Midjourney Saves The Election? ↙️ SXSW Special Edition
Sometimes laws are fun to read
A hearty welcome to our new AI Junkies from SXSW! It was nice to meet many of you face-to-face in Austin. I’m still catching up on all the AI content (I found myself wanting to be in four sessions simultaneously, all week long) but stick around for some of the biggest news of the year and some SXSpecial updates. Today, we've got new EU AI legislation meant to prevent humanity’s destruction and a warning from the U.S. State Department that it might happen anyway. Let's get into it. As always, if you disagree or have a tip, reply to this email or shoot us a note at ai@goodbad.ai.
The Good (a twofer today!)
EU framework on AI approved
I’ll start with maybe the best AI news in years. Am I overselling it? I don’t think so! The EU has reached a deal on a HUGE piece of AI legislation, which was just approved and now heads to the various nations to ratify. This sweeping legislation sets a framework for evaluating new AI tech on a four-tiered scale from low risk (like AI in spam filters) to unacceptable (like biometric identification in a commercial context). It goes far enough to dictate how law enforcement can use AI-powered surveillance and how AI can be deployed in critical infrastructure. The EU has been ahead of the US in Big Tech legislation for a while now, but this is a giant leap forward. More to come here, certainly.
Midjourney bans Trump & Biden images
I love Midjourney. I’m conflicted because while visual AI generation has a lot of problems around creator credit and compensation, it's also undeniably useful, like when I really, really need an image of a terminator going over my chart in a hospital.
In what I will say is an unequivocal good as we stare down a misinformation barrel this year, Midjourney has officially blocked image generation of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. This is one of those rare moments where a tech company made an actual change that will be a societal net good at the expense of their own profits. Are there other tools the misinfo peddlers will use? Obvi. But at least they won’t be getting their images from arguably the most photorealistic image generator out there. Bonus note, MJ’s CEO is quoted saying, “this moderation stuff is kind of hard,” which, like, I mean, yeah. Where ya been, dude?
The Bad (another twofer)
U.S. State Department says AI is coming for us all
A report commissioned by the U.S. State Department adds to the growing fear of AI representing an “extinction-level threat” to the human species. These kinds of headlines are meant to rabble-rouse, but there is a growing contingency of people who are afraid of this, and they’re not all dumb people! The report interviewed AI and tech experts and the consensus was that AI poses a meaningful threat, if not a completely existential one. Several of the concerns are, reasonably, about the long-term stability of democracy in a world with very persuasive AIs that have no conscience to guide them (Ed. note: someone should look into whether or not politicians could use this so-called "conscience" to guide them. Sounds useful.).
Look, go read the Action Plan yourself, the exec summary will take you 20 minutes to read, max. It’s worth knowing what the people who stand to gain the most from AI believe its biggest risks are.
Election misinformation: Our take? It’s bad!
Hot off the press from this panel at SXSW (hear my question to the panel at 54:35) and some CNN reporting this week, worries are pretty high about misinformation in the 2024 U.S. elections, and no one really seems to have any good ideas about how to fix it. The most common answer we hear is “AI and media literacy,” which is all well and good, but I don’t think we can reverse the decades-long downward trend in media literacy in America in the next 8 months. There’s some mildly promising legislation crawling through a few states (but not the ones that matter most) so the best hopeful message I can give you is to be vigilant, be outspoken about AI manipulation and misinformation, and don’t let your friends vote uninformed.
The AI
Fanboi favorite and the nation’s only Cybertruck daily driver, Elon Musk, announced this week that he’s open-sourcing xAI’s Grok (what are words anymore) after licking his wounds from the cat fight he started with Open AI (tl;dr: Elon sued because Open AI has become profit-driven, Open AI showed receipts where Elon was like “we should make Open AI profit-driven”).
Once you see the Hollywood Mountain AI picture that's fooling thousands, you'll be ready to jump off its totally-real peaks.
Too busy to name your baby or pet? Who isn't?! That's why you can leave it to the algo and have an AI Name Your Pet or Your Baby! I tried it, and it picked the name “X Æ A-12.” Huh. Must still be working out the kinks.
Once you’ve already relied on AI for your dog’s name, why not its diet? This AI dog feeder/collar combo tracks your dog’s activity and tells you how much food he deserves.
The CEO of an AI music company says we shouldn’t jump to the worst conclusions with AI. I mean, if you say so, Bronze.ai CEO Lex Dromgoole. Is it too soon for another AI-named-my-baby joke?
SXSpecial Updates
Icon, a construction start-up that 3-D printed a house at SXSW 2018, debuted a new AI tool for consumers to use AI to design the home Icon will build for them.
SXSW edited a sizzle reel all about AI and put it in front of their film screenings. It was notably boo-ed by the premiere-night audience for Fall Guy. Read the room, folks. The Convention Center crowd would have cheered it, but they played it at the Paramount Theatre to the group of people most likely to say AI has already started to steal their jobs.
FOR EXAMPLE, two of the winners of the SXSW Pitch competition were AI tools to automate video editing. Gee, I wonder why that room of film nerds was upset about AI grandstanding!
Truveta, a health industry start-up announced their medical language model, focused on electronic health records and diagnostic codes, attempting to help doctors diagnose more quickly and accurately. Dr. T-1000 will see you now!
Phew, big week. Back to your normal, bite-sized updates next week.
Kyle & John