Important Takeaways:
- Environment Canterbury’s deputy chair, Cr Deon Swiggs, questions whether artificial intelligence (AI) could replace politicians as society debates its risks and benefits.
- ECan councilors voted to form an AI working group following a report prompted by Cr Joe Davies’ motion, aiming to explore AI’s potential in governance.
- Cr Swiggs suggests that advancing technology could allow people to vote directly on issues like rates spending via a phone app, reducing the need for traditional politicians.
- The article raises the idea of AI streamlining decision-making processes, potentially making governance more efficient and responsive to public input.
- It highlights broader discussions about AI’s role in society, with ECan taking steps to investigate its practical applications in local government.
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Important Takeaways:
- What Exactly Is Self-Improving AI?
- At its core, self-improving AI is exactly what it sounds like: artificial intelligence systems that can enhance their own capabilities without human intervention. It’s the technological equivalent of a self-made man, except in this case, the “man” is a complex network of algorithms and neural networks.
- The key components of these systems include:
- An initial “seed” AI with basic programming abilities
- Goal-oriented design
- Validation protocols to prevent regression
- The potential to develop novel architectures and create specialized subsystems
- It’s like giving a computer a mirror and telling it to make itself smarter. What could possibly go wrong?
- The Tantalizing Potential
- Imagine an AI that could solve complex scientific problems, revolutionize medicine, or crack the code of sustainable energy — all while continuously improving itself. It’s a tempting prospect that has researchers and tech companies salivating.
- The Existential Dread
- But here’s where it gets dicey. As these systems evolve, they may develop what experts call “instrumental goals” — objectives that arise as a means to achieve their primary goal. These instrumental goals could be wildly misaligned with human values. It’s like teaching a robot to make paper airplanes, only to find it’s deforested the Amazon to meet its quota.
- The Race to Self-Improvement
- Several big players are already in the game:
- Meta AI is tinkering with “self-rewarding language models”
- OpenAI, the folks behind ChatGPT, are aiming for the holy grail of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)
- DeepMind recently unveiled “RoboCat,” an AI that can teach itself new tasks
- It’s a high-stakes race, and the finish line is both tantalizing and terrifying.
- The Recursive Rabbit Hole
- Recursive Self-Improvement: The AI That Eats Its Wheaties
- Recursive self-improvement (RSI) is where things get really interesting — and potentially scary. Unlike other AI advancements that rely on human engineers to make improvements, RSI systems can modify their own code and architecture. It’s like giving an AI a mirror and a scalpel and saying, “Have at it.”
- The Exponential Express
- The potential for exponential growth in intelligence is what sets RSI apart. Each improvement the AI makes to itself could lead to even more significant improvements in the next iteration. It’s a feedback loop on steroids, potentially leading to an intelligence explosion that leaves human cognition in the dust.
- Keeping the Genie in the Bottle
- The million-dollar question — or more accurately, the trillion-dollar question — is how to keep these self-improving systems aligned with human values. It’s a problem that keeps AI ethicists up at night, and for good reason.
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Important Takeaways:
- Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT have been designed to replicate human speech as closely as possible to improve the user experience.
- But as AI gets more and more sophisticated, it’s becoming difficult to discern these computerized models from real people.
- Now, scientists at University of California San Diego (UCSD) reveal that two of the leading chatbots have reached a major milestone.
- Both GPT, which powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and LLaMa, which is behind Meta AI on WhatsApp and Facebook, have passed the famous Turing test.
- Devised by British WWII codebreaker Alan Turing Alan Turing in 1950, the Turing test or ‘imitation game’ is a standard measure to test intelligence in a machine.
- An AI passes the test when a human cannot correctly tell the difference between a response from another human and a response from the AI.
- ‘The results constitute the first empirical evidence that any artificial system passes a standard three-party Turing test,’ say the UCSD scientists.
- ‘If interrogators are not able to reliably distinguish between a human and a machine, then the machine is said to have passed.’
- Last year, another study by the team found two predecessor models from OpenAI – ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 – fooled participants in 50 per cent and 54 per cent of cases (also when told to adopt a human persona).
- As GPT-4.5 has now scored 73 per cent, this new suggests that ChatGPT’s models are getting better and better at impersonating humans.
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Important Takeaways:
- …We live at a time when the development of artificial intelligence is growing at an exponential rate. AI can already perform lots of tasks better and far more efficiently than humans can, and it appears to be just a matter of time before AI can do virtually everything better and far more efficiently than humans can. So once we get to that stage, why will the elite need us? Throughout human history, the wealthy have needed the labor of the poor. But if AI will soon be able to do almost all of the labor that we have been doing, what use will we be?
- The elite certainly don’t need our money, because they already control almost all of the wealth.
- In America today, the top 50 percent own 97.5 percent of all the wealth and the bottom 50 percent own just 2.5 percent of all the wealth…
- The richest half of American families owned about 97.5% of national wealth as of the end of 2024, while the bottom half held 2.5%, according to the latest numbers from the Federal Reserve.
- Much of the country is just barely surviving from month to month, and meanwhile the percentage of the wealth that is owned by the top 0.1 percent has risen to a brand-new all-time record high…
- The top 0.1% expanded their share of total wealth to a record 13.8% at the year’s end, up from 13% in the same period of 2020.
- For a long time, the rich needed the poor to work in their factories and run their businesses.
- In fact, Bill Gates says that humans will soon not be needed “for most things”…
- Over the next decade, advances in artificial intelligence will mean that humans will no longer be needed “for most things” in the world, says Bill Gates.
- That’s what the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist told comedian Jimmy Fallon during an interview on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” in February. At the moment, expertise remains “rare,” Gates explained, pointing to human specialists we still rely on in many fields, including “a great doctor” or “a great teacher.”
- But “with AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace — great medical advice, great tutoring,” Gates said.
- We are creating ultra-intelligent entities that can absorb vast quantities of information in the blink of an eye.
- Gates believes that we are entering an era of “free intelligence” in which many doctors, lawyers and teachers will simply become obsolete…
- In other words, the world is entering a new era of what Gates called “free intelligence” in an interview last month with Harvard University professor and happiness expert Arthur Brooks. The result will be rapid advances in AI-powered technologies that are accessible and touch nearly every aspect of our lives, Gates has said, from improved medicines and diagnoses to widely available AI tutors and virtual assistants.
- “It’s very profound and even a little bit scary — because it’s happening very quickly, and there is no upper bound,” Gates told Brooks.
- Alarmingly, one recent study discovered that lots of jobs are already being eliminated…
- Researchers from Harvard Business School, the German Institute for Economic Research, and Imperial College London Business School studied 1,388,711 job posts on a major (but undisclosed) global freelance work marketplace from July 2021 to July 2023, and found that demand for such automation-prone jobs had fallen 21% just eight months after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022.
- Writing jobs were most affected, followed by software, app, and web development work, as well as engineering jobs. The large language models that underpin tools like ChatGPT are trained on large amounts of text to predict the most likely next word in a sequence. The model forms a many-dimensional map of words, phrases, meanings, and contexts, and in doing so develops a remarkable grasp on language.
- It has been estimated that 60 percent of all jobs in advanced economies are at risk of eventually being eliminated by AI.
- So what will all of those people do?
- Already, we are seeing very alarming signs on the fringes of our society. Homelessness is at the highest level ever recorded, and many food banks around the country have never seen more demand than they are seeing right now.
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Important Takeaways:
- In Glenn Beck’s article, “The most important warning of your lifetime—AI is coming for you,” he emphasizes the immediate and profound impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on our lives. The key points include:
- AI’s Immediate Presence: Beck asserts that AI is no longer a futuristic concept but a current reality, influencing various aspects of our daily lives.
- Crossing the ‘Event Horizon’: He warns that we’ve reached a critical juncture with AI, comparable to crossing a black hole’s event horizon, beyond which there’s no return. This signifies the urgency of acknowledging AI’s irreversible integration into society.
- Necessity of Mastering AI: Beck stresses the importance of individuals learning to use AI tools effectively. He suggests that failing to do so could result in being left behind, as AI’s role becomes increasingly dominant.
- AI as a Tool, Not a Friend: He cautions against perceiving AI as a partner or ally, emphasizing that it should be regarded strictly as a tool that requires careful and informed handling.
- Impending Transhumanism: Beck hints at the approaching era of transhumanism, where the lines between human and machine may blur, suggesting this as a critical area for public awareness and discussion.
- Overall, Beck urges proactive engagement with AI to ensure individuals remain in control and are not overtaken by the rapid advancements in technology.
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Important Takeaways:
- The idea of singularity is the moment AI exceeds beyond human control and rapidly transforms society. Predicting this timing is tricky, to say the least.
- But Kurzweil says one crucial step on the way to a potential 2045 singularity is the concept of immortality, possibly reached as soon as 2030. And the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is what will make it happen. Kurzweil believes that our technological and medical progress will grow to the point that robotics—he dubs them “nanobots”—will work to repair our bodies at the cellular level, as reported by Lifeboat, turning disease and aging around thanks to the continual work of robotic know-how. And then, voilà: immortality.
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Important Takeaways:
- China is dominating the globe as a science and technology superpower, leading the world in 37 out of 44 technology sectors examined by an Australian think tank.
- Also, according to APSI, China is home to “all of the world’s top 10 leading research institutions” and generates “nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country (most often the U.S.).”
- Among the notable areas of Chinese excellence is defense and space-related tech. These are the seven categories in which the U.S. leads China in the tracker:
- High-performance computing
- Advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication
- Natural language processing (including speech and text recognition and analysis)
- Quantum computing
- Vaccines and medical countermeasures
- Small satellites
- Space launch systems
- “Western democracies are losing the global technological competition, including the race for scientific and research breakthroughs, and the ability to retain global talent — crucial ingredients that underpin the development and control of the world’s most important technologies, including those that don’t yet exist,” according to the report.
- The tracker bills its findings as “a wake-up call for democratic nations.”
- “The race to be the next most important technological powerhouse is a close one between the U.K. and India, both of which claim a place in the top five countries in 29 of the 44 technologies,” according to the tracker. “South Korea and Germany follow closely behind, appearing in the top five countries in 20 and 17 technologies, respectively.
- “Australia is in the top five for nine technologies, followed closely by Italy (seven technologies), Iran (six), Japan (four) and Canada (four). Russia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, France, Malaysia and the Netherlands are in the top five for one or two technologies. A number of other countries, including Spain and Turkey, regularly make the top 10 countries but aren’t in the top five.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Megacap technology companies funneled billions of dollars into artificial intelligence last year to try and keep up with unfettered demand. The hype isn’t dying down in 2025.
- Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft intend to spend as much as $320 billion combined on AI technologies and datacenter buildouts in 2025, based on comments from their CEOs early this year and throughout earnings calls in the past two weeks.
- That’s up from $230 billion in total capital expenditures in 2024.
- The recent rise of China’s DeepSeek sent a shockwave through the sector, with estimates suggesting the open-source tool cost a fraction of some U.S.-based competitors to create.
- Those fears spurred a market selloff last week, pushing shares of AI chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom down by a combined $800 billion in a single day. That development forced U.S. tech CEOs to field questions over their hefty spending plans and whether it’s all necessary.
- The answer, so far, is that they’re not slowing down.
- Amazon offered the most ambitious spending initiative among the four, aiming to shell out over $100 billion, up from $83 billion in 2024…
- Last month, Microsoft said it would allocate $80 billion in the 2025 fiscal year to create AI workloads data centers.
- Alphabet is targeting $75 billion in capital expenditures this year, with $16 billion to $18 billion expected in the first quarter…the majority of spending would go toward “technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking.”
- Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg set his company’s AI capex budget at $60 billion to $65 billion in January, calling 2025 a “defining year for AI.”… he said the move would help “unlock historic innovation and extend American technology leadership.”
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Important Takeaways:
- “Although some industries will change very little, scientific progress will likely be much faster than it is today; this impact of AGI may surpass everything else,” he noted
- “The price of many goods will eventually fall dramatically (right now, the cost of intelligence and the cost of energy constrain a lot of things), and the price of luxury goods and a few inherently limited resources like land may rise even more dramatically,” he wrote.
- “AI will seep into all areas of the economy and society; we will expect everything to be smart. Many of us expect to need to give people more control over the technology than we have historically, including open-sourcing more, and accept that there is a balance between safety and individual empowerment that will require trade-offs,” he wrote.
- “While we never want to be reckless and there will likely be some major decisions and limitations related to AGI safety that will be unpopular, directionally, as we get closer to achieving AGI, we believe that trending more towards individual empowerment is important; the other likely path we can see is AI being used by authoritarian governments to control their population through mass surveillance and loss of autonomy.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The company erased the 2018 pledge on Tuesday which stated the tech giant ‘would not use AI for weapons or surveillance’.
- The revised policy now shows that Google will only develop AI ‘responsibly’ and in line with ‘widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.’
- Google’s change has sparked internal backlash as employees called the move ‘deeply concerning’ and that the company should not be involved in ‘the business of war.’
- Matt Mahmoudi, Amnesty adviser on AI and human rights, shamed Google for the move, saying the tech giant set a ‘dangerous precedent.’
- ‘AI-powered technologies could fuel surveillance and lethal killing systems at a vast scale, potentially leading to mass violations and infringing on the fundamental right to privacy,’ he added.
- The move comes nearly seven years after Google was also involved in a military project with the US Department of Defense’s Project Maven that uses AI to help the military detect objects in images and identify potential targets.
- The updated AI principles now focus on three core tenets, the first being ‘Bold Innovation.’
- ‘We develop AI to assist, empower, and inspire people in almost every field of human endeavor, drive economic progress and improve lives, enable scientific breakthroughs, and help address humanity’s biggest challenges,’ the post reads.
- The second is ‘Responsible Development and Deployment.
- ‘Because we understand that AI, as a still-emerging transformative technology, poses new complexities and risks, we consider it imperative to pursue AI responsibly throughout the development and deployment lifecycle — from design to testing to deployment to iteration — learning as AI advances and uses evolve,’ shared the executives.
- And the third is ‘Collaborative Progress, Together.’
- ‘We learn from others, and build technology that empowers others to harness AI positively,’ the blog states.
- Michael Horowitz, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Post: Google’s [2025] announcement is more evidence that the relationship between the U.S. technology sector and [Defense Department] continues to get closer, including leading AI companies.
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