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Microsoft has signed deal with CoreWeave for AI computing power, say sources by Paul Hill Microsoft has signed a deal with CoreWeave, a provider of AI computing power, that could be worth billions of dollars over a number of years. The news was disclosed by sources familiar with the matter, to CNBC. While Microsoft and CoreWeave have failed to confirm the information, the sources told CNBC that the deal was made to ensure that OpenAI’s ChatGPT had enough computing power going forward. Through a partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI currently uses Microsoft Azure infrastructure to run ChatGPT, which is resource intensive. It seems that the agreement was made earlier this year. In recent weeks, we’ve seen the price of NVIDIA’s shares rocket up as investors anticipate higher earnings for the company on the back of generative AI services like ChatGPT. CoreWeave offers cloud computing services also powered by NVIDIA hardware. The revelation about this deal comes just one day after CoreWeave announced that it had secured $200 million in a Series B funding extension, bringing the round’s total to $421 million. The $200 million was invested by Magnetar Capital. According to CoreWeave, the funding is helping it fill a gap in the market that legacy cloud computing providers are struggling to fill. “By combining easy access to high-powered GPUs for training AI models with fast and flexible infrastructure and by focusing on a specific type of compute, CoreWeave continues to differentiate itself from other companies in the space,” said Ernie Rogers, Magnetar’s chief operating officer. “Magnetar believes CoreWeave sits in a sweet spot for enabling world-class results across a number of industries. We are proud to have been the lead investor for CoreWeave’s Series B funding round and its extension.” Now that knowledge of this agreement is public, it could add even more fuel to NVIDIA’s stock price as it suggests the company could see even more demand for its products as CoreWeave seeks to provide resources for Microsoft and OpenAI. Source: CNBC

OpenAI develops LLM that uses a chain of thought like humans by Paul Hill OpenAI has released a new paper outlining some advancements it has made in eliminating the common problem of hallucinations where AI just makes stuff up. The paper outlines two models called outcome supervision and process supervision to weed out hallucinations and how they perform. With outcome supervision, OpenAI trains reward models to provide feedback on the final result the AI gives. With process supervision, the reward model provides feedback at every step of the way, creating a human-like chain of thought. In its research paper, OpenAI tested both models on a math dataset and found that the process supervision method led to “significantly better performance”. It’s important to note that the process supervision method has only been tested in the area of mathematics so far and that it will take more work to see how it performs more generally. Explaining the possible outcomes of the process supervision method, OpenAI said: “If these results generalize, we may find that process supervision gives us the best of both worlds – a method that is both more performant and more aligned than outcome supervision.” It’s still too early to say how much this step-by-step verification will help to address hallucinations more generally, but hopefully, it will because hallucinations are probably the number one issue with LLMs right now. Just this week, a lawyer that had used ChatGPT for his work and submitted false information detailing fake cases that the AI had dreamt up. OpenAI has not given a timeline for how long it will take to implement process supervision in ChatGPT which is available to the public. It’s still in the research phase and needs to be tested on general information. While initial results are good, OpenAI does mention that safer methods can incur reduced performance called an alignment tax. The results show so far that process supervision doesn’t incur this tax while working on math problems but we don’t know what will happen on more general information.

A lawyer used ChatGPT for legal research, but later found the chatbot created fake cases by Omer Dursun In a recent court case, a lawyer relied on ChatGPT for legal research, resulting in the submission of false information. The incident sheds light on the potential risks associated with AI in the legal field, including the propagation of misinformation. The case revolved around a man suing an airline over an alleged personal injury. The plaintiff's legal team submitted a brief citing several previous court cases to support their argument, seeking to establish a legal precedent for their claim. However, the airline's lawyers discovered that some of the referenced cases did not exist and promptly alerted the presiding judge. Judge Kevin Castel, presiding over the case, expressed astonishment at the situation, labeling it an "unprecedented circumstance." In an order, the judge demanded an explanation from the plaintiff's legal team. Steven Schwartz, a colleague of the lead attorney, confessed to utilizing ChatGPT to search for similar legal precedents. In a written statement, Schwartz expressed deep regret that he "had never previously used AI for legal research and was unaware that its content could be false." Screenshots attached to the filing showed a conversation between Schwartz and ChatGPT. In the prompt, Schwartz asked if a specific case, Varghese v. China Southern Airlines Co Ltd, was genuine. ChatGPT affirmed its authenticity, indicating that the case could be found in legal reference databases such as LexisNexis and Westlaw. However, subsequent investigations revealed that the case did not exist, leading to further doubts about the other cases provided by ChatGPT. In light of this incident, both lawyers involved in the case, Peter LoDuca and Steven Schwartz from the law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, have been summoned to an upcoming disciplinary hearing on June 8 to explain their actions. This event has prompted discussions within the legal community regarding the appropriate use of AI tools in legal research and the need for comprehensive guidelines to prevent similar occurrences. Source: NYT

G7 leaders unite to regulate generative AI globally under the 'Hiroshima Process' by Tushar Mehta Source: G7 Hiroshima Summit 2023 The sudden boom in the popularity of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT has compelled tech giants, including Microsoft and Google, to join the race with their chatbots that display human-like conversational skills. But the phenomenon has left lawmakers worldwide grappling with regulating its fair and ethical use. Thus, leaders from the Group of Seven countries recently came together at the G7 Hiroshima Summit 2023 to discuss ways to form global standards under common democratic values. Convening what is being dubbed the "Hiroshima Process," participating governments will initiate cabinet-level talks and report the results at the end of the year, as per Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida insisted on a "human-centric" approach toward the development of AI and called for a global and secure exchange of data. Kishida also pledged a financial contribution to the effort to ensure AI is not misused for spreading information or harming humans. The development comes a few weeks after digital and tech ministers from G7 nations unanimously decided to adopt a "risk-based approach" without stifling innovation, as per the official statement. It is followed by Italy's recent temporary ban on ChatGPT and concerns from lawmakers across several countries and regions, including the U.S., Australia, and the EU, about the potential dangers of generative AI. Notably, the European Union, also a "non-enumerated" member of the G7, is already leading the effort to draft an "AI Act," which is set to be the world's first all-encompassing legislation on the use of AI. The proposed AI Act also relies on a risk-based approach and classifies unacceptable, high-risk, limited, and minimal risks based on the implications of various AI applications. Besides popular chatbots such as ChatGPT, the AI Act looks to put an anchor to other AI applications that rely on advanced computing algorithms, such as remote biometric surveillance systems. Similarly, the US government is also working on a model AI Bill of Rights to ensure the safe, private, and accountable use of AI. Despite the speedy progress, generative AI tools have been subject to criticism, not only from governments and legislators but also from technology leaders, including OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman. Earlier this week, Altman testified in front of the U.S. Congress, where they primarily echoed the need to regulate AI and called for forming a government body that licenses AI companies. Participation from G7 countries is definitely expected to accelerate global and unified efforts towards keeping AI safe for users not just in the participant countries but also be used as a model in other democracies around the world.

Apple tells employees not to use AI chatbots like ChatGPT over confidential data leak fears by Paul Hill Apple has told its employees not to use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot according to The Wall Street Journal which got the information from people in the know. Apple is not the only big tech firm to take such actions, Samsung has also banned its employees from using generative AI chatbots. Apple apparently told employees that using these chatbots could cause the accidental release of confidential information. While most people are familiar with ChatGPT and what it does, you may not have used GitHub Copilot. First of all, GitHub is owned by a major Apple competitor, Microsoft. With Copilot, users can automate some of their software development and Apple is concerned that Microsoft could intercept secret Apple code to see what it’s working on or just copy the products. Luckily for Apple employees who want to delegate jobs to AI, Apple is working on its own generative AI product, according to the report. It’s not clear whether Apple employees are able to use this internally yet but as soon as that goes live, there will be no need for them to resort to products like ChatGPT. Apple is due to hold its WWDC developer conference early next month. The company is expected to reveal its mixed-reality headset and it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if we did see some sort of generative AI at least demoed. It seems like a lot of tech firms have been working on generative AI for a while now and have been quick to launch their own products; Apple could be in the same position. Speaking of WWDC, it was reported a few days ago that Apple could unveil sideloading apps on iOS. This feature has been on Android for a long time, if not from the beginning. It's definitely going to be interesting to see Apple open up iOS a bit more. Source: The Wall Street Journal

Twitter has sent a letter to Microsoft claiming it used data without paying for it by Paul Hill Twitter has sent a letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella complaining that Microsoft has been improperly using Twitter data, according to The New York Times which saw the letter. Twitter has accused Microsoft of not paying to use data, using data more than had been agreed, and sharing the data with government agencies without Twitter’s permission - this could be concerning if authoritarian governments were the recipients. Microsoft spokesman, Frank Shaw, told NYT that Microsoft doesn’t pay Twitter for its data. He said the company will review the letter from Twitter and respond accordingly. Perhaps reassuringly, Shaw said that Microsoft looks forward to continuing its long-term partnership with Twitter. In a recent interview with CNBC, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, said that the platform was like a plane that was on fire about to crash, financially speaking. In an effort to stop losing money hand-over-fist, Musk quickly fired about half of the employees at the company. He now admits it was very hasty but that decision had to be taken quickly. He said the company could probably do with getting some of those people back if they’re not too annoyed, he said. With the big splash ChatGPT and other generative AI services have made, platforms like Twitter and Reddit have said they want compensation for their data being used to train the bots. Musk has said that Microsoft essentially runs OpenAI now, or at least has significant power over the company. OpenAI’s ChatGPT powers Microsoft’s Bing Chat. Given Microsoft's involvement and the huge amount of money it has, this could explain why Musk is going after Microsoft for payment for the training data. The letter doesn’t say if Twitter will take legal action or how much financial compensation it has demanded but says that Microsoft uses Twitter data in several of its products including Xbox, Bing, advertising, and cloud computing. It wants Microsoft to submit a report by next month about how much Twitter data it uses and which governments have gained access to the data. It also told Microsoft to abide by the Twitter developer agreement in its handling of the data. Source: The New York Times

OpenAI launches ChatGPT app for iPhone users by Rahul Naskar A couple of months ago, we heard rumors of OpenAI working on the ChatGPT app for mobile users. Luckily, it's no longer a rumor, as OpenAI has recently announced the ChatGPT app for iPhone users. However, only US users can download the app on their iPhones for now. ChatGPT is a free app on iOS, but you will need a Plus subscription to benefit from GPT-4's capabilities. As is the case with ChatGPT on the web, Plus subscribers will also get access to new features earlier than normal users on the iPhones. Plus, the app syncs history across devices. Long story short, iPhone users get the same experience as on the web. As highlighted by OpenAI, the ChatGPT app for iPhone has the following features: Instant answers: Get precise information without sifting through ads or multiple results. Tailored advice: Seek guidance on cooking, travel plans, or crafting thoughtful messages. Creative inspiration: Generate gift ideas, outline presentations, or write the perfect poem. Professional input: Boost productivity with idea feedback, note summarization, and technical topic assistance. Learning opportunities: Explore new languages, modern history, and more at your own pace. OpenAI has promised that it will expand to markets beyond the US in the coming weeks. Besides iPhone users, the ChatGPT app will also be available for Android users "soon." Meanwhile, you can download the ChatGPT app on your iPhone here from App Store. ChatGPT Plus subscription with GPT-4 capabilities costs $20 per month. Microsoft's ChatGPT-powered Bing AI chatbot also incorporated GPT-4, and the app is available on App Store for free. You can download the New Bing app here from App Store. Source: OpenAI

Elon Musk on Sam Altman and ChatGPT: I am the reason OpenAI exists by Ishtiaqe Hanif Elon Musk, one of the three co-founders of OpenAI, questioned the changing business practices of the company during an interview with David Faber at Tesla's Giga Texas factory. He said, "I came up with the name" and "I am the reason that OpenAI exists.". Musk claimed the non-profit startup wouldn't have come to where it is today without his instrumental role. Initially committing to invest $1 billion in backing, Musk invested roughly $50 million in the startup. He resigned from the board of OpenAI after a dispute over his attempt to buy out the startup and a conflict of interest. Since then, it switched to a for-profit entity and accepted a $1 billion infusion from Microsoft to accelerate the development of ChatGPT and image generator DALL-E. Musk questions transitioning from a non-profit business to a $30 billion limited-profit company. I’m still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated ~$100M somehow became a $30B market cap for-profit. If this is legal, why doesn’t everyone do it? — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 15, 2023 He was also skeptical about the governance structure, policies and revenue plans of OpenAI after turning into a closed-source entity. The move conflicts with its name, which suggests it's open-source. In a tweet, he revealed it had access to the Twitter database for training, which he put a stop to. After the launch of ChatGPT, he remarked it was scary good, and it can quickly turn dangerous. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, replied to his tweet, agreeing about the potential cybersecurity risk and being close to getting real AGI within the next decade. This interview happened on the same day Sam Altman found addressing a US Senate panel on the rise of generative AI and its possible effects on many different industries suggesting AI needs regulation. Source: CNBC

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tells US Senate panel generative AI needs regulation by John Callaham OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman found himself in Washington DC, addressing a US Senate panel on the rise of generative AI and its possible effects on many different industries. Altman told the panel that such AI systems, like his company's own ChatGPT, need to be regulated by the government. Reuters reports that Altman believes the government should require some kind of licensing and testing requirements for AI systems. He also stated that the use of AI to interfere with upcoming elections by users who may create realistic-looking false images or video is a "significant area of concern." That was brought home during the start of the hearing by US Senator Richard Blumenthal. Bloomberg posted a video of Blumenthal who played a recording of his voice talking about the effects of AI. However, he revealed that the recording was actually made by an AI that replicated his voice that was trained via his previous US Senate speeches. Even that recording's remarks were written by an AI program. CNN reports that after that recording was made, Blumenthal said that AI replicated voice could have also created false "endorsement of Ukraine’s surrendering or Vladimir Putin’s leadership." Altman also said at the panel that businesses should have the right to ban their content from being used by AI training models. He also stated that he preferred AI use a subscription model, like OpenAI's own ChatGPT Plus, rather than an ad-based model, which is being used by Microsoft's Bing Chat.

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We interview Stardock's Brad Wardell about Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova and ChatGPT by John Callaham Stardock CEO Brad Wardell started working on the first Galactic Civilizations game in 1993 as the company's first software product for the now defunct OS/2 operating system. Since then the 4x strategy game has gone through several versions on Windows. This year, Stardock announced Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova, a standalone expansion of Galactic Civilizations IV with tons of new features. However, most people didn't expect one of those features was incorporating OpenAI's ChatGPT technology into the game. Supernova uses ChatGPT to allow players to create their own alien civilizations with just some text prompts. We got in touch with Wardell by email to ask him some more questions about Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova, and how he thinks ChatGPT will cause Stardock to actually bring in more team members to develop games. The Galactic Civilizations series has been ongoing for 30 years now. What are your thoughts about continuing to make games in this franchise for such a long time? Brad Wardell - I’ve long felt that as long as there were new and interesting things to try out in the 4X genre, I’d keep at it. The impetus for me, 30 years ago, was to try and see if you could make a multithreaded AI. An AI that would calculate in the background. Now, here we are, using a large language model like ChatGPT to give players unique, personalized experiences. Do you believe the series has served as an inspiration for other 4x games over the decades? Brad Wardell - Certainly. I’ve borrowed heavily from other games myself, not the least being the Civilization series. It’s always validating when a concept we came up with shows up in other games. When it came to making the Supernova standalone expansion what were the dev team's main goals? Brad Wardell - I would have preferred to make it a normal expansion. But, as we got in there, we realized we would need two copies of almost every data file to do that. What really exploded the scale of this “expansion” has been the rise of AI. What started out as a fairly normal expansion process became something different when we realized we could use AI to create a real-time, living universe for players. The integration with ChatGPT is one of the first such additions to a major PC game. How did the idea come about to add those features in Supernova? Brad Wardell - Stardock has been working on multi-parameter AI for the past several years in another title we’re developing. So, we’ve been keeping up to date with OpenAI’s work for some time. As soon as they had an API we could use, we realized there was an opportunity to vastly increase the amount of content available for players and create a lot of new, emergent gameplay. How hard or easy was it to incorporate the text prompts for ChatGPT so it could make new civilizations and quests for the game? Brad Wardell - It took quite a bit of time. For one thing, we didn’t put it directly into the game. It’s hosted on our cloud services tech called Tachyon. This way, any of our games can make API calls to Tachyon and then it can use whatever is the best tech to deliver what is needed. On the art side, we also had to make sure that the art was being trained on Stardock art and not, say, art from ArtStation, as we have a lot of artists here who have strong feelings about where the training data comes from. Another challenge is making sure that the GPT results weren’t purely cosmetic. We want to be able to generate in-game quests and have it affect relationships. We want it to affect even what the ships look like, so that took quite a bit of time as well. What are some of the more surprising things you have learned or encountered about adding ChatGPT into Supernova? Brad Wardell - How well it works. We didn’t really expect the writing results to be as good as they’ve been. It helps that ChatGPT is very familiar with GalCiv and its style of writing already so that results tend to fall into our existing, slightly humorous, writing style right away. In a forum post, you stated that adding ChatGPT into Supernova is actually causing Stardock to hire more people, not less. Can you go into specifics on that? Brad Wardell - Indeed. It’s changing the types of people we’d be hiring. But let me walk you through the business reason for this, as I think many people haven’t really thought through the issue to its logical conclusion. In game development, you need to have a critical mass of X in order for it to be worthwhile. People who think AI generated art or AI generated writing is going to eliminate all the jobs haven’t taken the critical mass feature threshold into account. AI will displace jobs, but that’s a different discussion. For example, in the past, we just couldn’t justify many features or classes of content because even if we had 3 artists, they could only produce, say, 3 units of content. Therefore, we wouldn’t hire the artists. But now, those 3 artists can produce 300 units of content via AI assist. That amount of content exceeds the threshold needed for a feature to be worthwhile to have in the game and thus, 3 new art positions are created. The same is true with writing. There’s now enough written content in the game to justify contracting a dedicated editor (and God knows, we’ve needed text editing for years). But, you need a lot of writing before you can make the business case of needing to hire writers and editors. The AI has allowed us to reach that threshold. What other features do you consider to be important in Supernova? Brad Wardell - A big part of it is the accessibility. We want to make GalCiv IV: Supernova have a lot more depth than GalCiv III (or even GalCiv IV base game on Epic). And not to harp on the AI stuff again but as a practical matter, without AI assist tech like GitHub Copilot and our own internal GPT servers, a lot of these features would just be well beyond the scope of our team. So, for example, Supernova has a new combat system, new planet management, cultural progression, minor raced system, star system upgrades, and core world upgrades, all with a UI designed to make it accessible for players new to the genre. How will the game evolve during the Early Access period and when do you think it will be available for full access? Brad Wardell - We are targeting late Summer or early Fall for the full release. We have a lot of features we are still looking to get into it. Our measure of success is if GalCiv IV: Supernova becomes the go-to game for turn-based 4X players. What can you tell us about Stardock's current and upcoming game lineup, and is it possible those games will add ChatGPT features as well? Brad Wardell - We have some unannounced games that make use of our multiparameter AI tech. I can’t say more than that right now. :) Finally, is there anything else you want to say about Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova? Brad Wardell - Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova represents a big step forward for the franchise. We can’t wait for people to try it out and for fans to see that we’ve been listening and writing down their ideas for the past several years since we released GalCiv III. The last GalCiv game I got to be this involved with was GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor, so on a personal note, this is a big treat for me. We want to thank Brad Wardell for taking time to answer our questions. The game is available in Early Access for Steam and the Epic Games Store for $39.99. If you have already bought the original Galactic Civilizations IV on the Epic Games Store, you can get Supernova for a big discount. Disclaimer: Neowin's relationship to Stardock

GPT-4 AI thinks Germany has the best Eurovision 2023 song entry by Paul Hill Germany is a favourite to win this weekend’s Eurovision 2023 song contest, according to SongPad, a start-up which analysed each of the song entries using the latest OpenAI GPT model, GPT-4. The company used custom-designed prompts and parameters to review and rank each of the submitted songs and it decided Germany’s entry, Blood & Glitter by Lord of the Lost was best. While GPT-4 may (or may not) have picked out the best song based on its quality, it’s important to remember that Eurovision can also get a bit political. Nobody will be surprised to hear that the winner of the competition last year was Ukraine and that Russia has been excluded due to its invasion of Ukraine. For this reason, the results may turn out different from what GPT-4 is predicting. According to the little experiment from SongPad, the worst song submission is Serbia’s. What’s a little bit unfair in this analysis, though, is that English translations of songs were used before GPT-4 analysed the emotional impact, use of metaphor, rhyme, creative writing techniques, structure, and repetition. Unfortunately for Serbia, its song, Samo Mi Se Spava, was in English to begin with and it still got the worst rating from GPT-4. The finals of Eurovision 2023 will take place on May 13 at 20:00 UTC+1 from the UK. The countries that will be taking part this year are Croatia, Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Moldova, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

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Microsoft invests in an AI company that makes it easy to build software by Paul Hill Builder.ai, a company that makes it possible to build software without technical expertise using artificial intelligence (AI), has received funding from Microsoft. The “equity investment” from Microsoft is just part of a wider strategic collaboration between the two companies. Aside from equity, this partnership will more tightly integrate Microsoft’s and Builder.ai’s services. Explaining a bit more about the integration, Builder.ai said that there will be integrations across Azure OpenAI Service and other Azure Cognitive Services with Builder.ai’s software. Builder.ai will also adopt Microsoft Cloud and AI. Microsoft customers will be able to use a natively integrated version of Builder.ai’s Natasha AI product manager with Microsoft Teams to easily build prototypes of their business applications. “Our collaboration with Builder.ai is an extension of our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” said Jon Tinter, Corporate Vice President, Business Development, Microsoft. “We see Builder.ai creating an entirely new category that empowers everyone to be a developer and our new, deeper collaboration fuelled by Azure AI will bring the combined power of both companies to businesses around the world.” Builder.ai, in its statement, did not disclose publicly how much Microsoft had invested as part of the deal. Microsoft has ploughed billions of dollars into OpenAI in recent months so it’s likely that the Builder.ai investment is at least in the millions of dollars range.

OpenAI no longer uses API customer data to train its LLMs by Paul Hill Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has confirmed to CNBC that the company no longer uses API customer data to train its large language models. OpenAI updated its Terms of Service to reflect this at the start of March but didn’t make a song and dance about it. If you use ChatGPT directly, this data will still be used for training, unless you go incognito. In an interview, Sam Altman told CNBC that customers “clearly want us not to train on their data, so we’ve changed our plans: We will not do that.” Unfortunately for those using ChatGPT directly, this is not the case by default. The collection of data is such an issue Samsung has banned employees from using chatbots like ChatGPT over security leaks. As an entirely new category of software, companies like OpenAI as well as wider society are still getting to grips with the best practices. Earlier today, Neowin reported on the fact that the Competition and Markets Authority was going to start investigating how these generative AI products could affect competition and consumers. Another way in which these bots have had to retrospectively be improved upon is in relation to guard rails. Since their launch, they’ve been adapted a little bit to ensure they don’t say offensive things. When users try to get the bots to say something offensive, the bots recall pre-written scripts letting the user know they can’t help with that request. Source: CNBC

AI systems from Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and others to be tested at DEFCON 31 in August by John Callaham The rise of generative AI is causing many people to be concerned that they won't behave in ethical and responsible ways. Indeed, one of Google's highest-ranking AI researchers, Geoffrey Hinton, recently left the company so he could be free to warn the world about the potential dangers of AI. Today, US Vice President Kamala Harris will be meeting with the CEOs of four of the leading companies in AI development: Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Anthropic's Dario Amodei. The White House says the participants will discuss the growing use of AI and "the importance of driving responsible, trustworthy, and ethical innovation with safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms to individuals and our society." The Biden Administration also announced that those four companies, along with Hugging Face, NVIDIA, and Stability AI, have all agreed to have their AI systems tested at the annual DEFCON hacking conference. DEFCON 31 is scheduled to be held in Las Vegas from August 10-13. The White House press release stated: This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models, and will enable AI companies and developers take steps to fix issues found in those models. Testing of AI models independent of government or the companies that have developed them is an important component in their effective evaluation. In addition, the US Office of Management and Budget will create a draft document for a policy on how the US government should use AI, and will offer it for public comment. Also, the National Science Foundation will add $140 million for funding of seven new National AI Research Institutes, which will bring the number of those groups to 25.

Microsoft Bing Chat is in open preview, and will add chat history, visual search and more by John Callaham Over the past couple of weeks, Microsoft has been fairly quiet with its updates on its Bing Chat service. However, there have been hints that the company was preparing some big announcements for its AI chatbot. Today, the company revealed a ton of new and upcoming features for Bing Chat and its Edge web browser. That includes the news that Bing Chat is now in full Open Preview mode. While Microsoft seemed to have eliminated the Bing Chat waitlist a couple of months ago, the company has now officially stated that there is indeed no more waitlist to try out the chatbot. All you need is a Microsoft Account and you are all set to use Bing Chat on mobile or via Edge on the desktop. Microsoft claims that there are now over 100 million daily active users for Bing Chat, with over half a billion total chats since its launch. It also says that daily installs of the Bing mobile app have gone up four times more than normal since Bing Chat was first introduced. One of the most requested features by Bing Chat users is a way to save previous chats. Today, Microsoft said that ability will be put in "shortly", allowing users to stop a chat in mid-session and then return again where the chat was paused. It added: And when you want to dig into something deeper and open a Bing chat result, your chat will move to your Edge sidebar, so you can keep your chat on hand while you browse. Over time, we’re exploring making your chats more personalized by bringing context from a previous chat into new conversations. Microsoft will also be adding ways to quickly export chat conversations and also share them on social media. It stated: For times when you want to easily share your conversation with others in social media or continue iterating on a newly discovered idea, you can export it directly – the format stays the same to make an easy transition to continue in collaborative tools like Microsoft Word. In March, Microsoft launched Bing Image Creator, a way to use text prompts to create art with generative AI. Since then the company claims that over 200 million images have been generated with the AI program. Today, the company said that Bing Image Creator is expanding its reach. Previously it only supported English, but now the AI art maker can now accept text prompts from all of Bing's over 100 supported languages. The company added it is working to add visual searches to Bing Chat, so you can upload images in the chat to search for content related to it in Bing. It will also add visual elements for searches in chat, including things like charts and graphs. Microsoft also revealed some changes coming to its Edge browser in relationship to Bing: Edge mobile will also soon include page context, so you can ask questions in Bing chat related to the mobile page you're viewing. The compose feature in sidebar can also now tailor drafts based on feedback you give like tone, length, phrasing and more. Bing Chat will also offer improvements for summaries of large articles and documents within Edge, and will introduce what Microsoft calls Edge actions: Available in the coming weeks, people will soon be able to lean on AI to complete even more tasks with fewer steps. For example, if you want to watch a particular movie, actions in Edge will find and show you options in chat in the sidebar and then play the movie you want from where it’s available. Microsoft adds that it will continue to monitor the use of Bing Chat to make sure that its safeguards are working for the ethical use of its AI tools. It stated: Together with our partners at OpenAI, we’ve continued to implement safeguards to defend against harmful content based on what we’re learning and seeing in preview. Our teams continue to work to address issues such as misinformation and disinformation, content blocking, data safety and preventing the promotion of harmful or discriminatory content in line with our AI principles. The new info on Bing Chat updates comes on the same day that the CEOs of Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic will be meeting with US Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington DC to discuss plans for keeping the use of AI ethical and responsible.

Microsoft might launch private ChatGPT for businesses that need their data safe and isolated by Karthik Mudaliar Microsoft is planning to launch a privacy-centric version of ChatGPT in response to concerns that people's data may be exploited for the training of artificial intelligence models. The move is set to appeal to industries like healthcare, finance, and banking that have refrained from using ChatGPT due to the potential risk of their staff sharing sensitive information with the system. A separate version of the AI tool will run on dedicated cloud servers where data will be kept separate from that of other customers. The data on these dedicated servers will be isolated from the main ChatGPT system to ensure privacy. The private setup could cost as much as 10 times more than what customers currently pay to use ChatGPT. OpenAI also plans to launch a new privacy-focused business subscription that won't feed user data to train models by default. OpenAI has also sold Morgan Stanley a private ChatGPT service using which the bank's wealth management division is able to ask questions and analyze thousands of the bank's market research documents. Since Microsoft already has a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment into OpenAI, it is allowed to resell its products without breaking any terms. The privacy-centric AI service from Microsoft can be a game changer for companies that tend to deal with important and sensitive data. Samsung banned its employees from using generational AI chatbots at work or on devices they use for work when it found that some of its employees had uploaded company source code. Salespeople from Microsoft are already inquiring organizations about the upcoming product, as many existing customers have contracts with Azure that could prove beneficial in managing the data securely. Microsoft is expected to launch its private AI service later this quarter. Source: The Information

ChatGPT has created a new app sector, with European developers taking the lead by Ishtiaqe Hanif ChatGPT has sparked a growing industry of AI chat apps, with Europe at the forefront. According to a recent study by App Radar, since their launch in November 2022, these innovative apps have garnered an impressive 23.6 million downloads from the Google Play Store. Recently, Call Annie has hit the App Store and gained traction. While OpenAI is yet to start working on GPT-5, GPT-4 is taking over the show. The study identified 40 AI chat apps with over 10,000 users that utilize ChatGPT or similar technology. Europe emerged as the global leader in this nascent sector, with 14 of the apps originating from the continent and boasting a collective 8 million downloads, representing 34% of the entire market. The Americas and Asia were home to nine and seven AI chat apps, respectively, with download figures of 2.7 million and 7.4 million. Additionally, eight apps with 5.2 million downloads had an undetermined country of origin. Thomas Kriebernegg, co-founder and managing director of App Radar, is astounded by the growth of this new sector. He credits the media's fascination with generative AI and the widespread belief that ChatGPT is a groundbreaking technology. The cooperation of developers and a passionate public in Europe drives the growth of this sector. KrKriebernegg notes that European consumers are generally more willing to experiment with new technology compared to other regions, as evident in the higher usage numbers for Fintech apps and solutions in the UK compared to the US. This cultural disposition offers European app developers an advantage in expanding their consumer base at a faster pace before venturing into new territories. Among European countries, Turkey stands out as a promising contender, with four apps, including the top three, accounting for 5.9 million downloads. With a flourishing development ecosystem, a vibrant mobile gaming hub, regulations that favor startups, and a growing list of tech successes such as Getir, Turkey have the potential to become a powerhouse in this segment. However, turning this early advantage into a profitable ecosystem will undoubtedly be a challenging task. Source: The Next Web

ChatGPT rival Google Bard launch was delayed over safety concerns by Ishtiaqe Hanif Google had been secretly working on an AI-driven virtual assistant since mid-2021, well before late 2022, when rival ChatGPT was released according to former Responsible AI team member Blake Lemoine, who discussed about Bard in a recent interview . Bard is a conversational generative AI bot based on LaMDA LLM. Blake told Futurism that OpenAI's offerings are not pushing Google around. What Google has in store is far more advanced in terms of technology, and its trajectory is not being affected. He also said he thinks Google is doing things in ways it believes are safe and responsible. OpenAI turned out to have released their ChatGPT before the curtains on Bard were lifted. Without putting a product name on it, Google has been working on Bard for a couple of years. Blake said, "They were on the verge of releasing something in the fall of 2022. So it would have come out right around the same time as ChatGPT, or right before it. Then, in part because of some of the safety concerns I raised, they deleted it." According to him, Google could've released a product similar to Bard's two years ago. Creative accuracy, and preventing gender, racial, and political bias are important for the Alphabet subsidiary. This has surfaced amid a report claiming Google is rushing out Bard and other AI products with poor ethical guards. Source: Futurism

ChatGPT is allowed again in Italy after it put in some data protection safeguards by John Callaham In March, Italy's data protection agency Garante placed a ban on the use of ChatGPT in that country. The ban was due to concerns that the chatbot AI service from the company OpenAI was in violation of Italy's data protection rules. Today, it was revealed that Italy's government has lifted the ban against ChatGPT after OpenAI agreed to put in some safeguards to protect the personal data of its users. The Associated Press reports that some of those privacy additions include adding a signup form that asks users to confirm their age. TechCrunch clarified that the form asks users if they are 18 years old or above, or if they are between 13 and 17 years old, which in that case they need the permission of a parent or guardian. In addition, ChatGPT users in Italy can now access links to see how the chatbot AI uses its personal info, and how it collects data to train the chatbot. Finally, Italy users can fill in a form to object to having their personal data accessible to ChatGPT for its training. The new privacy additions show that there continue to be concerns about how chatbots like ChatGPT, Microsoft's Bing Chat, and Google Bard use online data to generate the answers to users' questions. While these new features are a start, there will likely be more questions on these matters in the months and even years to come.

Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Edition Early Access launches with ChatGPT features by John Callaham In March, Stardock announced Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova as a standalone expansion for its space strategy game Galactic Civilizations IV. Today, the game is available to purchase as an Early Access title. It also announced new features that may make the game one of the first to use OpenAI's ChatGPT generative AI technology. As the press release from Stardock states: This latest sequel introduces AI-generated content OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology allowing players to create their own civilizations that uses AI to create the lore, conversation dialogs, quests and more. The game also uses AI, trained on decades of Stardock’s alien art to deliver custom graphics for their custom civilization. A post on the game's official forms offers more info on this feature: For the past several months, we have been working to build GPT technology into our Tachyon engine, Stardock’s cloud-based metagaming technology that has previously been seen in Ashes of the Singularity, Offworld Trading Company and Star Control: Origins. Thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT API and Tachyon, we are proud to demonstrate what this technology can do for games. Players of Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova can just type in a prompt to begin creating their own alien species. The generative AI features also extend to making new quests: With Tachyon, our games, starting with Galactic Civilizations, can just ask for a new quest. Where is gets really crazy that we can ask in the language of the player so the result comes back as a native speaker (or alternatively, as good/bad at it as English). The game is available from Steam and the Epic Games Store for $39.99. If you have already bought the original Galactic Civilizations IV on the Epic Games Store, you can get Supernova for a big discount. Disclaimer: Neowin's relationship to Stardock

Running ChatGPT might cost a whopping $700,000/day, research firm estimates by Aditya Tiwari ChatGPT has received both good and bad press since its inception, and it even got banned in some places. But have you ever wondered how much money it takes to run an advanced AI-powered bot of this scale? Well, a research firm named SemiAnalysis did the math. The firm estimated that running ChatGPT requires approximately $700,000 per day which narrows down to around 36 cents per query. And most of the expense goes into the hardware infrastructure required to run the AI systems. SemiAnalysis writes in a blog post: Estimating ChatGPT costs is a tricky proposition due to several unknown variables. We built a cost model indicating that ChatGPT costs $694,444 per day to operate in compute hardware costs. OpenAI requires ~3,617 HGX A100 servers (28,936 GPUs) to serve Chat GPT. ChatGPT is among the fastest-growing technologies that amassed over 100 million active users in January, just two months after its launch. For reference, it took nine months for TikTok and 2.5 years for Instagram to achieve the same milestone. SemiAnalysis chief analyst Dylan Patel told Insider that this initial estimate is based on GPT-3 and the newer model GPT-4 might be even more expensive to operate. The Information (paywalled) recently reported that OpenAI's prominent backer Microsoft has been working on a dedicated AI chip that is expected to reduce the cost of operations. OpenAI also launched its $20 premium subscription ChatGPT Plus earlier this year to earn some cash. SemiAnalysis says that if the ChatGPT model is used to power Google's existing search businesses, it would eat $36 billion from the company's profits in "LLM inference costs" alone. "Deploying current ChatGPT into every search done by Google would require 512,820.51 A100 HGX servers with a total of 4,102,568 A100 GPUs. The total cost of these servers and networking exceeds $100 billion of Capex alone, of which Nvidia would receive a large portion," the firm writes. Via Insider, Digital Trends

OpenAI is yet to start work on next-gen GPT-5 LLM by Ishtiaqe Hanif OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed the rumors about the development status of GPT-5, the widely believed upcoming version of the immensely popular GPT series. Since the release of the GPT-based ChatGPT chatbot, the language model has become the fastest-adopted technology in recent times. Source: @TheAiinnovations on Youtube GPT-3, the earlier version of the language model released on November 30, 2022, was considered an effective achievement in natural language processing and artificial intelligence. GPT-3 is frequently utilized in various applications such as chatbots, language translation, and content creation. Source: bytepawn.com During a discussion at an MIT event, Altman said work on GPT-5 had not yet begun. He said, “I think we’re at the end of the era where it’s gonna be these giant models, and we’ll make them better in other ways”. As the capabilities and precision of such technologies increase, the safety measures must increase as well. He then explained how people are more focused on the next iteration and bigger parameter numbers like the gigahertz race in the 90s and 2000s. Source: aimultiple.com The chart above shows the growth in the number of parameters in different models. OpenAI has just released GPT-4 on March 14, 2023. The capabilities of this new generation are yet to be fully comprehended and utilized before putting the spotlight on the next generation. At the moment, OpenAI is focusing on expanding the capabilities of GPT-4, especially the safety measures, and squashing bugs for which they're offering a $20,000 cash bounty. For those who want to try the latest version of the GPT by OpenAI, they can use the Bing Chat feature. Source: Amy Sterling (YouTube) via The Verge and TechCrunch

Elon Musk pursues generative AI, just weeks after calling for a pause by Paul Hill Several weeks ago, Elon Musk signed a letter with others calling for AI labs to pause the training of their AI systems for six months. Now, it turns out that Musk is pursuing his own generative AI start-up if a report from the Financial Times is to be believed. One insider says SpaceX and Tesla investors are already helping Musk fund the work and “are excited about it.” Ever since last year when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, many tech firms have piled in to create their own generative AI. Not one to shy away from futuristic projects, Musk now appears to be getting in on the game too. He has also secured thousands of NVIDIA GPUs to help power the AI systems, according to those in the know. To help develop the software, Musk has also been poaching engineers from various companies including Alphabet’s DeepMind. Igor Babuschkin is named as one engineer that has been brought on by Musk from DeepMind but there are about six others who weren’t named. Elon Musk actually helped to co-found OpenAI but had disagreements with the others at the company. Given his fears about AI, it’ll be interesting to see what safeguards he uses in his product if it launches. Source: Financial Times