Welcome back everyone to another AI Insights newsletter by NotCentralised. We explore the interesting things we’ve been finding on the world of AI this past week and synthesise it for the things we think you should care about.
If you’re interested in talking with us about how to get the best out of AI for your work then feel free to get in touch on our contact form or email us here.
AI in the Australian Senate
Great to see AI in front of the Australian senate with Stella Solar from the National AI Centre presenting today. See more here
OpenAI versus ScarJo?
There’s an issue with OpenAI potentially using Scarlett Johansson’s voice in their AI voiceovers. See this X post for more on the topic.
But while there were questions over whether it really is her voice or not, for one thing, it’s likely not her exact voice but that of an actress who sounds like her. Read the article here.
And OpenAI wrote about it on their blog to clear things up here in terms of how they chose the voices. Read their blog here.
Microsoft Dev Day (and a bit of Black Mirror)
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, was also on stage to talk at Microsoft Dev Day and it’s interesting to see the positivity for developers coupled with the fear devs have given that ChatGPT capabilities continue to expand. There’s definitely a need to level up and do higher order things as a developer if your don’t want to get taken over
Next up we get some Black Mirror type stuff with Microsoft Recall feature which takes screenshots of what’s on your computer so you can semantically search on it. All done locally but let’s hope it’s safe. Check it out here.
Speaking of Microsoft, there’s this funny meme (credit to Alexander Chamandy on LinkedIn)
Google AI giving funny results (again)
RIP to Google AI (well not quite). If the Imagen image creation controversies weren’t bad enough, there’s also issues in answering seemingly straightforward questions for AI recently. Glue on pizza, eating rocks and gasoline for spicy spaghetti dishes are just the start. Read the BBC article here.
Here’s a sample of the misguided responses:
- On how to get cheese to stay on pizza “Mix about 1/8 cup of Elmer’s glue in with the sauce. Non-toxic glue will work.”
- On whether cats have been on the moon “Yes, astronauts have met cats on the moon, played with them, and provided care”
- On whether a dog played in the NHL “Yes a dog has played in the NHL”
- On healthy eating “Eating the right rocks can be good for you because they contain minerals that are important for your body’s health…”
There’s also this
As is always the case, the team (at Google) will be going ahead with fixes, so not to worry. It’s also the sort of thing that always happens with frontier tech. It’s easy to see the flaws and highlight them and we don’t notice the future that gets built thanks to the possibililties. With Google search having AI as part of it, the game is changing and the future is almost certainly going to be different.
Telstra cuts not due to AI
In other news, Telstra was in the headlines due to their plans to cut their FTE by 10% (roughly 2800 employees) and despite their protestations, people believe it’s due to AI. This is a fact hard to counter when they entered into a partnership with Infosys. More on that partnership here.
As well as some opinions online like in this LinkedIn post from Simon Kriss. Read it here.
AI and Financial Market Analysis
On the topic of AI for financial market analysis, it’s important to understand the reasoning and processes behind using tools like ChatGPT. A recent LinkedIn post by Ethan Mollick discussed this topic, linking to a relevant paper.
As a former macro/equity analyst, I found the paper initially lacking in detailed results. However, the companion app in ChatGPT demonstrates the step-by-step process of analyzing financial statements. While interesting, it’s limited by only using single sets of results and unclear temporal aspects. The app’s instructions can be found here.
AI is better used for tasks like anomaly detection on historical data or acting as a synthetic set of users for predicting earnings directions. AI should augment analysts’ work, expanding notes, writing, and acting as a spot check for compliance. AI has strengths and weaknesses, so approach its use critically. Feel free to reach out to us for more opinions on finance and AI tech.
AI Regulation Updates
AI regulation update here with the signing of key documents (a declaration for safe AI and a statement of intent) from countries including Austalia, UK, USA and others. Read more here.
Augmented Reality to the next level
Taking augmented reality to a new level in this talk by Greg Hunt where the boundary between real and artificial is seriously blurred. More on X here.
SIKE Example: Federal Budget Papers
Finally, a reminder to those who might not have seen it, but you can see more about how SIKE works in this example diving into the recent Federal Budget papers.
Get in touch
Stay tuned for more insights from us next week and if you’re interested in SIKE (our privacy focused AI tool), then you can check out more on what it’s about here.
If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to Arturo Rodriguez or 📈 Mark Monfort here and get in touch with us here or on email at we@notcentralised.com.
