5 min read · 11 May 2023
AI generated Zaha Hadid desgin. Image Courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects.
The EU's landmark AI Act moves into its penultimate phase. Lawmakers agreed to more stringent restrictions, including a ban on predictive policing and the use of facial recognition in public spaces. The bill is now set to be finalised with the EU Commission and individual member states with a vote scheduled for June. (Reuters)
China arrests ChatGPT user who faked deadly train crash story. Chinese authorities have detained a man for using ChatGPT to write fake news articles, in what appears to be one of the first instances of an arrest related to misuse of AI. (Bloomberg)
Ex-Coinbase worker gets two-year prison term in first cryptocurrency insider-trading case. Ishan Wahi previously admitted to passing on confidential information from the crypto exchange to his brother and friend, who profited from the tips. (WSJ)
Binance slams US crypto crackdown and makes bid for UK oversight. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has said a crackdown on crypto has made it “very difficult” to do business in the US, adding that it now hopes to be regulated in the UK. (FT)
The meme coin PEPE has become the fastest growing ERC-20 token in crypto’s existence. The coin has reached a $1 billion market cap with 107,000 holders in only 23 days, sparking a renaissance in meme coins. As a result, both the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks experienced congestion and elevated transaction fees. While PEPE has grown at record pace, it still remains a fraction of DOGE and SHIB’s valuations. (CoinDesk)
Blur users open $95M of loans backed by NFTs in 10 days. Blur's platform, Blend, which allows users to borrow crypto against digital collectibles in perpetuity, has so far witnessed 51,656 ETH ($95 million) in loans since its inception 12 days ago, a Dune dashboard shows. More than 3,000 individual Blend loans have been opened to date and Azuki NFTs are proving the most popular with borrowers. (Blockworks)
EY launches Ethereum-based carbon emission tracking platform. EY’s ESG chain is based on the conviction that blockchains are the glue that can link business processes and global ecosystems across enterprise boundaries, said EY Global Blockchain Leader Paul Brody. (CoinDesk)
Google makes massive AI push, unveiling a slate of new products and initiatives:
Zaha Hadid Architects developing "most" projects using AI-generated images. Zaha Hadid Architects has begun incorporating text-to-image generators such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion throughout its design process—including proposals for Saudi Arabia’s controversial Neom development—and established an internal AI research group, studio principal Patrik Schumacher has revealed. (Dezeen)
OpenAI’s new tool attempts to explain language models’ behaviors. In an effort to peel back the layers of LLMs, OpenAI is developing a tool to automatically identify which parts of an LLM are responsible for which of its behaviors. The engineers behind it stress that it’s in the early stages, but the code to run it is available in open source on GitHub. (TechCrunch)
Meta open-sources multisensory AI model that combines six types of data. The new ImageBind model combines text, audio, visual, movement, thermal, and depth data. It’s only a research project but shows how future AI models could be able to generate multisensory content. (The Verge)
Microsoft said it is expanding access to its Copilot software, a digital assistant built on OpenAI’s GPT-4. The tech giant has also announced a new indexing tool that lets Copilot more accurately report on internal company data, alongside some new Copilot features for apps like Outlook, and PowerPoint. (The Verge)