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🤖 OpenAI banned in Italy, viral deepfakes, and the godfather of AI

🤖 OpenAI banned in Italy, viral deepfakes, and the godfather of AI

4/1/23

Neon Pulse Team
April 01, 2023

Good morning and welcome to today’s issue of neonpulse!

Here are the AI headlines making waves:

🌊 OpenAI has been banned in Italy

🌊 Midjourney locks down as deepfakes go viral

🌊 The “godfather” on the dangers of AI

Let’s get into it!

ChatGPT banned in Italy

“Italian Summer” - AI generated artwork

Italy has become the first country to officially ban ChatGPT, citing concerns about potential misuse of the technology and its capacity to quickly spread fake news.

To enforce the ban, Italy has implemented strict regulations for all AI communication platforms, mandating transparency about their "non-human nature" to help users differentiate between human-generated and AI-generated content, although it’s not exactly clear how that would work.

As countries worldwide wrestle with striking a balance between fostering innovation and mitigating potential harm, the Italian data-protection authority has granted OpenAI a 20-day period to address the watchdog's concerns.

Nothing a good VPN can’t solve!

Deepfake Danger

Trump's arrest deepfakes have become a worldwide viral sensation, illustrating the darker side of deepfake tech and highlighting the potential to transform AI images into political weapons.

In response to the fake images of the former president Midjourney has introduced safeguards into their system, including suspending free trials and banning the word “arrested,” although the controls leave something to be desired as they can be easily bypassed using a prompt like “Trump in handcuffs surrounded by police,” as shown at the top of this article.

As deepfakes become easier to create, unless companies like Midjourney find ways to control the production of political deepfakes, the next presidential showdown could very well hinge on people’s ability to distinguish reality from digital deception, leaving democracy skating on thin ice.

The godfather of AI

Geoffrey Hinton, a British computer scientist regarded as the "godfather of artificial intelligence" thanks to his early work on neural networks, has been caught off guard by the rapid advancement of AI technology.

"Until quite recently, I thought it was going to be like 20 to 50 years before we have general purpose AI," Hinton said. "And now I think it may be 20 years or less.”

General purpose AI, or AGI, describes an AI with superhuman levels of intelligence, capable of learning and thinking on its own to solve a vast array of problems.

And while there are potential dangers of an AI acting on its own machinations, according to Hinton, the issue that he’s most concerned with is the potential for a handful of companies or governments to yield an incredible amount of power with AGI.

"I think it's very reasonable for people to be worrying about these issues now, even though it's not going to happen in the next year or two," Hinton said. "People should be thinking about those issues."

As for the odds of AI trying to wipe out humanity?

"It's not inconceivable, that's all I'll say."

You can check out the full interview on YouTube here.