THE BIG STORY

The 'Godfather of AI' Is Worried

Geoffrey Hinton, an artificial intelligence pioneer whose work at the University of Toronto paved the way for today's AI systems, has left Google and joined critics who say the tech industry’s biggest companies are heedlessly racing to create products based on generative AI, the New York Times reports.

After OpenAI released a new version of ChatGPT in March, thousands of technology leaders and researchers signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of new systems that pose “profound risks to society and humanity.” Current and former leaders of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence have released their own letter warning of the risks of AI.

In an interview with the MIT Technology Review, Hinton said he now thinks there are two types of intelligence in the world: animal brains and neural networks. “It’s a completely different form of intelligence,” he says. “A new and better form of intelligence.”

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LEADERSHIP

Meta’s Zuckerberg Faces a Morale Crisis

Many Facebook insiders say founder Mark Zuckerberg has lost his vision—and the trust of his workforce—as the company is roiled by waves of layoffs that will slash some 21,000 workers and a costly investment in the virtual reality “metaverse” that shows no immediate signs of paying off. Many believe the Meta CEO is steering the company into an unprecedented morale crisis, the Washington Post reports.

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INNOVATION

Tech Moguls Put Their Money on Fusion

A number of tech founders and billionaires—including Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates and Marc Benioff—are among those betting that the decades-long goal of building nuclear fusion reactors is now within years of being reality, the Wall Street Journal reports. They hope to harness the process that powers the sun and stars to deliver almost limitless energy. In December, a controlled fusion reaction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory produced more energy than it consumed—a long-sought breakthrough.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Are Policymakers Too Old to Grasp AI?

A first-year student at Williams College and founder of Encode Justice could be the "Greta Thunberg of AI," Politico's Digital Future Daily reports. Sneha Revanur spearheaded a letter sent by a consortium of 10 youth organizations to congressional leaders and the White House calling on them to include more young people on AI oversight and advisory boards. The letter was prompted by concerns that older policymakers are ill-prepared to handle the rapidly developing technology.

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SPONSORED

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QUICK HITS

• As Elon Musk continues to alienate many Twitter users, a new competitor called Bluesky is gaining momentum. Due to its exclusivity, there’s a scramble to secure a coveted invite code.
• Payments infrastructure startup Finix is now directly connected to all major U.S. card networks, instead of relying on a third-party processor—a move that heats up its competition with Stripe.
• Often-discussed threats to digital privacy and security like using public WiFi and public phone chargers actually are low risk today, security experts say. Instead, focus on setting strong passwords and saying “yes” to software updates.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Sometimes I think it’s as if aliens had landed and people haven’t realized because they speak very good English.”

‍—AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, on large language models like GPT-4
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