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In this issue…

A news roundup: California Governor vetoes AI bill, iPhone 16’s AI features, prediction of a future without AI regulation, and an AI policy resource

California’s Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047, signs other AI-related legislation

NPR reports that the bill, which easily passed through both of California’s legislative chambers, would have required safety tests and a kill switch. Tech company representatives opposed to the legislation complained that it would have slowed the pace of growth of AI models, and stifled development of start up AI companies. The bill’s supporters claim that policy regulation is required for public safety, and that tech companies simply cannot be relied upon to police themselves.

Of note, Governor Newsom did sign into law two other bills this month that offer protections to entertainers/performers. JD Supra reported on this legislation, which address deepfakes and “digital replicas.”

iPhone 16 product launch touts AI capabilities

Reuters reported this month that Apple’s roll out of the iPhone 16 is designed with AI at the forefront. The higher end iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, respectively, will have greater AI capabilities, such as suggestions for how to stage photos and assistance with professional-level video production. The new phones will use Apple Intelligence, with the company touting greater personalization, privacy, and enabling greater creativity.

Apple Intelligence rolls out this fall, and will be compatible with some earlier-than-16 iPhones and other devices.

As iPhones revolutionized the way we use our mobile devices, it will be interesting to see if this change is what ushers in a massive wave of new/different AI use within the general public.

‘Godfather of AI’ predicts catastrophe if AI is left unregulated

LiveScience recently published an interview with Yoshuo Bengio, a professor, pioneer in deep learning, and Turing Award winner. In the interview, Bengio says there is “no way to deny the possibility of catastrophic outcomes when we reach a level of AI.” He posits the two dangers to humanity are “loss of human control” and “humans using the power of AI to take control of humanity in a worldwide dictatorship.” Yikes. Bengio also stated that the EU’s AI act and Biden’s AI executive order are ” steps in the right direction.”

Bengio wrote more about this topic on his own site.

AI policy resource from UNT

The University of North Texas has created an AI Policy Collection in their digital library collection. Currently there are 158 items, and it’s accessible to the general public.

Documents published are from “federal agencies, non-governmental organizations, international, state, and local governments.”

The goal of the collection is to “identify, collect, organize, and maintain digital resources relevant to artificial intelligence and machine learning and its intersection with public policy and practice.”

AI prompt ideas

I recently had a librarian contact me with an interesting application of AI. She uploaded a library-related court ruling into Google’s NotebookLM, which in turn produced an AI podcast. Based on a 30 page PDF document, the AI created a decent 12 minute podcast between a man and a woman discussing the ruling. While I could tell it wasn’t 100% natural-sounding, it was quite good.

This might be a great prompt for librarians and patrons alike to experiment with the podcast medium. Librarians may want to enter in their newsletter, new books, and schedule into NotebookLM and ask it to create a podcast. Patrons may want to upload documents of interest to them and create a podcast about their topic of choice.