Unit ⑧ Letter #20231
We finally decided to open up to our wider network and share a selection of our resources with our colleagues and followers. 🦾
Dear Unit ⑧ friends,
We have been internally exchanging readings for a while, sharing links we find relevant for our development as a small organisation, looking for meaningful directions to head to, and thriving to know what is cracking in the realm of technology from a technological, political, ethical and artistic point of view. We finally decided to open up to our wider network and share a selection of our resources with our colleagues and followers, and hopefully generate discussion, knowledge exchange and ideas. Here are 5 links to some articles we paid attention to this week, covering topics from data regulations to the combination of blockchain and AI technologies. We hope you enjoy them! ♡
🗯 OpenAI Drama
Last Friday, OpenAI’s board fired its CEO Sam Altman, also the founder of ChatGPT. Altman was hired by Microsoft right away, and so was his colleague and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman. Meanwhile, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear was appointed at OpenAi to replace Altman. However, when most of the team threatened to leave following his departure, Altman got rehired by OpenAI. After a fair amount of back and forth, the news that he would rejoin OpenAi reached the public on Tuesday evening. There will probably be new information released in the next few days, but for now, these are two relevant articles — FT and AI Supremacy Substack summarising the course of events.
♤ Decentralised social networks
Sarah Perez reports for Tech Crunch that Mozilla has developed a social network based on Mastodon, which is interconnected with other platforms through the Diverse Network, part of which aims to prevent toxic speech and increment users’ security and trust, through “strict measures around hate speech, impersonation, self-harm, harassment, misinformation, violent and sexualised content, and more, in addition to illegal content.” So far, they are using Mastodon to grow their community.
♢ Propaganda or Science
If someone would like to create a weapon, they have all the information already available on how to do it online. This information is accessible to any AI and also to the general public, meaning that the creation of risky material is available for any person or entity with the motivation to perpetrate some damage. Then, why be so scared about the potential of AI to invent damaging tools? In their blog, 1a3orn authors critique a policy paper advocating the ban of open-source LLMs due to bioweapon risks, while questioning the existent evidence around them. In their mind, this evidence is too weak and has been reported in a propagandistic fashion. 1a3orn thus advocates for a need for balanced policy discussions, considering the benefits of open-source AI.
♤♢ AI + Blockchain
VC Danny Sursock believes that crypto middleware can establish efficient markets for computing and data, as well as tools for privacy. Through it, it can improve inputs across the supply side of AI. Decentralised applications and protocols will reach new heights as ML capabilities get integrated into smart contracts and brought on-chain. In his article, Sursock describes the potential that Generative AI may be crypto’s missing link to transform UI/UX while catalysing technical development. On its end, blockchain should harness, contextualise, and accelerate AI’s potential. Former Tesla AI engineer and current deep learning and computer vision engineer at OpenAI, Andrej Karpathy, summarised the sentiment around decentralisation in AI in a tweet; a sentiment that has become even more palpable after the weekend drama around OpenAI’s governance.
♢ The Digital Services Act and Palestinian Digital Rights
For Tech Policy Press, Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal discusses the consequences of the Digital Services Act (DSA) regarding the silencing and “potentially adverse implications” of marginalised communities, especially voices solidarising with the Palestinian cause and current civilian attacks they are suffering. Olazábal is the EU Advocacy Officer at 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media.
♤ Crypto and Hamas
News has been circulating about the possibility of crypto funding behind Hamas, especially in an article published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). In his Cryptobriefing article, Ben Shiller quotes Nic Carter’s and Chainlink’s debunking of this theory. Despite the lack of plausible data, the news has encouraged the US Congress to enforce more measures to cancel cryptocurrencies and weaken its reputation even more.
♢ EU’s AI Act negotiations hit the brakes over foundation models
Luca Bertuzzi from Euractiv.com looks at the policy regulation process in the EU after ChatGPT, a chatbot based on OpenAI’s powerful GPT-4 model, has risen in popularity. Foundation models have become the sticking point in this late phase of the negotiations. The tiered approach that has been proposed and originally consecrated has faced opposition from large European countries such as France, Germany and Italy, who have pushed against any type of regulation for foundation models.
☞ Unit ⑧ Blog
In our last blog post, The State of the Art of AI Regulations, we list the most relevant iterations in the EU, UK, US congress, UN, China, and more, in order to find meaningful ways to keep AI technology safe.
☞ Unit ⑧ Hackathon
Last but not least, Ape Unit’s Dacade will host an AI x Web3 Hackathon in collaboration with ICP. Following their bet on decentralisation’s potential, ICP just announced a partnership to let LLMs run in a decentralised way.