The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

Entertainment and technology clashed this week in the world of AI, alongside some significant development behind the scenes. As the presidential election heats up, Taylor Swift added even more star power to the race by pledging support for Harris, citing major concerns about AI as a driver for her decision. Meanwhile, tech heavy hitters Apple and Open AI shared progress on which should be in consumer’s hands shortly, alongside reports that US trade restrictions on AI chips aren’t sticking.

Last week, it was reported that the cost of renting cloud services using Nvidia’s leading AI chips, is far lower in China than in the US. This is despite US export restrictions which were put in place to limit the supply of GPUs to China, indicating the restrictions are easily being circumvented. Nvidia, the technology company producing graphics processing units widely being used to power AI technology, had an export restrictions placed on their chips to China, Iran and Russia in 2023, citing restrictions on export restrictions to China being the country strengthening its military with the technology. See more here.

Apple announced its latest iPhone, the iPhone 16, to boost sales of its handset. The next generation of iPhones using Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI software, will be used to improve Siri and will help to understand and identify objects captured by the phone camera, the company said. This will mean users can ask complex questions to Siri, isolate specific audio in video, and use richer proofreading tools for emails. The company, which is worth $3tn, has many commentators raising questions about whether it is losing a competitive edge in AI. See more here.

OpenAI has announced that it will launch ‘Strawberry’, a reasoning-focused artificial intelligence, as part of its ChatGPT service in the next two weeks. This service will differ from other conversational AI, because of its ability to “think” before responding, rather than immediately answering a query, according to reports. In effect, ‘Strawberry’ will have the ability to effectively fact-check itself, as reportedly better at programming and maths calculations than existing generative models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o. Businesses will likely be pleased to hear about this focus on accuracy, given increasing frustrations about the limits of generative AI tech. A survey published this week found that 41% of firms exploring generative AI cited inaccuracies as a key concern. See more here.

AI became a significant driver of global politics this week, after the biggest pop start in the world, Taylor Swift, endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Taylor cited AI-generated images of herself endorsing Donald Trump, which were posted on his website, full-throatily taking a stand about AI-generated misinformation, and stating that ‘the simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.’ See more here.