The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

Four-week fever  

Another week passes and the pace of AI development shows no sign of slowing down. Just ask the four-week-old French startup, Mistral AI, that raised $113 million in its seed funding round to directly challenge OpenAI in the building and training of large language models. Mistral CEO, Arthur Mensch aims to tackle what he sees as the biggest challenge in AI development: actually “making AI useful.” With an influx of investments and ground-breaking advancements on the horizon, the quest for practical and impactful AI solutions is more vibrant than ever.   

AI Discrimination threats  

As Mistral AI works to make AI useful, EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager signals AI discrimination as a more immediate threat to humanity than our possible extinction, as reported by the Guardian. While the nauseating pace of AI development has a role to play in this, the overarching fear of the end of humanity seems to be overshadowing the more immediate risk AI poses. Vestager recognises that while there are ‘existential risks from advances in AI,’ we need to look at how AI will impact our ability to ‘access social services’ or ‘mortgage applications’ if computers are processing and making decisions based on “your gender, your colour, or your postal code.” This risk is also acknowledged by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was urged by AI ethics fellow Dr Mhairi Aitken to “include evidence from impacted communities”, according to the Mirror.  

EU closer to leading the charge on AI regulation  

All this talk about regulation and disallowing Silicon Valley heads to lead the charge has brought the EU one step closer to ‘passing one of world’s first laws governing AI’ reports The Guardian.  

London Tech Week wraps up  

Moreover, with London Tech Week wrapped up, a few points to note include Prime Minister Sunak recognising the need for safety and AI regulation by disclosing the UK AI policy will involve UK researchers and AI companies partnering to ensure that new developments are being developed in a safe manner. 

On the other hand, Labour Leader Keir Starmer questioned the UK Government’s ‘light touch’ stance on AI, pleading for a AI regulation to be fast tracked as well as backed by legislation, reports Tech Monitor.  

Forever young with AI?  

Want to be forever young? A recent study conducted by the University of Edinburgh, with AI assistance, has led to the discovery of three drugs that could assist in halting the effects of ageing and diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s, as reported by Sky News. In an effort to identify specific chemicals, a machine learning model was trained to sift through data from over 2,500 chemical structures that had already been discovered and identify which drugs have the potential to be utilised to halt ageing and related diseases in future.  

The legend lives on  

In other news, the legend lives on with AI being able to ‘extricate’ John Lennon’s vocals for the release of an upcoming track, said former bandmate Paul McCartney to the BBC. 

While this essentially allows the legend to live on, there is, of course, a moral element to consider on whether it’s ethical for the music industry to extract voices of artists who have passed away.   

Paul himself summed it up quite well on BBC’s Today programme:  

“There is a good side to it and then a scary side, and we’ll just have to see where that leads.”