The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change
The companies with the most powerful AI models, such as GPT-4 and Gemini, will face more onerous requirements, such as having to perform model evaluations and risk-assessments and mitigations, ensure cybersecurity protection, and report any incidents where the AI system failed. Companies that fail to comply will face huge fines or their products could be banned from the EU.
It’s also worth noting that free open-source AI models that share every detail of how the model was built, including the model’s architecture, parameters, and weights, are exempt from many of the obligations of the AI Act.
Deeper Learning
Africa’s push to regulate AI starts now
The projected benefit of AI adoption on Africa’s economy is tantalizing. Estimates suggest that Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa alone could rake in up to $136 billion worth of economic benefits by 2030 if businesses there begin using more AI tools. Now the African Union—made up of 55 member nations—is trying to work out how to develop and regulate this emerging technology.
It’s not going to be easy: If African countries don’t develop their own regulatory frameworks to protect citizens from the technology’s misuse, some experts worry that Africans will be hurt in the process. But if these countries don’t also find a way to harness AI’s benefits, others fear their economies could be left behind. (Read more from Abdullahi Tsanni.)
Bits and Bytes
An AI that can play Goat Simulator is a step toward more useful machines
A new AI agent from Google DeepMind can play different games, including ones it has never seen before such as Goat Simulator 3, a fun action game with exaggerated physics. It’s a step toward more generalized AI that can transfer skills across multiple environments. (MIT Technology Review)
This self-driving startup is using generative AI to predict traffic
Waabi says its new model can anticipate how pedestrians, trucks, and bicyclists move using lidar data. If you prompt the model with a situation, like a driver recklessly merging onto a highway at high speed, it predicts how the surrounding vehicles will move, then generates a lidar representation of 5 to 10 seconds into the future (MIT Technology Review)
LLMs become more covertly racist with human intervention
It’s long been clear that large language models like ChatGPT absorb racist views from the millions of pages of the internet they are trained on. Developers have responded by trying to make them less toxic. But new research suggests that those efforts, especially as models get larger, are only curbing racist views that are overt, while letting more covert stereotypes grow stronger and better hidden. (MIT Technology Review)
