3rd issue: 🤔 To pause or not to pause?

🌯 Wrap for the week

A close look at all the main headlines in AI

Should we hit the snooze button on AI development?

If you have been following tech news, you would probably have seen the reporting of the petition to pause AI development that is more advanced than GPT4 for 6 months. The people calling for the pause include Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

The Future of Life Institute organised the petition that warns that AI systems with "human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity" and that recent months have seen AI labs locked in a race to develop more powerful digital minds that nobody can control. Here are the key questions raised in the petition:

• Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth?

• Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones?

• Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?

• Should we risk the loss of control of our civilization?

The letter calls on all AI labs to pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. It has prompted a mixed response with some welcoming the idea but others arguing that the letter is vague and doesn't take the regulatory problems seriously.

Here is the take from Andrew Ng, Founder & CEO of Landing AI, Founder of deeplearning.ai:

My take

Do I agree with the concerns raised in the petition? Hell yeah.

Do I think the pause is the way to solve them? I am not 100% that is the case.

One thing I feel is not emphasised in this petition is the benefit that it brings to our life. Looking at the benefit that AI has brought to my personal and work life, I want to see more advancement in this area which could bring me more efficiency improvement. In the end, I think the proposed idea might not be 100% right but I agree with the sentiment.

I agree with the take from Rafe Brena, who is one of the people that signed the petition but he is also criticising it. See his thought about the petition in detail here: Why I Signed the “Pause Giant AI Experiments” Petition

What do you think about this? Should we hit that snooze button for 6 months?

News credit:
Tech leaders urge a pause in the 'out-of-control' artificial intelligence race from NPR

ChatGPT got the “red card” from Italy

Sounds like OpenAI just can’t catch a break.

Italy's Data Protection Authority (GPDP) has ordered a ban on OpenAI's AI chatbot, ChatGPT, citing the "unlawful collection of personal data."

The regulator ordered OpenAI to stop collecting Italian users' data immediately until it amends its data collection practices. The GPDP says the company lacks lawful justification for the collection of users' personal information and has no mechanism in place to stop underage users from accessing the service, which exposes minors to unsuitable answers compared to their degree of development and self-awareness.

This is not Italy's regulator’s first rodeo in banning chat experience apps. It previously banned a chatbot app Replika.ai in February over its failure to properly process data and safeguard minors.

OpenAI now has 20 days to communicate what measures it's taken to meet the regulators' requirements and may face fines of up to €20 million if it fails to comply.

Also, if you would like to try to access ChatGPT now using a VPN from Italy, this is what you are going to see 👇️ 

News credit:
Italian regulators order ChatGPT ban over alleged violation of data privacy laws from The Verge

Other top AI headlines for the week

Google’s new tool lets developers build generative AI applications without coding from The Indian Expres

No code and generative AI are my two favourite areas in tech at the moment. To me, this is a match made in heaven!

At the moment, it looks like it is targeted only at enterprise clients. So probably no luck for me to play with this anytime soon. However, I think allowing businesses easily create a chat experience using data of their own is going to help businesses quickly see and feel the benefit of generative AI, which could further fuel advancement in this area.

Here is a quick demo of its capability:

AI-generated images of Pope Francis in puffer jacket fool the internet from NBC news

Looking at this detailed image generated from midjourney, no wonder why NBC news has called it “one of the first instances of wide-scale misinformation stemming from artificial intelligence”.

This is also a good call back to the concern raised in the petition to pause where misinformation could flood our communications given how real the AI-created artefacts could be.

By the way, if you haven’t seen the image, check it below.

Google denies Bard was trained with ChatGPT data from The Verge

😲

Looking at the not-so-great first demo and the slew of tweets about Bard’s failures, Bard’s debut has been quite bumpy. Now, this claim just makes people start to question Google’s ability to regain its position in AI.

What is going to happen next with Bard? We don’t know. I just hope I can get to test Bard myself. Google, please make it available in Australia soon. 🙏 

🧰 Toolbox

Check out this week’s tools and resources that give you more superpowers with prompt crafting!

1. 📺 Brainstorming ChatGPT Business Ideas With A Billionaire (#438)
   I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation in this episode of My First Million. It is so delightful to hear Dharmesh Sha, Hubspot Co-founder and CTO, talking about his thoughts around AI and the things that he geeks about. I can’t wait to see his ideas around Chat.com and Prompt.com come to fruition.

2. 🔧 Genmo
   Text-to-video is closer than you think. Although some of the current creations from Genmo could look a bit nightmare-ish, it is good to see more things happening in this direction.

3. 📚 Learning Prompt
   It is great to find another open-source place to get more people to learn about creating prompts. The more the merrier! Check it out if you want to further improve your prompt crafting skill.

👋 Your next Twitter friend

Connect with great people in the industry to supercharge your growth

🖼️ Image of the week

Thanks to Kris, my last week’s recommendation of “Your next Twitter friend”, i.e. @icreatelife, I was able to check the prompt by the artist who created the infamous pope with a puffer jacket image.

Here is the prompt shared by Kris and feel free to try it yourself using midjourney v5:

Catholic Pope Francis wearing Balenciaga puffy jacket in drill rap music video, throwing up gang signs with hands, taken using a Canon EOS R camera with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, f/2.2 aperture, shutter speed 1/200s, ISO 100 and natural light, Full Body, Hyper Realistic Photography, Cinematic, Cinema, Hyperdetail, UHD, Color Correction, hdr, color grading, hyper realistic CG animation --ar 4:5 --upbeta --q 2 --v 5 

Now, here is my version of the image using the above prompt, pretty realistic right?

💕 Share the love and get some cool avatars!

I hope you have been enjoying the Prompt Craftsman newsletter so far. If you do, why not share your love of the newsletter with your friends as well? 😉 

Obviously, if you are sharing the love, I should do something in return to share my gratitude. That is why, I have decided that I will randomly select 3 subscribers each week who have got at least 3 of his/her friends to join the newsletter that week and provide them with 3 cool avatars.

For the lucky chosen subscribers, I will create these avatars using the portrait photo(s) you give me in 3 different styles of your nominations. You can suggest styles either using some image(s) you like and/or some descriptive text. If you have heard Lensa before, it is basically the same concept, but free of charge with the Prompt Craftsman! 😄 

I won’t promise to get the same level of detail, but the end result could be similar to the ones below.

Alright, if you are in, here is your link to share your love of the Prompt Craftsman with your friends. You are the best! ❤️