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Reddit escalates its fight against AI bots

Also: Singapore’s ‘Fomo’ amid the rise of the AI data centre

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AI KATANA
June 25, 2024

Morning!

In today’s newsletter, we explore Reddit’s stringent measures against AI bot scraping, reinforcing its licensing requirements for data usage, and the swift response by Chinese AI firms to OpenAI’s API restrictions, showcasing the competitive landscape in AI technology. Additionally, Singapore’s strategic expansion in data center capacity highlights its ambition to remain a key AI hub in Southeast Asia. We also delve into the IMF’s AI Preparedness Index, shedding light on global disparities in AI adoption readiness. Furthermore, IBM’s integration of AI with quantum computing marks a significant leap in technological advancement. Lastly, we touch on the potential of AI in gaming NPCs and updates on AI tools in popular platforms like Gmail and Firefox, along with a substantial funding boost for AI-driven manufacturing startup Bright Machines.

Sliced:

  • 🤖 Reddit escalates its fight against AI bots

  • 🇨🇳 Chinese AI firms woo OpenAI users as US company plans API restrictions

  • 🇸🇬 Singapore’s ‘Fomo’ amid the rise of the AI data centre

  • 🌏 Mapping the World's Readiness for Artificial Intelligence Shows Prospects Diverge

  • 👩‍🔬 IBM Develops The AI-Quantum Link

  • 👨🏻 My colleagues turned me into an AI-powered NPC. I hate him.

🤖 Reddit escalates its fight against AI bots

Reddit is taking action to prevent most automated bots from accessing its public data, requiring companies to obtain licensing agreements to use Reddit content for AI model training and other commercial purposes. This policy, although existing in principle, will now be strictly enforced by updating the site’s robots.txt file, signaling unauthorized entities to stop scraping data. This move addresses the increasing data scraping by AI companies, which ingest large amounts of web content to train their models. The change highlights the evolving landscape of web data usage and the growing tensions between platform owners and AI developers over data access rights.

🇨🇳 Chinese AI firms woo OpenAI users as US company plans API restrictions

Chinese AI companies are quickly capitalizing on OpenAI’s decision to restrict API access in China and other regions. As OpenAI plans to block API traffic from unsupported regions starting July 9, major Chinese firms like Baidu, Alibaba Cloud, and Zhipu AI are offering migration programs and free tokens to attract affected users. Baidu’s Ernie platform and Alibaba’s Qwen-plus model, priced lower than OpenAI’s GPT-4, aim to provide seamless transitions for developers. These efforts underscore China’s robust AI sector, with numerous companies having launched their own AI-powered chatbots in the past year, demonstrating significant advancements and competitive strategies in response to OpenAI’s limitations.

Singapore recently announced plans to increase power allocation for data center expansion in response to significant investments from tech giants in neighboring countries like Malaysia. This move comes after a three-year moratorium on new data centers, aimed at addressing the high resource consumption of these facilities. Singapore’s decision is seen as a competitive response to Malaysia’s recent $8.5 billion influx in AI and data center investments from companies like Nvidia and Microsoft. Despite its limited land and power resources, Singapore aims to solidify its status as a leading AI and data hub in Southeast Asia by fostering a complementary relationship with nearby Johor, Malaysia. This strategy leverages Singapore’s advanced connectivity and favorable business environment while utilizing Johor for data center facilities, benefiting from their proximity and economic synergies.

The IMF’s new AI Preparedness Index Dashboard, tracking 174 economies, highlights the varying readiness levels for AI adoption based on digital infrastructure, human capital, labor policies, innovation, and regulation. While AI offers potential productivity boosts and economic growth, it also risks exacerbating inequality and job displacement. Advanced economies are generally better equipped for AI but face significant job disruption, while emerging and low-income countries, having fewer high-skilled jobs, may experience less immediate impact. Policymakers in advanced economies should enhance social safety nets and training programs, while those in developing regions need to invest in foundational digital infrastructure and skills development to harness AI’s benefits and mitigate risks. The dashboard serves as a critical tool for assessing AI preparedness and guiding policy design to ensure equitable AI-driven growth.

IBM is pioneering the integration of AI with quantum computing to enhance quantum system capabilities. Leveraging its leadership in both AI and quantum technology, IBM is using its watsonx generative AI platform to improve the usability and performance of its Qiskit quantum software. By embedding AI models for circuit optimization, resource management, and error correction, IBM aims to significantly advance quantum computing efficiency. The company’s roadmap includes deploying practical quantum applications and creating heterogeneous data centers that combine CPUs, AI accelerators, and quantum processing units by the decade’s end. This fusion of AI and quantum technologies is expected to revolutionize computing, addressing complex problems beyond the reach of classical systems.

Inworld AI, a US-based company, is leveraging generative AI to enhance non-player characters (NPCs) in video games, aiming to make them more interactive and engaging. The author’s colleagues used Inworld’s Studio to create an AI-powered NPC version of himself, resulting in a character with exaggerated and sarcastic traits. This experiment highlights the potential for AI to bring depth to NPC interactions, potentially transforming gaming and other sectors such as education. Despite the benefits, the experience also underscores the challenges of AI personality customization and the unexpected ways these characters can behave.

🛠️ AI tools updates

Google and Mozilla are integrating AI chatbots and tools into their platforms to enhance user experience. Google is rolling out AI side panels in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive, featuring Gemini 1.5 Pro, which will assist with writing, summarizing, organizing data, and creating content. Meanwhile, Mozilla will allow users to integrate AI chatbots into the Firefox browser sidebar, offering options like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Hugging Chat, and Le Chat Mistral. These AI enhancements aim to streamline tasks, improve productivity, and provide a more interactive user experience, while ensuring user privacy and data security.

💵 Venture Capital updates

Bright Machines, a software and robotics startup based in San Francisco, has secured $106 million in a Series C funding round. Notable investors include Nvidia, Microsoft, Eclipse Ventures, Jabil, and BlackRock, with an additional $20 million in debt from J.P. Morgan. The company, which specializes in using AI and machine learning to automate manufacturing tasks, plans to use the funds to enhance its engineering efforts in robotics and computer vision. Bright Machines aims to create a platform that allows engineers to design products and have them manufactured by robotic systems remotely. This technology is particularly beneficial for producing AI server hardware and other electronics, offering significant time savings and efficiency improvements in manufacturing processes.

🫡 Meme of the day

⭐️ Generative AI image of the day