AI news we're talking about off-podcast this week

Don't worry. We're working on a fresh episode in the meantime.

The holidays are in full swing, and Sarah and I are taking the week off from the podcast. So I thought I would give you a recap of what we’ve been discussing in the meantime. (AI news, as it happens, does not rest these days.)

One of the most important developments was Friday’s deal in Europe where 37 hours of talks over the European Union’s AI Act resulted in a deal that could set new standards for risk, enforcement, and penalties in EU countries. The legislation could also set a bar for other countries to emulate. As with many laws, though, enforcement in practice will tell the story of how effective these rules prove to be.

Google, meanwhile, debuted its new Gemini AI model, showing off capabilities that extend to text, images, audio, and coding in a video titled "Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI." The video received a great deal of deserved scrutiny, however, thanks to some liberties that were taken, resulting in criticism that some of the interactions shown were ultimately fake.

Then, on the OpenAI front, the dust is still settling from the recent leadership shakeup, with various parties trying to get their sides of the ordeal out in the open for public consumption. For departing board member Helen Toner, that meant opening up about the conflict between her and CEO Sam Altman. For Altman, that meant speaking with Trevor Noah about his intense days fighting to be reinstated. In the meantime, a Washington Post story found employee accounts alleging that the CEO had been psychologically abusive, painting a contrasting picture against the supportive scene that emerged previously as OpenAI team members pledged to resign en masse if Altman wasn’t put back into power.

Last, because we don’t have "Two truths and l’AI" to play this week, here’s one of the stories I would have mentioned there. It’s called: "The tortured ‘I’ in AI — poems by artificial intelligence reveal angst over its own identity." In it, you’ll see what AI composing poetry about humans can look like.

As always, thanks for subscribing and tuning in. We’ll be back with a new episode soon!