OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before the Senate this week. It was a surprisingly friendly set of interactions when compared with other tech hearings recently. Let’s pull two paragraphs from the Verge:
Congress’s plan to regulate AI is still unclear after Tuesday’s hearing, just the first of several lawmakers plan to hold over the summer. A new regulatory agency was discussed the most, but lawmakers ran other ideas past Altman, like making AI companies liable for the harms they inflict on users.
Some lawmakers have already introduced bills to restrict the use of AI across industries. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) passed a bill requiring new disclosures in political ads that use AI-generated content. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) put companion legislation in the Senate before the hearing.
And here’s one from Vice on the hearings.
“The U.S. government should consider a combination of licensing or registration requirements for development and release of AI models above a crucial threshold of capabilities, alongside incentives for full compliance with these requirements,” Altman said in his written testimony.
Altman explained that he wants a governmental agency with the power to give and take licenses so that the U.S. can hold companies accountable.
Google Cloud has launched two new AI-powered tools to help biotech and pharmaceutical companies accelerate drug discovery and advance precision medicine. The Target and Lead Identification Suite is designed to help companies predict and understand the structure of proteins, a fundamental part of drug development. Another the Multiomics Suite will also help researchers ingest, store, analyze, and share mass amounts of genomic data.
In other vertical offerings, SolarWinds announced it is adding transformative artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to its IT service management solutions. The new AI features include a virtual agent to help users solve everyday IT problems and guided incident resolution to grant agents the information they need to resolve complex issues. The SolarWinds Service Desk additions are designed to reduce ticket volume by enabling users to remediate easier-to-solve issues. Disclosure, I’m a SolarWinds shareholder.
On the government front, Vice reports on how Customs and Border Protection is using an AI-powered monitoring tool to screen travelers, including U.S. citizens, refugees, and people seeking asylum, which can, in some cases, link their social media posts to their Social Security number and location data, according to an internal CBP document obtained by Motherboard. The system Called Babel X lets a user input information about a target—their name, email address, or telephone number—and receive a bevy of data in return, according to the document. Results can include their social media posts, linked IP addresses, employment histories, and unique advertising identifiers associated with their mobile phone. According to the document, the monitoring can apply to U.S. persons, including citizens and permanent residents, as well as refugees and asylum seekers.
Zoom is adding Anthropic’s Claude to its platform. It’s intended to help customer support agents by creating “better self-service features” that can help guide customers toward relevant solutions. It will soon be able to surface necessary resources for agents while serving customers.
And not to be outdone, Microsoft is updating Bing Chat in Edge Mobile, a Bing widget for iOS and Android, and continuous Bing Chat conversations between mobile and desktop.
Focusing on the extensive philosophical debates in Congress cleverly avoids the practical short-term impacts of the technology. Consider that as you listen to the debate. There’s a head fake in there.
I’m focusing on use cases and relevant tools and trying to find the business ones. They’re intended to be ideas to inspire action with customers. I will try and wax poetic less than I offer insights into what is happening. The list of industry-specific announcements continues to grow. I believe it’s more than a fad, and time will tell if it’s disruptive or accelerant within technology itself. It’s likely to be quite disruptive in individual customer industries.