The French MistralAI has released a beta version of its chatbot, Elon Musk sued OpenAI, and Google has more troubles. What else did we live through last week?
Elon Musk in a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman argues that the merger with Microsoft was a betrayal of the company's mission in pursuit of profit.
According to the latest forecasts from ABI Research, the augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technology sector is on the verge of a revolution - by 2028, the number of AR/VR sets delivered is expected to increase more than fivefold, reaching 69 million units.
Week in review 31.10: governments are seriously tackling AI; where are social media heading?
AI is still on everyone's lips, thanks to the next initiatives aimed at improving the safety of its users. What has Joe Biden done in this regard and what can be expected from the AI Safety Summit? We invite you to review the week with the Digitized editorial team.
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Summary
President Joe Biden has issued an executive order imposing safety restrictions on entities involved in AI development to reduce threats to consumers, workers, minority groups, and US national security.
The AI Safety Summit 2023 will discuss AI threats and countermeasures, while the Nightshade project aims to protect visual works from unauthorized use by AI model training algorithms.
Stack Overflow and other tech giants are replacing employees with generative AI programs, leading to significant layoffs in the tech industry.
AI Clearing has developed a system for monitoring construction site progress using drones, mobile apps, and AI algorithms, addressing the shortage of experienced engineers.
Global IT industry spending is projected to reach $5.1 trillion in 2024, driven by the development of generative AI, cloud services, and cybersecurity costs.
AWS European Sovereign Cloud has been designed to help public sector customers and regulated industries meet stringent operational and legal requirements for data storage.
Ransomware attacks on healthcare facilities increased in 2023, disrupting medical facilities and endangering patient health.
Meta has launched a paid subscription service for ad-free use of Facebook and Instagram to address EU concerns about its ad targeting and data collection practices.
Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino revealed plans for the expansion of X (formerly Twitter), focusing on video content and job offers, with plans to feature dating services by the end of 2024.
The European Parliament is working on a 'right to repair' project to promote sustainable consumption and increase product repairs during and after the legal warranty period.
The UK, the US, Singapore, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland are the most startup-friendly countries, according to Startup Blink.
The Polish Agency for Enterprise Development has launched a competition to support mentoring programs that allow the verification of business assumptions of originators.
Swedish fintech Klarna is facing potential massive strikes by trade unions over its resistance to enter into a collective agreement.
AI software company Levatas has partnered with Boston Dynamics to integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT with Spot robot dogs, enabling the robots to talk.
The average working week in Poland is 40.4 hours, which can be managed using modern applications and tools that automate and organize work.
The Viva Tech fair, held annually in Paris, showcases the current state of the Polish startup scene, attracting major investors and startup stars from across Europe.
From the Editorial Board
Another week this year has passed under the sign of artificial intelligence. The most important news is definitely the new executive order of President Joe Biden, which imposes a number of restrictions related to safety on entities involved in the development of AI.
At the same time, government and company representatives will debate on the same topic at the AI Safety Summit 2023 in the United Kingdom. The Nightshade project also saw the light of day, the aim of which is to protect visual works from unlawful use by algorithms training generative artificial intelligence models.
A lot of changes are also planned in social media - especially in X, but also on Facebook and Instagram. You can read more about this in the new weekly review of the Digitized editorial team.
Welcome!
Weekly news review
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
US President Joe Biden issued an executive order on AI safety
US President Joe Biden issued a new executive order on AI on Monday, October 30. The purpose of the document is to reduce the threats that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers, minority groups, and the national security of the United States. The order requires AI system creators from critical areas to provide the US government with the results of safety tests of these systems before they are made public.
AI Safety Summit 2023 starts on November 1. The summit is organized by the British government
The AI Safety Summit is an international event in which governments, leading companies dealing with artificial intelligence, representatives of non-governmental organizations and the scientific community will participate. The aim of the summit is to discuss the threats associated with the spread of artificial intelligence and ways to combat them through coordinated international action. The summit will take place on November 1-2 at Bletchley Park in the UK. This is a symbolic place where Alan Turing worked on breaking the Enigma code.
Nightshade: "poisoned" pixel for generative AI algorithms
Artists wanting to protect their works from unauthorized use by algorithms learning generative artificial intelligence models will soon receive a tool that can help them protect their intellectual property. This is about the Nightshade program, which places an invisible pixel in the graphics, so that the image is categorized by AI as something different than it actually is. The model created in this way will be useless.
Layoffs at Stack Overflow, Amazon, Google. Reason: generative AI
Stack Overflow is laying off nearly one third of its employees. They will be replaced by programs based on generative artificial intelligence, such as Microsoft Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer and Google Bard. This year, other tech giants such as Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft also decided to take similar steps. According to data collected by Layoffs.fyi, an online platform tracking employment in the tech sector, over a thousand tech companies have laid off about 243 thousand employees this year.
AI on the construction site. Polish startup changes the way of managing large projects
This is about the company founded by Adam Wiśniewski and Michał Mazur, AI Clearing, which in response to the shortage of experienced engineers in the European and American market, has developed its own system for monitoring the progress of work on construction sites. It uses drones, mobile applications and artificial intelligence algorithms, which make it possible, for example, to update the status of the next stages daily and solve current problems. The company is also supported by venture capital funds, such as New York's Prudence and Polish Inovo and Innovation Nest.
IT industry, cloud services and security
Global IT development. In 2024, industry spending will rise to over 5 trillion dollars
According to the latest Gartner company forecast, global IT industry spending in 2024 will amount to $5.1 trillion - 8% more compared to 2023. The overall increase in spending is supported, among others, by the development of generative AI, cloud services, and cybersecurity costs.
AWS European Sovereign Cloud – a new independent cloud computing in Europe
AWS European Sovereign Cloud is a new, independent cloud computing for European entities. It has been designed to help customers from the public sector and regulated industries meet the most stringent operational and legal requirements for data storage - announced representatives of Amazon Web Services.
Data protection in medical facilities. Disturbing report by Veeam
In 2023, as many as 91% of health care facilities were attacked by ransomware malicious software - according to the Data Protection Trends Report 2023 by Veeam. In 2022, this percentage was 76%. This increase should be alarming. The loss of sensitive data can paralyze the operation of medical facilities and pose a threat to patient health. As the mentioned report shows, only in the last year in the most severe attacks in the health care industry, even 39% of data was encrypted or destroyed. Only 55% of resources could be recovered.
Social media
Meta launched a paid subscription without ads on Facebook and Instagram
Meta officially launched the option of paying a monthly subscription for using Facebook and Instagram without ads. The service will be available from November in the European Union, the European Economic Area, and Switzerland. Its cost is 9.99 euros per month for using the platforms in the browser or 12.99 euros per month for using the platforms in mobile applications. The subscription aims to dispel the European Union's concerns about Meta's practices in targeting ads and collecting data.
Elon Musk: new products X (Twitter) will compete with YouTube and LinkedIn
During the anniversary meeting with X (formerly Twitter) employees, platform owner Elon Musk and its president Linda Yaccarino revealed new plans for the expansion of the service. The new business model assumes a focus on the development of the video content segment and job offers. According to Musk, this means that YouTube and LinkedIn will be the biggest competition for X in the future. By the end of 2024, the platform is also expected to feature... dating.
EU law
Repair, don't throw away. The EU is working on a right to repair project
The European Parliament has started work on the so-called right to repair. The aim of the new regulations is to increase the number of repairs during the legal warranty period of products and after its expiration, and to promote a new culture of sustainable consumption. The project assumes that sellers would be obliged to offer free repair of products (e.g. washing machines, vacuum cleaners, smartphones) during the legal warranty period, unless the repair would be more expensive than replacement, impossible or inconvenient for the consumer.
Startups and business development
Countries most friendly to startup development. Startup Blink report
Startup Blink has published a list of the hundred most startup-friendly countries. The leader of the list is the United Kingdom, and the top ten also include the United States, Singapore, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
PARP: Call for applications for the Innovator's Laboratory competition begins
On October 24, 2023, the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development launched a call for the "Innovator's Laboratory" competition from the European Funds for Modern Economy (FENG) program. The aim of the action is to support mentoring programs that allow the verification of the business assumptions of the originators. Entities working for innovation can apply for funding. Applications will be accepted until December 19, 2023.
Trivia
Swedish fintech Klarna in trouble. The company is threatened with massive strikes by trade unions
Over the past few months, Klarna's management has resisted calls to enter into a collective agreement that would require the company to negotiate any major changes with trade unions. The representation of Sveriges Ingenjörer, the largest trade union of engineers, said: enough. A massive strike has been announced, which is scheduled to start on November 7.
Boston Dynamics' robots have been integrated with ChatGPT. Now they can talk
Levatas, a company specializing in AI software, has partnered with Boston Dynamics to integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT with Spot robot dogs. The results are below.
Digitized Editorial recommends
OKR systems. How to set ambitious goals for the company and achieve them?
They are used by Google, Intel, and LinkedIn. Will Objective and Key Results, a methodology for jointly setting ambitious goals, also work in startups and medium-sized companies? How do OKRs differ from KPIs? And how to implement such a methodology?
– In short, I would say that KPIs are often more down-to-earth (target, revenue, growth, etc.), while OKRs allow for daydreaming – explains Iza Klat, OKR Consultant, Head of People & Culture at Prowly.
– This means allowing the imagination to run wild and reaching for what at first glance seems impossible. OKRs often sound absurd and are considered amusing by many down-to-earth managers. It is usually these managers who define their goals briefly - growth of 100% year on year. But after working at Google, we know that OKRs can also be very strongly based on numbers and this also has a chance to work – adds Klat.
How to work smarter, not harder? 11 office applications improving efficiency
According to the latest Eurostat research, the average working week in Poland lasts 40.4 hours. This is almost seven hours more than in the Netherlands, which is first in this respect, and three hours more than the European average. Of course, such a state of affairs is largely due to entrenched socio-cultural patterns, but also the constantly increasing workload.
While new systemic solutions and generational changes are needed to modify the former, the latter can be dealt with independently using modern applications and tools that automate and organize work. Here are the most interesting of them.
Can well-being be measured? About happiness management
Shortly after the great crisis of 2008, it seemed that the world was finally drawing conclusions. Happiness, including the happiness of employees, began to emerge as an important topic, worth bringing to light and key to rebuilding what was destroyed as a result of the shock of bursting artificially inflated bubbles.
So how did it happen that fifteen years later, in 2023, much more is said about a new wave of addictions and something called the "loneliness epidemic", and not about linearly increasing indicators of individual and social happiness?
People get sick, burn out professionally, fall into depression and miss a large number of working days, and the existing motivational methods work in a very limited way. In this way, a new tool for accumulating efforts at work has emerged: happiness management. But does it really work?
In the constellation of the unicorn. Does the Polish startup industry have a chance to catch up with the peloton?
"A bucket of cold water is being poured on the venture capital industry. It will sober some up, drown others, and teach some to swim. One thing is certain: no one will come out of this with dry feet".
"The current state of the Polish startup scene is shown by this year's Viva Tech fair. The event, which takes place annually in Paris, attracts the biggest investors and startup stars from all over Europe, who share a vision of the future and the development of new technologies. The organizers call it the biggest startup event in Europe".
Editor-in-chief of Digitized. He has been associated with journalism for almost a third of his life; he worked for the Polish editions of Playboy, CKM and Esquire magazines, as well as Well.pl and naTemat.pl services. In his texts, he tries to understand reality and describe it objectively. He remains skeptical about many phenomena, but is not afraid to admit a mistake and change his mind. A native of Warsaw. Privately, he is a seeker of sense in nonsense and order amidst entropy. He likes wise words.
According to the latest forecasts from ABI Research, the augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technology sector is on the verge of a revolution - by 2028, the number of AR/VR sets delivered is expected to increase more than fivefold, reaching 69 million units.
Recruitment of qualified cybersecurity specialists is a major problem for companies in Poland, according to a KPMG report. The study showed that more than half of the respondents experience difficulties in hiring and retaining competent staff in this area.
Inclusive language is a way of communication that aims to avoid discrimination and promote equality by taking into account differences. Unfortunately, something that should unite, more and more often divides. What does this result in and how to change it?
The company Creandum published a report on the salaries of startup founders. The study was conducted among 650 entrepreneurs from 47 European countries, and the aim was to provide data on the average earnings of founders at various stages of their companies' development.
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