🕵️ The Zodiac killer letters analysed by AI

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🧠 AI and Machine Learning

AI tools trace the body's link between the brain and behavior (3 minute read)
AI-enabled micro-measurements of animals running, hunting, preening and playing are unlocking troves of new data that scientists now want to use to simulate animals and test theories about behavior and the brain. A primary function of the brain is to produce behavior and help animals move through the world — but there are questions about how that happens, with ramifications for medicine and efforts to create artificial general intelligence (AGI). AI methods are increasingly being used to help scientists measure the behaviors of animals, a laborious task that typically involves researchers watching animals and tracking and annotating their movements.

Beijing publishes its AI governance rules (2 minute read)
Chinese authorities have published rules governing generative AI which go substantially beyond current regulations in other parts of the world. One notable requirement is that operators of generative AI must ensure that their services adhere to the core values of socialism, while also avoiding content that incites subversion of state power, secession, terrorism, or any actions undermining national unity and social stability. To ensure fairness and non-discrimination, developers are required to create algorithms that do not discriminate based on factors such as ethnicity, belief, country, region, gender, age, occupation, or health.

EU rules on AI must do more to protect human rights, NGOs warn (3 minute read)
A group of 150 NGOs including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Transparency International, and Algorithm Watch has signed a statement addressed to the European Union. In it, they entreat the bloc not only to maintain but enhance human rights protection when adopting the AI Act. Between the apocalypse-by-algorithm and the cancer-free utopia different camps say the technology could bring, lies a whole spectrum of pitfalls to avoid for the responsible deployment of AI. As Altman, Musk, Zuckerberg, et al., dive head first into the black box, legislation aiming to at least curb their enthusiasm is on the way. The European Union’s proposed law on artificial intelligence — the AI Act — is the first of its kind by any major regulatory body. Two different camps are claiming that it is either a) crippling Europe’s tech sovereignty or b) not going far enough in curtailing dangerous deployment of AI.

💼 Business

AI leaders from Google, AWS discuss promise and perils of generative AI (3 minute read)
Generative AI isn’t some overhyped short-lived trend; it could transform the world as we know it. That’s according to executives from Google and Amazon. Matt Wood, VP of product at Amazon Web Services (AWS) called AI “the single largest, most transformative technology which is going to change how we interact with data and information and each other, probably since the advent of the very earliest web browser.”. Gerrit Kazmaier, VP data and analytics at Google Cloud is also extremely enthusiastic about gen AI as a way for organizations to unlock the value of data in ways that were not easy or even possible before. He noted that generative AI models are now available to anyone.

CEO replaces 90% of support staff with AI, praises the system on Twitter (4 minute read)
Few people are happy about AI taking human jobs. So, if you're a CEO who decides to lay off 90% of a support team, it's probably not a good idea to post a celebratory tweet thread about the "tough" but "necessary" move. That's what Suumit Shah did, and the public response is about what you'd expect. Shah, the 31-year-old CEO and founder of Bengaluru-based Duukan, which helps merchants to set up online stores and sell products digitally, posted that "We had to layoff 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely." Several more tweets followed, all of them praising the AI assistant that can answer customer queries instantly and precisely – and doesn't receive any wages or sick leave, obviously. He goes so far as comparing the AI's abilities to Edward Morra from the movie Limitless running the entire customer support section. Again, though, the fictional character of Morra would still want things like money for his services.

❓ Misc

The Zodiac Killer Letters Were Analyzed By AI—Here Are the Results (4 minute read)
In the late 1960s, residents of Northern California were terrorized by a masked serial killer who sent letters and ciphers to police which purportedly contained information that would lead to his arrest. But decades have passed and law enforcement has yet to catch the killer, who became known as the Zodiac Killer. While multiple theories have been floated over the years as to the identity of the mystery killer, Professor Thomas Henry Horan is convinced that the Zodiac Killer eluded capture because he simply doesn't exist. In an effort to prove that the letters were written by multiple people, Horan and filmmaker Andrew Nock approached Florian Cafiero and Jean-Baptiste Camps, two Frenchmen who are experts in computational linguistics and asked them to analyze all 35 letters using artificial intelligence. Cafiero and Camps worked with the writing samples for nearly a month, with Cafiero describing the task as “by far, the most challenging that we've had to work on because there is so much," and adding that the writers seemingly tried to "deceive" the reader.

OpenAI's ChatGPT Shows a Significant Slowing in Traffic (4 minute read)
ChatGPT app downloads are slowing down. Analysts found that app downloads for ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing have slowed in recent weeks, citing Sensor Tower data. ChatGPT downloads on iPhones in the U.S. were down 38% month over month in June, according to the note. Bing app downloads, which includes a ChatGPT-based chatbot in the U.S., were also down 38% in June. This indicates that some of the “hype” around ChatGPT may be hushing as more companies ban it and more consumers are aware of the risks of using it.

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