The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

It’s been another rollercoaster week for Artificial Intelligence, with the AI race, AI interviewers, AI image rendering and autonomous ships all making the headlines.

Here’s your SEC Newgate AI Weekly.

Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing AI secrets

The BBC reported that a former Google software engineer was charged in the US with stealing trade secrets.

The former Google employee, Linwei Ding, faces up to 10 years in prison for each of the four charges. Mr Ding is alleged to have uploaded information relating to the infrastructure of Google's supercomputing data centres, which are used to host and train large AI models, to a personal computer, while secretly working for two Chinese companies.

With the US and China streets ahead of other countries in terms of AI investment, it could be that we’re seeing a new AI race emerge between the two nations.

Switzerland leads in Generative AI growth potential

In a new report by PwC, one of the world’s largest professional services companies, Switzerland was identified as the country with the highest generative AI growth potential in a best-case scenario.

This is not because Switzerland leads in AI investment, but because of the types of industries that dominate the Swiss economy, namely: technology, software, media, pharmaceutical and financial companies.

These sectors are likely to see strong benefits from generative AI development, leaving Switzerland in an enviable position to enhance its GDP through uptake of the new technology.

Computer says “no!”

The Guardian reported that an increasing number of employers are using AI technology to sift through job applicants.

The technology is being used to conduct both phone and online interviews to whittle down candidates before the select few are interviewed by a human. For many, they will never get past the Artificial Intelligence.

But before employers truly get the upper hand, AI technology like Final Round AI is also being used as an interview co-pilot, where AI listens to an interviewer’s questions and then prompts answers for the interviewee, based on their CV. 

With Artificial Intelligence interviewing AI-prompted interviewees the future for recruiting looks… interesting.

Phone cameras get an extra dimension

Cameras in phones have come a long way in the past few years, with some even giving true cinema cameras a run for their money. But until now camera phones have been confined to 2 dimensions.

That is set to change as new AI technology will allow phone users to create 3D images through a new technique called Proximity Attention Point Rendering (PAPR). PAPR will see AI turn a set of 2D photos into a cloud of 3D points that can bring an object to life in 3 dimensions.

It’s an AI life for me

Driverless cars have received a lot of attention in recent years, with much debate of the ethics of schemes like the AI driven Waymo taxis already on the road in San Francisco.

But this week the BBC drew attention to the increasing number of vessels at sea that have no sailors onboard.

Many of these vessels are being remotely controlled by humans that are hundreds of miles away, others are operating autonomously through AI.

The BBC noted examples in Norway, Belgium, and Japan, where autonomous ships were navigating between destinations, as well as in China, where big, autonomous container ships are sailing between coastal cities.