Hub AI and society

Artificial Intelligence is a key technology that can help us solve major societal challenges such as climate change, energy supply, healthcare, education or logistics. AI can solve specific problems more effectively by supporting us in decision-making, automating solutions and thus scaling them, or discovering completely new solutions. But the use of AI also poses new risks, for example when it comes to surveillance or questions of social justice.

What is our society doing with AI – and what is AI doing to our society? We shed light on this question in our AI and Society Content Hub.

AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

AI and society

Meta's human-like chatbot personas can mislead users and result in real-world harm

AI and society

US think tank warns of "reverse brain drain" in China's AI sector

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AI and society
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Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery have filed a lawsuit in California against Chinese company Minimax. The studios accuse Minimax of using their copyrighted characters, including Darth Vader, the Minions, and Wonder Woman, to promote its AI service Hailuo AI and generate content.

According to the complaint, Minimax ignored requests to add safeguards that other AI platforms typically use to prevent copyright violations. The studios argue that Minimax actively encouraged infringement by treating their characters as if they were its own property. They are seeking damages and an injunction to stop the service from operating without protections in place.

This case follows earlier actions against Midjourney. Disney and Universal filed suit in June, and Warner Bros. launched its own complaint in September.

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Google plans to invest 5 billion pounds (about 6.78 billion US dollars) in AI infrastructure and other projects in the UK over the next two years, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The company says the funds will also support energy supply, research, engineering, and workforce training. At the same time, Google has opened a new data center north of London to meet the growing demand for services like Cloud, Maps, Workspace, and Search.

Other US tech giants are also ramping up their investments across Europe. Oracle has announced 3 billion dollars for projects in Germany and the Netherlands, Microsoft is putting 4.75 billion dollars into Italy, and Amazon is making multi-billion dollar investments in cloud and logistics centers in Germany and Spain. OpenAI is moving ahead with a major European project as well, called "Stargate Norway."

WSJ
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According to Bloomberg, Chinese regulators say Nvidia violated conditions of its 2020 acquisition of Mellanox.

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announced Monday that the deal had been approved only on the condition that Nvidia would not discriminate against Chinese firms. The agency now claims Nvidia failed to comply. The original approval was granted during trade talks between the US and China in Madrid. Nvidia’s stock slipped about 2 percent in premarket trading after the news.

At the same time, Beijing launched an anti-dumping investigation into US-made semiconductors from companies including Texas Instruments. The move comes against the backdrop of US restrictions on the export of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China. Regulators did not say what new penalties Nvidia might face.

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OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor sees strong echoes between today's AI boom and the dotcom era.

"I think there are a lot of parallels to the internet bubble," Taylor said in a conversation with The Verge. "If you look at the internet, some of the world's biggest companies like Amazon and Google came out of it. At the same time, a lot of big failures like Pets.com and Webvan happened right alongside them. Both existed together - massive winners and dramatic losses."

For Taylor, the key point is that AI will reshape the global economy in the same way the internet did, but it's also going to produce plenty of failed bets. "I think it's absolutely true both at once - that AI will transform the economy, and that we're in a bubble where a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money."

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Tencent has hired AI researcher Shunyu Yao away from OpenAI, according to Bloomberg citing people familiar with the matter. At the Shenzhen-based tech giant, Yao is expected to work on integrating artificial intelligence into Tencent's existing services. Before joining Tencent, he spent time at Google and Princeton University, focusing his research on AI agents. Chinese media speculated that his compensation package could be worth more than 100 million yuan, roughly $14 million. Tencent dismissed the figure on its official WeChat channel, calling it a rumor, but didn't provide further details. Neither OpenAI nor Yao has commented. His departure comes during an intense race for AI talent, one that has recently escalated with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg offering payouts that reportedly reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Google News

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AI in practice

OpenAI suddenly remembers that copyright law exists after a few days of wild Sora videos

AI in practice
Update

OpenAI unveils Sora 2 video model with realistic physics, high-quality audio, and a new social app

AI in practice

Deepmind says video models for visual tasks could become what LLMs are for text tasks

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