AI dominates the agenda at Davos

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Welcome back, Superhuman

It’s Davos time. The World Economic Forum is in full swing and there are no prizes for guessing which topic is dominating the agenda this year — politicians, CEOs and academics can’t stop talking about AI. From Sam Altman’s warning to Bill Gates’ predictions, we’re giving you the full brief on what went down.

TODAY’S MENU

• AI dominates the agenda at the World Economic Forum

• The biggest developments in AI governance and policy

• Chart: Over 70% expect AI to impact their hiring soon

• How to use Windows 11 Paint to generate AI images

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• AI Generated Images: Hypercars as robots

NEWS

Today in AI & Tech

That’s Bananas: Cloned rhesus monkey lives to adulthood for the first time, paving the way for further research involving primates.

New Heights: Apple overtakes Samsung to become the world’s biggest seller of smartphones.

Shopping Assistant: Amazon launches a new AI tool that will answer shopper questions instantly, saving them the headache of scrolling through reviews.

Kingly Ambitions: Elon Musk says he will develop AI and robotics outside Tesla unless he gets more voting control, sparking concern over governance issues.

DJ GPT: Musician Will I Am announces a new radio show with an AI co-host.

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

AI dominates the agenda at the WEF

The icy mountains of Davos provided a pleasant contrast to the fiery debates at Davos this week, as the world’s leading politicians, businessmen, and academics descended on the tiny Alpine village to debate the future of AI, among other global issues.

Bill Gates was unsurprisingly bullish on AI. The Microsoft cofounder predicted that AI will be adopted quickly around the world because it doesn’t require any new hardware, which means that people will be able to access it with current devices like smartphones. He also expects AI to have beneficial applications in countries with restricted access to doctors and teachers.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that AI’s future depended on an energy breakthrough that can enable vastly higher power consumption required to scale the technology. Altman said that he’s optimistic about climate-friendly sources of energy like nuclear fusion and cheaper solar power and storage.

Leaders from Google also expressed optimism about AI. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat highlighted the potential for AI to revolutionize screening for breast cancer. Google DeepMind COO Lila Ibrahim echoed similar sentiments around AI’s impact on materials science and biology.

But it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies at the forum. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff claimed that AI companies stole intellectual property to build their technology. Benioff advocated for AI companies to standardize payments to treat content creators fairly, but admitted that it’s hard to determine a fair price for the content.

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GOVERNANCE & POLICY

The biggest developments in AI governance and policy

Trade Wars: Reuters reports that Chinese military and government organizations have purchased small batches of Nvidia AI chips that were banned by the US for export to China, highlighting the difficulty of enforcing such bans.

Designing Better Solutions: OpenAI claims that they funded 10 teams from around the world to design ideas and tools to collectively govern AI. The output of the 10 teams involves ideas around social choice, case law and more.

Taxing Matter: An essay in the Financial Times by Marietje Schaake, a special adviser to the European Commission, claims that AI could replace jobs and calls for a tax to be levied on AI products to mitigate job losses.

Laughing Matter: Chinese authorities clarify that viral images of an aircraft carrier made of ice (pictured above) are entirely fake

CHART

Over 70% of organizations expect AI to impact their hiring plans in the next 2 years

In a recent Deloitte survey with 2,835 business and technology leaders involved in piloting or implementing generative AI in their organizations, over 70% said that they expect to make changes to their hiring strategy in the next 2 years because of AI.

AI AT WORK

How to use Windows 11 Paint to generate images with AI

• Update Windows 11: Go to Settings → Windows Update → Check updates. Install and download the latest updates.

• Update Microsoft Paint: Open the Microsoft Store app → Library icon on the left → Get updates.

• Create an image with AI: Launch the Paint app and use the Cocreator pane to describe the type of image you want. Click "Create" to generate the image based on your description.

You can edit the image with Paint’s tools or save and share it with friends and colleagues once you’re done.

5 AI Tools to Supercharge Your Productivity

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AI GENERATED IMAGES

Hypercars as robots

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Until next time!

Zain