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With the pending arrival of AI agents, we will even more effectively join the always-on interconnected world, both for personal use and for work. In this way, we will increasingly dialog and interact with digital intelligence everywhere.

The path to AGI and superintelligence remains shrouded in uncertainty, with experts divided on its feasibility and timeline. However, the rapid evolution of AI technologies is undeniable, promising transformative advancements. As businesses and individuals navigate this rapidly changing landscape, the potential for AI-driven innovation and improvement remains vast. The journey ahead is as exciting as it is unpredictable, with the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence continuing to blur.

By mapping out proactive steps now to invest and engage in AI, upskill our workforce and attend to ethical considerations, businesses and individuals can position themselves to thrive in the AI-driven future.

Large language models have emerged as a transformative technology and have revolutionized AI with their ability to generate human-like text with seemingly unprecedented fluency and apparent comprehension. Trained on vast datasets of human-generated text, LLMs have unlocked innovations across industries, from content creation and language translation to data analytics and code generation. Recent developments, like OpenAI’s GPT-4o, showcase multimodal capabilities, processing text, vision, and audio inputs in a single neural network.

Despite their potential for driving productivity and enabling new forms of human-machine collaboration, LLMs are still in their nascent stage. They face limitations such as factual inaccuracies, biases inherited from training data, lack of common-sense reasoning, and data privacy concerns. Techniques like retrieval augmented generation aim to ground LLM knowledge and improve accuracy.

To explore these issues, I spoke with Amir Feizpour, CEO and founder of AI Science, an expert-in-the-loop business workflow automation platform. We discussed the transformative impacts, applications, risks, and challenges of LLMs across different sectors, as well as the implications for startups in this space.

Those who rush to leverage AI’s power without adequate preparation face difficult blowback, scandals, and could provoke harsh regulatory measures. However, those who have a balanced, informed view on the risks and benefits of AI, and who, with care and knowledge, avoid either complacent optimism or defeatist pessimism, can harness AI’s potential, and tap into an incredible variety of services of an ever-improving quality.

These are some words from the introduction of the new book, “Taming the machine: ethically harness the power of AI”, whose author, Nell Watson, joins us in this episode.

Nell’s many roles include: Chair of IEEE’s Transparency Experts Focus Group, Executive Consultant on philosophical matters for Apple, and President of the European Responsible Artificial Intelligence Office. She also leads several organizations such as EthicsNet.org, which aims to teach machines prosocial behaviours, and CulturalPeace.org, which crafts Geneva Conventions-style rules for cultural conflict.

Selected follow-ups:

McDonald’s (MCD) will put an end to its AI drive-thru partnership with IBM (IBM) in late July as many customer complaints over botched orders began to mount. The fast-food chain does have plans to continue implementing AI into its business model down the line.

The Morning Brief Anchors Brad Smith and Seana Smith break down the latest developments for McDonald’s and what it means for the company moving forward.

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In a somewhat unexpected turn of events, the ongoing controversy surrounding Photoshop and Substance 3D developer Adobe has extended beyond negative social media comments and Twitter Community Notes and into real life, with the company getting sued by the US government on the grounds of the former’s questionable business practices.

The federal court complaint, filed by the Department of Justice following a referral from the Federal Trade Commission, alleges that Adobe has been harming its users by enrolling them in its default subscription plan without clearly disclosing important terms regarding the cancellation process, effectively making one’s attempt to cancel their subscription a massive pain in the back.