China fights back with its own AI

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will host AI forum

Top leaders from major tech companies, including Google, Tesla, NVIDIA, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft, are set to gather on Capitol Hill for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's inaugural AI insight forum on September 13. The closed-door, bipartisan event aims to discuss artificial intelligence policies and regulations with Congress members.

The forum's guest list, which includes CEOs like Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, will be joined by representatives from labor and civil rights advocacy groups. Schumer's broader plan involves a series of nine forums focused on regulating AI, addressing concerns such as national security, privacy, bias, and the impact on the workforce. As the U.S. seeks to catch up with global AI regulations, Schumer's push aligns with the Biden administration's commitment to ensuring user privacy, addressing bias, and countering misinformation in AI.

Attendee list below:

• Sam Altman, OpenAI – CEO

• Rumman Chowdhury, Humane Intelligence – CEO

• Jack Clark, Anthropic – Co-founder

• Clément Delangue, Hugging Face – CEO

• Eric Fanning, Aerospace Industries Association – President & CEO

• Bill Gates, Microsoft – Former CEO

• Tristan Harris, Center for Humane Technology – Co-founder & ED

• Jensen Huang, NVIDIA – CEO

• Alex Karp, Palantir – Co-founder & CEO

• Arvind Krishna, IBM – CEO

• Janet Murguía, Unidos US – President

• Elon Musk, X/Tesla – CEO

• Satya Nadella, Microsoft – CEO

• Sundar Pichai, Google – CEO

• Deborah Raji, U.C. Berkley – Researcher

• Charles Rivkin, Motion Picture Association – Chairman & CEO

• Eric Schmidt, Google – Former CEO

• Elizabeth Shuler, AFL-CIO – President

• Meredith Stiehm, Writers Guild – President

• Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers – President

• Maya Wiley, Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights – President & CEO

• Mark Zuckerberg, Meta – CEO

China’s Baidu rolls out ChatGPT rival ERNIE

China's tech giant Baidu has introduced its ERNIE Bot, a competitor to ChatGPT, for public use, marking a significant step in China's AI sector and its bid to capitalize on the AI boom. This move aligns with China's recent regulations for AI developers, allowing them to stay competitive in the global AI race while maintaining strict control over online information.

ERNIE Bot boasts capabilities comparable to OpenAI's GPT-4 and is equipped with a vast knowledge graph containing around 550 billion facts, predominantly centered on the Chinese market. While the chatbot can generate audio responses in various Chinese dialects and create images and videos from text, its focus on the Chinese market may limit its proficiency in answering questions outside of that context.

While ERNIE Bot has been accessible since March, its wider availability will provide Baidu with substantial human feedback to rapidly enhance the app's performance. However, these AI apps must adhere to China's socialist core values and avoid jeopardizing national security, as outlined in the new guidelines. The bot's responses reflect this constraint, avoiding sensitive topics like the Tiananmen Square protests, highlighting the broader context of China's AI landscape that balances technological advancement with ideological control.

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Walmart rolls out ChatGPT like AI tool to employees

Walmart has introduced a GenAI-powered feature named My Assistant to its U.S. campus associates via a desktop and mobile app experience. The tool aims to enhance productivity by aiding associates in tasks such as drafting, creative collaboration, and document summarization. While recognizing the potential of GenAI to improve efficiency, Walmart also highlights the importance of human creativity and judgment.

The company envisions My Assistant as a way to empower associates, allowing them to focus on improving customer experiences while streamlining their work. The tool is part of the Me@Campus super app, providing various functionalities for managing careers, learning, financial well-being, and more. The company plans to continue developing AI-driven solutions to enhance the associate experience and customer interactions.

OpenAI claims ChatGPT output not copyright violation

OpenAI has filed a motion to dismiss multiple claims made against it in a lawsuit, asserting that certain allegations, including copyright infringement, violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), unfair competition, negligence, and unjust enrichment, lack legal basis and should be removed from the case. OpenAI argues that its use of copyrighted material to train large language models like ChatGPT falls within the bounds of fair use and transformative innovation, and that its models don't violate copyright law as they aim to teach the models the rules underlying human language rather than directly profit from distributing copyrighted content.

OpenAI also maintains that its models' outputs aren't derivative works in the legal sense, and that claims of DMCA violations lack evidence and logical support. They further contend that certain state law claims are preempted by federal copyright law. While OpenAI seeks to dismiss most claims, the lawsuit's core issue remains whether ChatGPT's training model infringes copyright by reproducing and distributing original works or creating derivative works without proper authorization or changes.

In response, the authors pursuing the lawsuit view generative AI as a form of "grift," representing a detached replication of "human intelligence" divorced from its creators, and maintain their stance that OpenAI's use of their copyrighted works violates their rights. The outcome of this legal battle could significantly impact the interpretation of copyright law in the context of AI-generated content and its implications for creative ownership and innovation.