The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

What’s next… a new tool that takes a screenshot of your laptop every few seconds or the ability to voice-order McDonald's bacon ice cream? Thankfully, neither (anymore). This week has seen some interesting stories emerge in the world of AI. 

Here, take my screenshots, in case I forget something… 

Scheduled to be part of Microsoft Copilot+ and promoted as a tool to help you easily find and remember things, Recall is a “feature that takes screenshots of users’ laptops every few seconds” — what could possibly go wrong there? As with a vast number of AI breakthroughs, the threats posed by cyber criminals are constantly rising and highlight flaws in new tools as soon as they go through testing. This time, Microsoft pulled the new feature, having listened to widespread security concerns that gained media coverage. 

No time to waste for Ilya Sutskever 

The musical chairs of Silicon Valley AI startups continue as Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder, announced a new venture this week, focused on “building safe superintelligence.” The aptly named Safe Superintelligence Inc (SSI) is looking to become a rival to Sam Altman’s OpenAI, according to the FT, which comes just one month after Sutskever’s departure from Open AI after a turbulent time for the researcher. 

Newsrooms — to use AI or not? 

While most people welcome new AI tools that can offer summaries of information and siphon traffic from news websites, a new research report, covered by Reuters, reiterated that consumers are still suspicious about the use of AI in news generation — particularly to do with politics. With many elections taking place around the world this year, consumer audiences seem to be more mistrusting than ever of newsrooms associated with the use of AI.  

Elsewhere… 

I wrote a few months ago about a (somewhat terrifying) film written and created entirely by AI. This week, The Last Screenwriter, conceived by Peter Luisi and created by ChatGPT, was scheduled to be premiered at a prominent London cinema… until it wasn’t. Cancelled due to public backlash, following announcements of the film on social media, the BBC and Evening Standard reported on the cinema’s comments. 

Plans for what would be one of Europe’s largest AI data centres have identified an area in North Lincolnshire — with a horticultural greenhouse, heated using excess heat from the data centre, as a carbon footprint-reducing initiative.  

Finally — the BBC and Sky News covered a story of McDonalds restaurants in the US removing AI-powered technology from its drive-through systems, after some comical mishaps emerged online. “In one video, which has 30,000 views on TikTok, a young woman becomes increasingly exasperated as she attempts to convince the AI that she wants a caramel ice cream, only for it to add multiple stacks of butter to her order”. IBM was named as the AI technology partner in the story, with the fast-food chain adding that it will “continue to evaluate long-term, scalable solutions that will help us make an informed decision on a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year.”