EP 64: Big Tech and US Government Reach Agreement on AI

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How will the new agreement between Big Tech and the United States Government affect us all? That's one of the questions that we're going to be talking about today on Everyday AI. This is your daily livestream, podcasts and free daily newsletter helping everyday people like you and me not just learn what's going on in the world of AI, but how we can actually leverage it. All right, so before we get started and as a reminder, if you are joining us live, please jump in, ask a question. It's just going to be you and I talking about this big news today. So please let's talk about it together. And as a reminder, if you are listening to us on the podcast, check the show notes not just for some super helpful links, but also we'll link back to so you can join future live streams. It's always best to learn together. So before we talk about some of those things, actually I'm going to go ahead and plug one thing because I can. It's my show so I can. I can plug things. So we haven't talked about this too much on the show, but as a reminder, go to the your everydayai.com homepage. Don't just sign up for the newsletter while you're there. Also sign up for our contest because we're going to be giving away six months of ChatGPT plus and one on one training. So if you haven't done that already, please make sure to do it. So before we talk about this big kind of AI and government kind of marriage, let's first talk about what's going on in the world of AI news. It's something that we do every single weekday, Monday through Friday, 7:30am Central Standard Time. So the first thing though, it's actually a very useful resource that we're going to be putting out in the newsletter today. But Forbes has a great article breaking down the difference between generative AI and more of traditional AI. So you know, for the most part we talk about generative AI on the show and that definition is kind of ever changing. So make sure that you check out that article in the newsletter next. New Axios report shows that essentially the whole AI boom is happening in four states. We can all kind of assume that California is one of them, right? Goes without saying. But what are the other three? Make sure to check that out in the newsletter. Couple, couple big companies making some big Announcements. So first, Twitter, the, the social media app that most of us know and love is not Twitter anymore. It's actually just called X. So this is interesting. And yes, this is social media news, but it's also a little bit AI news as well. Here's why. So Elon Musk has said that, yes, Twitter will be called X. He's already unveiled the new logo and they're going to be getting rid of all the traditional Twitter references, apparently. But what's important here to think is this is also Elon Musk, his kind of push to move everything under one umbrella, which is X or X AI. So we'll see how the X AI project that Elon Musk announced to kind of compete with OpenAI and kind of X the, the new Twitter name. We'll see how those two things relate to each other, or if they do at all. Another big one. Speaking of big names. So Sam Altman, the kind of head person in charge at OpenAI, has officially unveiled his Worldcoin project. So this is a Universal Basic Income project, so why is that important? And what does it have to do with AI, aside from the fact that it's. It's from OpenAI's founder, Sam Altman. Well, here's what it is. And I've referenced this two or three times on the show before. So in an interview probably about three months ago, three or four months ago, when kind of chatgpt was really surging. One thing that Sam Altman said in the interview that he was worried about with ChatGPT was disinformation and economic shock. So, you know, it's kind of coincidental maybe not that Sam Altman is also pushing the World Coin Universal Basic Income project when he's talking about how the GPT technology and AI in general might create some economic shock. So it's something definitely to keep an eye on. All right, so not just that much more today in our free daily newsletter. So make sure you go check that out at your everyday AI dot com. Kind of have it up on the screen here. Go join the joint. Go join our newsletter. It's every single day. We put a ton of work into it. So make sure to check that out. All right, so let's talk about the kind of main event. Here it is, the tech giants of the world meeting with the White House and President Joe Biden to talk about AI. So as a reminder, this broke kind of late Friday morning, actually right before our show. So we kind of did a split show on Friday. We talked about on the half front, we talked about how Apple was releasing essentially their kind of chat GPT. So Apple GPT as some people are calling it, or Ajax. So that is rumored to be dropping in 2024 and it's a pretty big deal because it will bring whatever it ends up looking like. So whether it is a smarter Siri, whether we're chatting by default with Siri on our iPhones, it doesn't matter. But the, the reason why that's a big deal is it's be it's going to bring the GBT technology or AI technology to 2 billion devices. So I think it is going to completely change how we work with our devices. But at the last second kind of this, this news broke of the seven kind of big tech companies reaching an agreement with the Biden White House. So we gave it kind of split treatment on Friday but we're going to give it exclusive treatment for the rest of our show today. So let's talk about this and if you're joining us live first of all, welcome drop a comment Rastafa thank you for joining us Jupiter. Great to have you. But let's talk about what this means first and foremost. This is not legislation. This is not technically even regular like government regulation. This is a voluntary pledge from kind of presidents and CEOs of seven companies. This is essentially an informal agreement with the White House. So that's something super important to keep in mind. This is not a law, this is not regulation, this is not even real governance yet. So let's break it down and let's talk about who was there and what they agreed to. And also let's talk about who wasn't there. I thought that was pretty interesting. So the big companies that were in tenants was OpenAI Anthropic, which has their Cloud, Cloud 2 chatbot, Google Inflection which has their chat as well, Microsoft Meta and Amazon Web Services. So it wasn't, you know, Amazon. So why did I even make that differentiation? Because there's a couple big names that you would expect to be there that weren't. So a lot of companies maybe sent their second person in charge. So notably missing from this important meeting, Google's CEO Sundar Puchai Mata's Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI's Sam Altman. So it was kind of interesting to me and I'd love if you are joining us live, let me know your take on that. You know, if you're meeting with the President of the United States. Yes, all these companies have a lot of things going on but this was a somewhat closed door session so President Biden kind of made some open remarks with the leaders seated around the table and then the rest of the session was, was closed door. But there was kind of a photo video op kind of of these leaders in the room. So I found it pretty interesting that some of the biggest names were missing. And also, you know, Amazon decided to send their Amazon Web service kind of representative as well. Not amazing. Amazon, the, the parent company. So it was kind of interesting to see who wasn't in the room. Question coming in May, Brit asking was, where was Elon? Yeah, Elon wasn't there. So yeah, no representative from Twitter, obviously. So the, it's, it's actually, it's, it is good to denote that. So this isn't just big tech. These are companies for the most part that right now are leading the push in generative AI. So these are kind of, you know, for the most part, all of the big chats, right? So you have chat GPT, you have Cloud 2, you have Bard, you have PI, you have Bing Chat and then you have Meta, which announced their Llama 2 kind of chat in partnership with Mark Microsoft. So this was all, for the most part, those who are creating the generative AI chats and their representative and then obviously Amazon Web Services, aws, which kind of power, I think most of those platforms are on aws. So it was, yes, interesting that Twitter was not there, right. Even though Elon has his X AI platform and also Apple wasn't there. Right. Obviously those companies have their, have their platforms in development and all of these other kind of companies that were represented there, they have live products, they have products that, you know, millions of people or hundreds of millions of people are already using. So that's probably the reason why, you know, companies like, you know, X or Twitter, Apple were not in attendance just yet because these are all the publicly available chats. All right, so now that we know who was there, who wasn't, and maybe why, let's talk about what these leaders actually talked about and more importantly, what it means for everyday people like you and me. Let's dive in.

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So essentially, and we'll share, you know, this, this article again here that's on the screen. There's plenty of news organizations that pick this up. So one of the big things that came up was self governance, right? And that piece is extremely interesting because aside from this being voluntary, this is more or less these seven companies saying yes, we will do these things. Right? That's the biggest thing. But I'm just going to go through a laundry list of the different things that they included or kind of pledged to do. Right? So internal and internal and external security tests, investing in cybersecurity for GPT and AI, sharing information. So being more publicly, being more public about sharing information with the public and also sharing information with the government. Government. So both how they are obtaining all of this data and how it's actually being used. So a little more transparency. They are pledging to next developing a watermarking system. That one is interesting to me because Google has obviously already announced that they will do that with images. But most of these companies are text, right? OpenAI for the most part text, Anthropic cloud text, Google Bar, they work with some images now same thing with Microsoft, Bing Chat, but for the most part these companies generate text. So I guess there's you know, this pledge or agreement that they will figure out a watermarking system but they did not specify if this is going to be for text because if it is, I'm not sure how that will work because obviously you can copy and paste what you grab out of Chat GPT or what you grab out of Google Bard. You can throw it in any text processor in strip all formatting. Right. So I'm not sure how a watermark would work with text. But you know, that's why these companies get paid the big bucks and we don't. All right, what else did they talk about? Reporting. So reporting about AI systems, about what their actual capabilities and limitations are.

Right.

Because we're always talking about what does chat GPT know, you know, people share all the time how they can jailbreak chat, GPT or other, or other AI chats, which is essentially, you know, companies build all of these AI chats with guardrails, right? And they say, hey, conversations happen between the guardrails for safety, for consistency, for privacy, for all these other reasons, you know, companies build these guardrails, then it's not terribly difficult to, you know, quote unquote, jailbreak these systems and to make them operate outside of the guide rail. So part of this pledge is these companies sharing what the guardrails are and why, right? So again, we'll see how companies adhere to this kind of self regulation, but that is part of it. Also another piece to, to denote here is prioritizing research on risks and biases and privacy. That's another big one that I think a lot of people are rightfully concerned about because that's an issue, right? Something that we don't really keep in mind or talk about very much with these AI chats, when we bring up the fact that, yes, they may be showing bias or, you know, they may be perpetuating stereotypes is, well, all of these AI chats are built from publicly available information on the Internet. And guess what, everyone, the Internet has prejudice, it has stereotypes, right? So if all of these chats are essentially building their foundations on what's publicly available on the Internet, it is naturally going to have biases and stereotypes built into these chats, right? Also, there is real human feedback on these chats. That's how they're built. But also humans have biases, Humans have tendencies that we may not be proud of, right? So that part is tricky and it will be interesting to see how these companies are going to kind of police that, so to speak. So let's talk about what this means. All right, we have a comment from Fabian Molina joining us from Chile. Thank you, Fabian, for joining us. So let's talk about what this means for you and I. Here's, here's the reality. This in the end means nothing, right? This is not actual laws. This is not even real regulation, right? Even when, you know, the two sides are coming to the table and they say, yes, we are voluntary, voluntarily pledging to do all these things to keep our users safe, to, you know, to take responsible steps forward in the development of AI, it doesn't really mean anything, right? I've talked about this on the show all the time. You know, what is the future of governance in AI? This is not it. This isn't it. This is one Step. But more than anything, this is symbolic. This isn't necessarily going to change anything, anything much for users. Right. I think most people refer to right now AI or GPT development as kind of the Wild West. So maybe this is the Wild west with an unofficial sheriff in each town in these seven towns, you know, with OpenAI and anthropic and Google and Inflection and Microsoft Meta, Amazon Web Services. So maybe there's an unofficial sheriff in town and maybe these unofficial sheriffs are having unofficial talks. But this is nothing official in terms of governance, in terms of, of real steps forward in regulation. So why do I bring that up? And we talk about it all the time. Other countries and other parts of the world are taking real steps forward in regulation. You know, specifically the EU has probably been leading this charge in terms of having still the freedom to use all of these systems for the most part, as long as these companies adhere to rules. So the EU has kind of been pushing with their first major draft of proposed legislation, real legislation. Right. You know, and may Brit here saying, totally. I do think it builds trust with the eu, for example, perhaps it's a strategy to, to encourage the use of AI. Absolutely. So let me talk at least here in the us Why I think if nothing else, this was very symbolic and it wasn't anything real, it wasn't anything with teeth. And I don't think anything with teeth is going to be coming anytime soon. Here's why, number one, the overwhelming majority of Congress people, of US Senators here in the US do not understand how the Internet works. Right? There's, there's definitely exceptions, right? There's, there's very intelligent people running our country. There's, there's already been some, some proposals that have gone to committee in terms of AI governance, but nothing that is far reaching or nothing that is encapsulating. It's very small pieces. You know, one was, you know, kind of AI surveillance in the workplace that went to a committee. But there's been nothing about the overall governance or the overall regulation of AI, of GPT technology. And probably the biggest reason I think is the majority of the people running the US do not understand the Internet, let alone AI or GPT technology. All you need to do is go back and look when big tech, you know, probably two, two years ago, you know, representatives from companies like Google, Facebook were going to testify in front of Congress and the questions that they were receiving clearly, clearly signaled that our government does not understand even the basics of the Internet. Right? So why would we expect them to understand even Even something more complex such as AI, machine learning, deep learning, the GPT technology. We, we shouldn't. So it's probably, if I'm being honest, it's probably for the best right now that this first symbolic step is coming, is coming forward now. Because at least right now I don't think the US is in the, the position to make common sense legislation, real rules regarding AI. We're not there yet. So although this more than anything, it is kind of marketing from both sides. It's marketing from these seven tech companies and it's marketing from the US government to say yes, we are moving forward. We are, you know, coming to a somewhat of an agreement. You know, it's like a handshake agreement. That's all this is. So is that a good thing?

Yes.

Does it mean anything? No. But also is it the right thing to do right now? Probably. Because at least right now I don't think that our lawmakers here in the US have a tight enough grasp on what this technology even means to be able to properly legislate it. All right, we have a comment here coming from Ben. Ben, thank you for writing in saying interesting public show of support for self governance. Sending a number two or delegate makes it easier for leaders to back off or slow walk their commitment. Absolutely, Ben, that's what we talked about at the, at the top of the show, that some of these companies actually any of the big companies, right, the biggest companies in the room there were Google, Mata, Microsoft and technically Amazon through Amazon Web Services and none of them sent their, their head person, they sent maybe their second in charge, you know, kind of some of the smaller companies, you know, anthropic and inflection sent their CEOs I believe. But yes, the big companies, the household names did not send their first person. So yes, they're, they're actual CEO. So that is probably so they can say at some point it's easier for them to, to shift their trajectory. Right. So I'm glad we had this conversation almost twice. Right. So like I said, this, this, this kind of news broke late Friday, literally minutes before we went live. And I think it was important to talk about it on Friday when it first happened and to give you all the chance to ask questions. And you know, we put out some more great information about it in the newsletter, but I think it was important to talk about and to have its own dedicated show today. And here's why this subject is going to constantly be coming up. You know, especially here in the US we, the election cycle coming up, the 2024 election cycle and it's just starting to kick into high gear right now. And there are AI campaign or not AI campaigns, but there's AI commercials, right. Even internally, right. Parties going against each other. You know, I believe it was Ron DeSantis has PAC made a, a commercial using an AI generated voice of former President Donald Trump. So even within the parties, right, because first in the US we have our primary where the top Republican and top Democrat will come out of it. So we haven't even really started in the, in the heat of the election cycle that hasn't even started and we're already seeing AI is grabbing the headlines and we can already see how problematic it's going to be. So that's why I thought it was important to have its own dedicated show because especially here in the US we're going to be talking about AI and deep fakes and GPT technology. You know, when it starts coming to all of our devices or you know, 2 billion Apple devices across the world, we're going to be talking about GPT and AI more and more and more. So yes, this is an ongoing conversation but I think it was an important conversation to add. So as a reminder, thank you so much for joining us today as we talked a little bit about AI and regulation. So if you want to know more, we share every single morning we put out a newsletter recapping not just what we talked about in our show but everything else that's going on in the world of AI. So we, we break down the AI news, we have our fresh finds which is essentially different happenings across the Internet, new AI softwares and tools and a daily tutorial that our team puts together. So please make sure to check that out. Go check out the contest for six free months of chat, GPT plus and free training. So I hope this was helpful to talk about govern kind of this self governance in AI. And I hope to see you back tomorrow and every day with Everyday AI. Thanks.

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