AI & Society Articles - The Batch

Nuclear power plant cooling towers emitting steam into the sky.

Tech & Society

AI Giants Go Nuclear: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft bet on nuclear power to meet AI energy demands

Major AI companies plan to meet the growing demand with nuclear energy.

Graph showing global warming with and without aerosol injection.

Letters

To Fight Climate Change, It’s Time to Consider Geoengineering: Hurricanes Helene and Milton took hundreds of lives, not to mention other disasters driven by climate change. Stratospheric aerosol injection could save countless lives.

To Fight Climate Change, It's Time to Consider Geoengineering

LLM leaderboard with Chinese models rising in ranks.

Tech & Society

A Year of Contending Forces: State of AI report highlights 2024’s major trends and breakthroughs

A new report documents the interplay of powerful forces that drove AI over the past year: open versus proprietary technology, public versus private financing, innovation versus caution.

Several legal documents from the Federal Trade Commission are spread out on a wooden surface.

Business

U.S. Cracks Down on AI Apps That Overpromise, Underdeliver: U.S. Federal Trade Commission launches Operation AI Comply to tackle deceptive business practices

The United States government launched Operation AI Comply, targeting businesses whose uses of AI allegedly misled customers.

Design layout of Sedenak Data Centre Park, Malaysia.

Business

Malaysia’s Data Center Boom: Malaysia emerges as an AI and cloud computing hub, drawing billions in investment

Malaysia’s location, natural resources, and investor-friendly government are perfect for data centers, turning part of the country into an AI-fueled boomtown.

Collage of various images featuring a baseball player, movie scenes, portraits, landscapes, and diverse wildlife.

Tech & Society

German Court Says LAION Didn’t Violate Copyrights: LAION wins copyright case in Germany

A German court dismissed a copyright lawsuit against LAION, the nonprofit responsible for large-scale image datasets used to train Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and other image generators.

Three people, Jeff Dean, Andrew Ng, and Geoff Hinton, stand together at Hinton’s retirement party.

Letters

Nobel Prizes for AI!: Nobel committees for physics and chemistry honored AI researchers. How can the AI community itself can celebrate the next generation of innovators?

Congratulations to Geoff Hinton and John Hopfield for winning the 2024 Physics Nobel Prize!

California Senate Bill 1047 with a large veto stamp on top of the document.

Letters

A Victory for Innovation and Open Source: California’s governor vetoed SB 1047, which would have hurt innovation without making anyone safer. Now let’s work on mitigating AI’s real risks and realizing its potential benefits.

We won! California’s anti-innovation bill SB 1047 was vetoed by Governor Newsom over the weekend.

Global leaders discuss Responsible AI in the military at the REAIM 2023 summit in The Hague, Netherlands.

Tech & Society

International Guidelines for Military AI: Global coalition endorses blueprint for AI’s military use

Dozens of countries endorsed a “blueprint for action” designed to guide the use of artificial intelligence in military applications.

A dynamic GIF featuring erupting volcanoes, a reindeer in the snow, animated fuzzy creatures, and a close-up of a human eye.

Tech & Society

Generative Video in the Editing Suite: Adobe integrates AI video generation into Premiere Pro

Adobe is putting a video generator directly into its popular video editing application.

Flags of the United States and California Republic waving together in the wind.

Tech & Society

California Restricts Deepfakes: California enacts laws to regulate deepfakes in politics and entertainment

California, a jurisdiction that often influences legislators worldwide, passed a slew of new laws that regulate deepfakes.

Coursera Connect event in Las Vegas, September 2024, featuring Andrew Ng and Coursera executives during panel discussions.

Letters

AI Innovations for Learners: How generative AI is changing education

Last week I spoke at Coursera Connect, the company’s annual conference in Las Vegas, where a major topic was AI and education.