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The European Union is at the forefront of drafting new AI rules that could set the global benchmark to address privacy and safety concerns that have arisen with the rapid advances in the generative AI technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT. "If it's about protecting personal data, they apply data protection laws, if it's a threat to safety of people, there are regulations that have not been specifically defined for AI, but they are still applicable." Data protection authorities in France and Spain also launched in April probes into OpenAI's compliance with privacy laws. 'THINKING CREATIVELY'French data regulator CNIL has started "thinking creatively" about how existing laws might apply to AI, according to Bertrand Pailhes, its technology lead. "We are looking at the full range of effects, although our focus remains on data protection and privacy," he told Reuters.

Garante is among the most proactive of the 31 national data protection authorities which oversee Europe's data privacy regime known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The agency was the first to ban AI chatbot company Replika, to impose fines on facial recognition software maker Clearview AI, and to restrict TikTok in Europe. "We are looking for three AI advisers because we are aware AI tools are evolving very quickly and we need experts with tech background to help us in our data protection activity," Ghiglia said. "We explored ChatGPT and realised it was not compliant with EU data privacy rules." "That's why we decided to act swiftly with ChatGPT", Ghiglia said.

☆ Column: World can't afford US-style home energy consumption habits
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Gavin Maguire | Thomson Reuters | Gavin Maguire Is The Global Energy Transition Columnist. He Was Previously Asia Commodities | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

HOMES RULEA key driver behind America's outsized electricity consumption is the preference for single family homes over all other types of residences. For many in the United States, owning your own home is a key part of the so-called American Dream. According to the EIA's latest Residential Energy Consumption Survey 57% of electricity used by detached households is used for space heating, and 64% for air conditioning. OTHER WAYS OF LIVINGThe United States is not alone in facing rising living costs while trying to improve the efficiencies of buildings. Similarly, a vast majority of China's population lives in apartments, and apartments are more popular than individual houses in the cities of India, Japan and Southeast Asia.

☆ Supreme Court gifts Big Tech best kind of boring
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters Breakingviews) - American tech giants have two new things to celebrate, and one less thing to worry about. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously protected Twitter from being sued for militant-group content on its platform. Together, the rulings reinforce internet platforms’ legal shield and kick a regulatory crackdown further down the road. With the Supreme Court siding in their favor, Big Tech can breathe a sigh of relief. The Supreme Court ruling leaves that debate stuck in Congress, exactly where tech giants want it.

☆ High-stakes game of keeping secrets on Wall Street
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Citadel Securities' trading strategies? Look no further than a recently filed lawsuit by Citadel Securities against two former employees, per Bloomberg. The suit, which you can read here, alleges the former employees were building a competing high-frequency trading firm while still employed and used trade secrets gained while at Citadel Securities. Portofino told Bloomberg that the Citadel Securities lawsuit was "corporate bullying" and that it would defend itself. On the one hand, trading firms invest a lot of money — check out some salary ranges here — in developing these strategies.

Meta's ad business has been rebuilt since Apple's ATT update threatened its ability to make money. Many of Meta's top execs left and are now building ad platforms for companies like Reddit and Snap. Below are some prominent former Meta ad execs who recently left, and where they've ended up. This time last year, Meta's ad business was on the brink. But today, Meta's ad business is back on the upswing, as the company has delved into AI to replace the consumer data that powered its lucrative ad targeting and measurement capabilities.

☆ In Battle Over A.I., Meta Decides to Give Away Its Crown Jewels
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Cade Metz | Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As a race to lead A.I. heats up across Silicon Valley, Meta is standing out from its rivals by taking a different approach to the technology. Driven by its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta believes that the smartest thing to do is share its underlying A.I. Google, OpenAI and others have been critical of Meta, saying an unfettered open-source approach is dangerous. “We want to think more carefully about giving away details or open sourcing code” of A.I.

☆ Debt ceiling threat: Time to take this political football off the field
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

In theory, the debt ceiling should act as a fiscal restraint during the budgeting process. Deciding later not to pay the bills by not raising the debt ceiling is not sound fiscal policy. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, a Republican, has said the debt ceiling is counterproductive. And the CEO of the nation’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon turns visibly frustrated at the subject of the debt ceiling. KPMG Chief Economist Diane Swonk says the politicization of the debt ceiling has weakened America.

☆ Say goodbye to the US car market as we know it: Cheap Chinese EVs are coming
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Nora Naughton | Tim Levin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

After years of eyeing the American market, Chinese brands are poised to arrive. After years of preparation, Chinese car companies are poised to upend the US electric-vehicle market. Chinese EV manufacturers can gain a foothold in the US by coming in at a budget price point, analysts said. "I've driven a number of the Chinese EV brands, and boy oh boy, the Europeans are in trouble." The sheer size of the US car market means new entrants will need to build locally to compete seriously in the long term, he said.

☆ WHO warns against bias, misinformation in using AI in healthcare
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

May 16 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization called for caution on Tuesday in using artificial intelligence for public healthcare, saying data used by AI to reach decisions could be biased or misused. The WHO said it was enthusiastic about the potential of AI but had concerns over how it will be used to improve access to health information, as a decision-support tool and to improve diagnostic care. The WHO said in a statement the data used to train AI may be biased and generate misleading or inaccurate information and the models can be misused to generate disinformation. It was "imperative" to assess the risks of using generated large language model tools (LLMs), like ChatGPT, to protect and promote human wellbeing and protect public health, the U.N. health body said. Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Nick MacfieOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

El Niño hasn’t even landed yet. That hasn’t stopped it from moving commodity markets around the world. The hard-to-predict climate pattern, when powerful, can usher in intense drought or rainfall, upend output from the world’s breadbasket regions, and whipsaw the prices of commodities. Brazilian sugar producers, American grain farmers and international traders are bracing for the phenomenon. But the cyclical shift in ocean temperatures can just as easily be a dud.

The unboxed assembly process is intended to enable Tesla to hit that ambitious price target. Several big questions loom: What sort of impact will Tesla's process have on the auto industry overall? Body panels are painted separately, then joined together toward the end of the assembly process. If everything works as planned, the unboxed process could rewrite the industry's standard playbook and practices. Oba worked previously for the Toyota Production System Support Center, a division that helps the automaker's suppliers and others implement TPS.

☆ Goldman Sachs CIO says it's important to decide who in a firm to 'superhumanize' with AI technology
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-11 | by ( Paige Hagy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Goldman Sachs' Marco Argenti told a conference how he assesses AI's return on investment. Firms can use AI to "superhumanize" talent, Argenti said. The top financial services firms, like Goldman Sachs, are looking to use artificial intelligence to "superhumanize" their talent. Generative artificial-intelligence will enhance productivity and efficiency across financial services, according to Marco Argenti, chief information officer at Goldman Sachs. Within Goldman Sachs, Argenti said the bank is looking to apply generative AI to data management, data classification, and workflow creation.

☆ Joe Biden’s dreadful poll
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Opinion Geoff Duncan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —There’s no other way to slice it: Donald Trump is the clear GOP White House frontrunner for 2024. His reelection is not out of the question, given President Joe Biden’s dreadful showing in recent opinion polls. Geoff Duncan — APThe political world was rocked by the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll pegging Biden’s approval rating at a jaw-dropping 36%, a new low point for his presidency. Even polls that haven’t been quite as dire for Biden, like CNN’s Poll of Polls, showed his average approval at 40%, with 55% disapproving. The 2022 election results proved that the GOP cannot simply rely on Biden’s vulnerabilities while ignoring Trump’s.

☆ Digital health faces the same hurdle as fintech: Get profitable or get lost.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Digital health, once the darling of the healthcare industry, is having a tough go of it. After a pandemic-fueled surge when health services and offerings utilizing tech were prioritized, digital health has come back down to earth. The similarities between digital health and fintech are striking. For both fintechs and digital health, this year has served as a reminder that they're only partly tech companies. Click here for predictions from 16 bankers and dealmakers on the future of digital health.

☆ Don't look now, but Wall Street bonuses are already trending in the wrong direction
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Wall Street, I'm sorry to say your 2023 bonus is already on some shaky ground. I realize we're not even halfway through the year, but after an awful first quarter, bonuses in plenty of areas of finance are trending in the wrong direction. It's a mixed bag, with some areas trending toward a double-digit percentage increase over 2022, while others are heading the opposite way. If that isn't a certainty, you can bet people, especially those earlier in their career, will look for greener pastures. Six of the largest European and US oil companies have a combined nearly $160 billion in cash and cash equivalents on their balance sheets, The Wall Street Journal reports.

☆ I tried of the best AI productivity tools for a week to make my job easier. Here are the 2 I've kept using, and the 2 that made my life harder.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Labor experts agree that AI tools can make workers more productive. Insider's Aaron Mok tested 4 AI tools for a week to see if they can boost productivity. AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT have taken the world by storm — and workers are using them to make their jobs easier. Many experts agree that AI tools can boost productivity, and people have already used ChatGPT and other AI tools to generate articles, write code, and produce real estate listings in attempts to save time. AI tools will not do your job, but they can make it easier if you spend time learning how to use themAfter playing with these tools for a week, I realized that there's a learning curve.

☆ Google plans to upgrade search with AI chat, video clips- WSJ
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

May 6 (Reuters) - Google is planning to make its search engine more "visual, snackable, personal, and human," with a focus on serving young people globally, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing documents. The move comes as artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as ChatGPT are rapidly gaining in popularity, highlighting a technology that could upend the way businesses and society operate. At its annual I/O developer conference in the coming week, Google is expected to debut new features that allow users to carry out conversations with an AI program, a project code-named "Magi," WSJ added, citing people familiar with the matter. Google, part of Alphabet Inc., did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Kim CoghillOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Twitter’s Blue Check Marks Become Polarizing Symbol of Elon Musk’s Tenure
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Alexa Corse | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Elon Musk’s move to upend Twitter’s longstanding verification system is turning the platform’s iconic blue check marks into a polarizing symbol of his leadership for some of Twitter’s most prominent users. In the two weeks since Twitter began removing the check marks from legacy verified users, reactions have ranged from some users saying they are happy to say goodbye to the check marks and mocking those who purchased them to others saying the subscription features are worth buying.

And so whenever I get one of those notifications, I know I’m going to have a good time there. kevin roose[LAUGHS]: I actually don’t think I could’ve told you what IBM stood for. kevin rooseSo I’ve thought a lot and written a lot about how and when AI actually is a threat to jobs. The third category is just the jobs that I think are going to be protected, the jobs that we won’t let AI do. But I don’t actually think the speed of it matters at all.

☆ The Next Fear on A.I.: Hollywood’s Killer Robots Become the Military’s Tools
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( David E. Sanger | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But at the Pentagon and the National Security Council, there was a second agenda: arms control. If the Chinese military cannot get the chips, the theory goes, it may slow its effort to develop weapons driven by artificial intelligence. That would give the White House, and the world, time to figure out some rules for the use of artificial intelligence in sensors, missiles and cyberweapons, and ultimately to guard against some of the nightmares conjured by Hollywood — autonomous killer robots and computers that lock out their human creators. Now, the fog of fear surrounding the popular ChatGPT chatbot and other generative A.I. software has made the limiting of chips to Beijing look like just a temporary fix.

☆ UK reviews AI models as rapid growth fuels safety concerns
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Paul Sandle | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Governments around the world are now trying to find a balance whereby they can assess and rein in some of the potential negative consequences of AI without stifling innovation. Britain in March opted to split regulatory responsibility for AI between those bodies that oversee human rights, health and safety, and competition, rather than creating a new body dedicated to the technology. CMA CEO Sarah Cardell said in a statement that AI had burst into the public consciousness and was developing at speed. The review in Britain echoes investigations taking place around the world, from Beijing to Brussels and Washington. Italy, a G7 member, took ChatGPT offline last month to investigate its potential breach of personal data rules.

☆ Fintech Finix is now a payments processor. The startup's CEO details how it wants to upend the industry and take on industry giants like Fiserv and FIS.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Paige Hagy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Finix is now a payments processor, Insider has learned. The financial-technology startup is now a payments processor in addition to being a payments facilitator, Insider has learned. By becoming a payments processor, Finix is reducing the number of third-parties in a given transaction as it looks to compete against legacy processors such as Fiserv and FIS. As a processor, Finix can own yet another portion of the payments' lifecycle. And while a legacy processor can take up to 24 hours to test new code, Finix takes 30 minutes.

☆ Wells Fargo is pushing for quantity over quality in its private bank
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Which brings us to a fantastic story about Wells Fargo's decision to reorganize how it serves its ultra-rich clients. And while many understood some changes were necessary, nearly everyone agreed the bank didn't go about it the right way. Read more about Wells Fargo's chaotic reorganization of its private bank. It's the latest move in what has been an active 12 months for the bank's tech division. The accounting firm had signed off on financial statements from Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic, the Financial Times reports.

☆ See the 14-slide presentation an AI-powered startup used to raise $25 million to upend pharmaceutical marketing
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Yeji Jesse Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

An AI-powered startup called Odaia is looking to change that by providing real-time data analysis. That's according to Philip Poulidis, a cofounder and the CEO of an AI-powered startup called Odaia. Odaia said on Monday that it had raised a $25 million Series B round led by Threshold Ventures and Monograph Capital. ODAIAFounded in 2018, Odaia helps pharmaceutical sales and marketing teams plan their strategies and product launches through a tool that offers data analysis and market forecasts. Odaia removed financial details from the pitch deck it used to raise its Series B round before sharing the presentation with Insider.

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