Економіка

Drivers in Malawi are getting an opportunity to purchase electric vehicles through a local startup company. The handful of buyers so far say they no longer have to struggle daily to get fuel at pump stations. Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre.
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Digital officials, tech company bosses and researchers are converging Wednesday at a former codebreaking spy base near London to discuss and better understand the extreme risks posed by cutting-edge artificial intelligence. 

The two-day summit focuses on so-called frontier AI — the latest and most powerful systems that take the technology right up to its limits, but could come with as-yet-unknown dangers. They’re underpinned by foundation models, which power chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard and are trained on vast pools of information scraped from the internet. 

Some 100 people from 28 countries are expected to attend Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s two-day AI Safety Summit, though the British government has refused to disclose the guest list. 

The event is a labor of love for Sunak, a tech-loving former banker who wants the U.K. to be a hub for computing innovation and has framed the summit as the start of a global conversation about the safe development of AI. But Vice President Kamala Harris is due to steal the focus on Wednesday with a separate speech in London setting out the U.S. administration’s more hands-on approach. 

She’s due to attend the summit on Thursday alongside government officials from more than two dozen countries including Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia — and China, invited over the protests of some members of Sunak’s governing Conservative Party. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also scheduled to discuss AI with Sunak in a livestreamed conversation on Thursday night. The tech billionaire was among those who signed a statement earlier this year raising the alarm about the perils that AI poses to humanity. 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and executives from U.S. artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and influential computer scientists like Yoshua Bengio, one of the “godfathers” of AI, are also expected. 

The meeting is being held at Bletchley Park, a former top secret base for World War II codebreakers that’s seen as a birthplace of modern computing. 

One of Sunak’s major goals is to get delegates to agree on a first-ever communique about the nature of AI risks. He said the technology brings new opportunities but warns about frontier AI’s threat to humanity, because it could be used to create biological weapons or be exploited by terrorists to sow fear and destruction. 

Only governments, not companies, can keep people safe from AI’s dangers, Sunak said last week. However, in the same speech, he also urged against rushing to regulate AI technology, saying it needs to be fully understood first. 

In contrast, Harris will stress the need to address the here and now, including “societal harms that are already happening such as bias, discrimination and the proliferation of misinformation.” 

Harris plans to stress that the Biden administration is “committed to hold companies accountable, on behalf of the people, in a way that does not stifle innovation,” including through legislation. 

“As history has shown in the absence of regulation and strong government oversight, some technology companies choose to prioritize profit over: The wellbeing of their customers; the security of our communities; and the stability of our democracies,” she plans to say. 

She’ll point to President Biden’s executive order this week, setting out AI safeguards, as evidence the U.S. is leading by example in developing rules for artificial intelligence that work in the public interest. Among measures she will announce is an AI Safety Institute, run through the Department of Commerce, to help set the rules for “safe and trusted AI.” 

Harris also will encourage other countries to sign up to a U.S.-backed pledge to stick to “responsible and ethical” use of AI for military aims. 

A White House official gave details of Harris’s speech, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss her remarks in advance. 
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The world’s first major summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety opens in Britain Wednesday, with political and tech leaders set to discuss possible responses to the society-changing technology.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will all attend the two-day conference, which will focus on growing fears about the implications of so-called frontier AI.

The release of the latest models has offered a glimpse into the potential of AI, but has also prompted concerns around issues ranging from job losses to cyber-attacks and the control that humans actually have over the systems.

Sunak, whose government initiated the gathering, said in a speech last week that his “ultimate goal” was “to work towards a more international approach to safety where we collaborate with partners to ensure AI systems are safe before they are released.

“We will push hard to agree the first ever international statement about the nature of these risks,” he added, drawing comparisons to the approach taken to climate change.

But London has reportedly had to scale back its ambitions around ideas such as launching a new regulatory body amid a perceived lack of enthusiasm.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is one of the only world leaders, and only one from the G7, attending the conference.

Elon Musk is due to appear, but it is not clear yet whether he will be physically at the summit in Bletchley Park, north of London, where top British codebreakers cracked Nazi Germany’s “Enigma” code.

‘Talking shop’

While the potential of AI raises many hopes, particularly for medicine, its development is seen as largely unchecked.

In his speech, Sunak stressed the need for countries to develop “a shared understanding of the risks that we face.”

But lawyer and investigator Cori Crider, a campaigner for “fair” technology, warned that the summit could be “a bit of a talking shop.

“If he were serious about safety, Rishi Sunak needed to roll deep and bring all of the U.K. majors and regulators in tow and he hasn’t,” she told a press conference in San Francisco.

“Where is the labor regulator looking at whether jobs are being made unsafe or redundant? Where’s the data protection regulator?” she asked.

Having faced criticism for only looking at the risks of AI, the U.K. Wednesday pledged $46 million to fund AI projects around the world, starting in Africa.

Ahead of the meeting, the G7 powers agreed on Monday on a non-binding “code of conduct” for companies developing the most advanced AI systems.

The White House announced its own plan to set safety standards for the deployment of AI that will require companies to submit certain systems to government review.

And in Rome, ministers from Italy, Germany and France called for an “innovation-friendly approach” to regulating AI in Europe, as they urged more investment to challenge the U.S. and China.

China will be present, but it is unclear at what level.

News website Politico reported London invited President Xi Jinping, to signify its eagerness for a senior representative.

Beijing’s invitation has raised eyebrows amid heightened tensions with Western nations and accusations of technological espionage. 

 
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With White House funding to put more electric cars on the road, some states are using the money to build out their part of a fast-charging EV network. Deana Mitchell has the story.
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President Joe Biden on Monday signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence, covering topics as varied as national security, consumer privacy, civil rights and commercial competition. The administration heralded the order as taking “vital steps forward in the U.S.’s approach on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI.”

The order directs departments and agencies across the U.S. federal government to develop policies aimed at placing guardrails alongside an industry that is developing newer and more powerful systems at a pace rate that has many concerned it will outstrip effective regulation.

“To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology,” Biden said during a signing ceremony at the White House. The order, he added, is “the most significant action any government anywhere in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security and trust.” 

‘Red teaming’ for security 

One of the marquee requirements of the new order is that it will require companies developing advanced artificial intelligence systems to conduct rigorous testing of their products to ensure that bad actors cannot use them for nefarious purposes. The process, known as red teaming, will assess, among other things, “AI systems threats to critical infrastructure, as well as chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and cybersecurity risks.” 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology will set the standards for such testing, and AI companies will be required to report their results to the federal government prior to releasing new products to the public. The Departments of Homeland Security and Energy will be closely involved in the assessment of threats to vital infrastructure. 

To counter the threat that AI will enable the creation and dissemination of false and misleading information, including computer-generated images and “deep fake” videos, the Commerce Department will develop guidance for the creation of standards that will allow computer-generated content to be easily identified, a process commonly called “watermarking.” 

The order directs the White House chief of staff and the National Security Council to develop a set of guidelines for the responsible and ethical use of AI systems by the U.S. national defense and intelligence agencies.

Privacy and civil rights

The order proposes a number of steps meant to increase Americans’ privacy protections when AI systems access information about them. That includes supporting the development of privacy-protecting technologies such as cryptography and creating rules for how government agencies handle data containing citizens’ personally identifiable information.

However, the order also notes that the United States is currently in need of legislation that codifies the kinds of data privacy protections that Americans are entitled to. Currently, the U.S. lags far behind Europe in the development of such rules, and the order calls on Congress to “pass bipartisan data privacy legislation to protect all Americans, especially kids.”

The order recognizes that the algorithms that enable AI to process information and answer users’ questions can themselves be biased in ways that disadvantage members of minority groups and others often subject to discrimination. It therefore calls for the creation of rules and best practices addressing the use of AI in a variety of areas, including the criminal justice system, health care system and housing market.

The order covers several other areas, promising action on protecting Americans whose jobs may be affected by the adoption of AI technology; maintaining the United States’ market leadership in the creation of AI systems; and assuring that the federal government develops and follows rules for its own adoption of AI systems.

Open questions

Experts say that despite the broad sweep of the executive order, much remains unclear about how the Biden administration will approach the regulations of AI in practice.

Benjamin Boudreaux, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, told VOA that while it is clear the administration is “trying to really wrap their arms around the full suite of AI challenges and risks,” much work remains to be done.

“The devil is in the details here about what funding and resources go to executive branch agencies to actually enact many of these recommendations, and just what models a lot of the norms and recommendations suggested here will apply to,” Boudreaux said.

International leadership

Looking internationally, the order says the administration will work to take the lead in developing “an effort to establish robust international frameworks for harnessing AI’s benefits and managing its risks and ensuring safety.”

James A. Lewis, senior vice president and director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA that the executive order does a good job of laying out where the U.S. stands on many important issues related to the global development of AI.

“It hits all the right issues,” Lewis said. “It’s not groundbreaking in a lot of places, but it puts down the marker for companies and other countries as to how the U.S. is going to approach AI.”

That’s important, Lewis said, because the U.S. is likely to play a leading role in the development of the international rules and norms that grow up around the technology.

“Like it or not — and certainly some countries don’t like it — we are the leaders in AI,” Lewis said. “There’s a benefit to being the place where the technology is made when it comes to making the rules, and the U.S. can take advantage of that.”

‘Fighting the last war’ 

Not all experts are certain the Biden administration’s focus is on the real threats that AI might present to consumers and citizens. 

Louis Rosenberg, a 30-year veteran of AI development and the CEO of American tech firm Unanimous AI, told VOA he is concerned the administration may be “fighting the last war.”

“I think it’s great that they’re making a bold statement that this is a very important issue,” Rosenberg said. “It definitely shows that the administration is taking it seriously and that they want to protect the public from AI.”

However, he said, when it comes to consumer protection, the administration seems focused on how AI might be used to advance existing threats to consumers, like fake images and videos and convincing misinformation — things that already exist today.

“When it comes to regulating technology, the government has a track record of underestimating what’s new about the technology,” he said.

Rosenberg said he is more concerned about the new ways in which AI might be used to influence people. For example, he noted that AI systems are being built to interact with people conversationally.

“Very soon, we’re not going to be typing in requests into Google. We’re going to be talking to an interactive AI bot,” Rosenberg said. “AI systems are going to be really effective at persuading, manipulating, potentially even coercing people conversationally on behalf of whomever is directing that AI. This is the new and different threat that did not exist before AI.” 
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Elon Musk has said that corrections to posts on X would no longer be eligible for payment as the social network comes under mounting criticism as becoming a conduit for misinformation.

In the year since taking over Twitter, now rebranded as X, Musk has gutted content moderation, restored accounts of previously banned extremists, and allowed users to purchase account verification, helping them profit from viral — but often inaccurate — posts.

Musk has instead promoted Community Notes, in which X users police the platform, as a tool to combat misinformation. 

But on Sunday, Musk tweeted a modification in how Community Notes works.

“Making a slight change to creator monetization: Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share,” he wrote.  

“The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism,” he added. 

X pays content creators whose work generates lots of views a share of advertising revenue. 

Musk warned against using corrections to make X users ineligible for receiving payouts.

“Worth ‘noting’ that any attempts to weaponize @CommunityNotes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious, because all code and data is open source,” he posted.

Musk’s announcement follows the unveiling Friday of a $16-a-month subscription plan that users who pay more get the biggest boost for their replies. Earlier this year it unveiled an $8-a-month plan to get a “verified” account.

A recent study by the disinformation monitoring group NewsGuard found that verified, paying subscribers were the big spreaders of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war. 

“Nearly three-fourths of the most viral posts on X advancing misinformation about the Israel-Hamas War are being pushed by ‘verified’ X accounts,” the group said.

It said the 250 most-engaged posts that promoted one of 10 prominent false or unsubstantiated narratives related to the war were viewed more than 100 million times globally in just one week. 

NewsGuard said 186 of those posts were made from verified accounts and only 79 had been fact-checked by Community Notes. 

Verified accounts “turned out to be a boon for bad actors sharing misinformation,” said NewsGuard.

“For less than the cost of a movie ticket, they have gained the added credibility associated with the once-prestigious blue checkmark and enabling them to reach a larger audience on the platform,” it said.

While the organization said it found misinformation spreading widely on other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Telegram, it added that it found false narratives about the Israel-Hamas war tend to go viral on X before spreading elsewhere. 
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