the US anticipate that China could invade Taiwan as soon as 2025…

A move that would effectively lead to World War 3.

If you want to learn more, you can click here for an in-depth report on the subject.

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And now your moment of zen

That’s all for today folks! We hope you enjoyed today’s newsletter, and we’ll see you bright and early tomorrow!