AI Leadership Weekly

Top Stories

Dorsey and Musk want all IP laws “deleted”
Over the weekend, Jack Dorsey (the co-founder of both Twitter and Square) posted on Twitter his desire to "delete all IP laws."

This tweet was quickly replied to by Elon Musk, simply stating, "I agree." Tech evangelist Chris Messina said Dorsey, "had a point." Messina also made a comparison between 3-strike IP laws for AIs being akin to cannabis possession laws that overly target poor people.

Pushback came from several places, including Ed Newton-Rex of the nonprofit Fairly Trained (who certify AI training practices that respect creators’ rights), who noted that "none of Jack or Elon’s companies would exist without IP law." He also defends creators who, "don’t want their life’s work pillaged for profit."

OpenAI API may soon require verified ID
A new support page on OpenAI's website hints that organisations may soon need to be verified in order to access advanced models and features via the API.

According to the page, a verified ID can be only be used for one organisation, and verification only lasts for 90 days (after which, presumably, you will simply re-verify).

The page further states the reason for verification is to "mitigate unsafe use of AI while continuing to make advanced models available to the broader developer community," as a small minority of developers abuse their systems. They are vague on the specifics of this "abuse", but individuals pushing the boundaries of and exploiting loopholes in the moderation system aren't uncommon.

AI shopping app “powered” by workers in Philippines
Founder and former CEO of AI app Nate, Albert Saniger, has been charged with defrauding investors according to a DOJ press release.

The e-commerce company purported to allow users to make one-click purchases on any site, while, in reality, the service relied on hundreds of contractors in a Pilipino call centre to complete the purchases.

Saniger had raised tens of millions of dollars in investments, and claimed that humans would only be needed in "edge cases" where the AI failed to complete the purchase. But, according to the DOJ, AI completed virtually 0% of purchases. Reportedly, the company ran out of money in 2023, leaving investors with "near total" loses.

In Brief

• OpenAI staff now only have “days” to perform safety and performance testing on models

• Safe Superintelligence raises $2b on $32b valuation

Market Trends

Meta’s AI lab “dying slow death”
Last week, Joelle Pineau, the leader of FAIR (one of Meta's AI labs), announced her departure after two years at the helm.

The timing has raised questions, as her resignation came just days before the controversial launch of Llama 4, which has drawn criticism and claims of cheating on LLM leaderboards. It is important to note, though, that the Llama model came out of Meta's GenAI team, and not the FAIR lab.

Almost two dozen researchers have left the company in the past two years, with 8 of those being in the last six months alone. Yann LeCun, who is Meta's chief AI scientist and who actually founded FAIR, is now back temporarily leading that team. He terms this era as "a new beginning" for FAIR, and aims to refocus the group on what he calls Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a term he prefers to the "misleading" AGI.

Former OpenAI employees pushing back on ‘for profit’ conversion
Twelve ex-employees of OpenAI have filed an amicus brief in seport of Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI.

The employees served between 2018 and 2024, in both technical and leadership roles, and oppose CEO Sam Altman's desire to take OpenAI for-profit. The group express the view that restructuring OpenAI would "breach the trust of employees, donors, and other stakeholders" who came aboard when they were a non-profit.

One former employee even described Altman as "a person of low integrity," and accused the CEO of using the original charter simply as a way to attract talent. All twelve also expressed concern that taking the company for-profit would mean that the benefits of AGI would only apply to a narrow segment of individuals with financial interests in the company.

Tools and Resources

DreamActor M1
Upload both a still image and a video, and let this AI apply the video’s movements to the still image.

Hera
Describe an animation you need, attach any relevant data, and Hera will create the video for you.

Recommended Reading

Is human data enough for AGI?
In this YouTube video, David Silver (the VP of Reinforcement Learning) discusses and explores his concept of the "era of experience" and how it might lead to superhuman intelligences.

Hit reply to let us know which of these stories you found the most important or surprising! And, if you’ve stumbled across an interesting link/tweet/news story of your own, send it our way at [email protected] It might just end up in the next issue!

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