Elon Musk is suing OpenAI for a second time, Google comes back swinging in the AI race, IBM is accused of age discrimination and OpenAI knows when you’ve been cheating….but will they tell on you? That’s the question.
All this and more on the “he sues me, he sues me not” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love. Let’s get into it.
Elon Musk has once again taken legal action against OpenAI and its founders. This time, the tech mogul is alleging deception and betrayal of the company’s original mission.
Musk’s lawsuit claims that OpenAI’s cofounders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, misled him about the company’s intentions when it was founded in 2015. According to the suit, Musk was promised that OpenAI would remain a nonprofit, focused on developing AI for the benefit of humanity rather than for profit.
The lawsuit states, “The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions.” That’s super legal outrage talk for Musk’s legal team argues that OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft demonstrates a shift away from its initial objectives.
OpenAI, responding to the allegations, shared a blog post from March, reaffirming their commitment to ensuring artificial general intelligence “benefits all of humanity.”
And they OpenAI released emails from Musk showing him agreeing with the company’s plan to raise more money and move away from open-source releases of its products. Ooops.
So, will this be a lawsuit of Shakespearean dimension? Will it be the final stand of OpenAI, with that final battle to the legal death, and “damned be him who first cries, hold, enough.” Or will it be like he first lawsuit, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
And no, I did that from memory. I didn’t need AI to give me the lines from Shakespeare.
Sources include: Axios
Google made some moves to reclaim its position at the forefront of AI innovation, hoping to proving that the tech giant is far from out of the game.
To understand what is happening here, Google was the leader in AI until OpenAI hit the scene. Microsoft and OpenAI partnered and blew Google’s offerings out of the water. Then came Anthropic and even Meta, Facebook’s parent and they’ve been leaping over Google with development after development.
And by the way, Zuckerberg is making his hellishly great model – open source. Eat that Google!
Every time Google tried to catch up, they stepped in it. Accusations of editing their demos, colossally simple mistakes, embarrassing in early launches – telling you to put glue on your pizza to keep toppings from sliding off.
Even the fact that they have all the money in the world didn’t save them. Their ad at the Olympics was panned by everyone.
But don’t count Google out.
The company’s latest AI model, Gemini 1.5 Pro’s experimental version 0801, has taken the top spot in Arena, a Web 3 gaming platform that matches AI models against each other, had Gemin outperforming its rivals and sending shockwaves through the industry.
And in another stunning feat, a system called Alpha Proof, based on Google’s Gemini model won silver medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad, a competion for elite pre-college mathematicians. It scored 41 out of 42, just shy of the gold medal and solved 4 out of 6 problems – two algebra, one number theory and one geometry.
And I know we might not all appreciate how big of a deal this is. It’s one thing to even, believe it or not, create a work of Shakespeare or any other textual challenge, but remember, this is an AI working with something that has already been done, imitating its style.
To take an abstract math problem, where you can’t go back and find the solution in your memory, is quite another thing.
I don’t want to say the AI is thinking, but it is solving a new puzzle that it hasn’t seen before. That’s astonishing.
Or to put it in these terms, until now, AI has been like a “grade school savant” – it knew a lot of facts buy it couldn’t reason about something new. But solving a math problem you haven’t seen before puts it up with the smartest person in your high school.
I’ll give you a hint. I graduated high school with a 93 percent average and I was by no means the smartest kid in math.
Google’s AI is now wicked smart. It may not be Artificial General Intelligence or AGI but it is the step you have to get through to have AGI.
This development signals a significant shift in the AI landscape, where Google had previously been perceived as lagging behind competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. Now, it seems the sleeping giant woke up.
As one industry analyst put it, “Google has reminded us all why they’ve been a leader in tech for so long. They may have been quiet, but they certainly weren’t idle.”
So will Google once again take the lead? Maybe. But no matter what, they are now pushing the others to “go big or stay home.”
So we’ll see if the others say Game On.
Sources include: Analytics India and Fortune
IBM Canada finds itself on the defensive as a former executive’s age discrimination lawsuit gains traction. Bruce Maule, once the worldwide president of channel marketing at IBM, is challenging the tech giant’s claim that his position was eliminated, alleging instead that he was replaced by a younger employee.
Maule’s lawsuit, filed in 2022, accuses IBM of systematic age discrimination, a practice he claims has been in place since 2013. His allegations are part of a broader pattern of similar claims against IBM, supported by investigative reporting and regulatory scrutiny.
The case took an interesting twist when IBM Canada attempted to have Maule’s claims about systematic discrimination struck from the record. However, Ontario Superior Court ruled against IBM, stating, “the plaintiff has pleaded the necessary and sufficient material facts to support a claim of systemic age discrimination.”
Reputedly, this is not the only claim about IBM showing a bias against older employees which is really strange given that for many years a long history with IBM was a badge of honour. Experience and loyalty were highly valued.
Times change? Who knows? It will be interesting to see if more of these actions surface in the coming months.
Sources include: The Register
And is it too early for a “back to school” story?
OpenAI has confirmed the existence of a powerful text watermarking tool that could potentially expose AI-generated content, including essays written by students using ChatGPT. However, the company is hesitating to release this technology due to complex ethical considerations.
The tool, which OpenAI claims has “high accuracy,” can detect text created by ChatGPT, even when it’s been paraphrased. However, it’s not foolproof. OpenAI acknowledges that the tool is “less robust against globalized tampering” such as using translation systems or other AI models to reword the text.
OpenAI explains their cautious approach, stating: “While it has been highly accurate and even effective against localized tampering, such as paraphrasing, it is less robust against globalized tampering… making it trivial to circumvention by bad actors.”
The company is weighing the potential benefits against unintended consequences. They worry the tool could “disproportionately impact some groups,” potentially stigmatizing AI use as a writing aid for non-native English speakers.
As AI continues to reshape education and content creation, this development highlights the ongoing challenges in balancing technological capabilities with ethical considerations and fairness.
Sources include: Neowin.net
And that’s our show for today. You can find show notes at our news site technewsday.com or .ca take you pick.
Hashtag Trending is on summer hours so there’s no morning news edition tomorrow, but our weekend show will be released early on Friday.
Thanks for listening. I’m your host Jim Love, have a Terrific Tuesday
