🪡 Thread Alert!

PLUS: Mastercard Plays Mastermind

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI

Hello Hitchhiker,

We're nearing the weekend, but before we get there, let's explore the fresh perspectives that Thursday brings us. Dive into today's 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to AI' for the most current and compelling news from the AI frontier.

In today’s Tracker:

  • 🧪 Research highlights: ChatGPT Takes Top 1% in Creativity Tests

  • 🚨 Industry news: Mastercard Issues New AI Tool Against Fraud

  • ⚖️ Policy and regulation: U.S. Ponders Chinese Cloud Restrictions

  • 🌐 AI and society: Tweet-tweet, Who's There? It's Threads

  • 🧰 Snippets

💻 Creative Genius or Artificial Intelligence? ChatGPT Breaks the Mold

In a recent study conducted by Dr. Erik Guzik and his team at the University of Montana, the artificial intelligence application ChatGPT, powered by the GPT-4 engine, demonstrated its creativity by scoring in the top one percent on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), a standard benchmark for measuring human creativity.

Intriguingly, ChatGPT outperformed most college students nationally in both 'fluency' - the capacity to generate a large volume of ideas - and 'originality' - the capacity to generate novel ideas.

This demonstrates an unprecedented level of AI capability in creative thought and presents new opportunities and challenges for assessing and understanding creativity.

However, Guzik emphasizes the need for caution and deliberative regulation as we integrate AI into our future, given its potential to transform industries such as business and innovation.

Our Two Cents: This ground-breaking research demonstrates the potential for artificial intelligence to rival human creativity. It illustrates how artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, could reshape disciplines such as business and innovation, presenting a future in which machines created by humans could help us generate novel ideas. Nonetheless, it highlights the need for thoughtful guidelines as we traverse this landscape powered by AI.

🏦Banking on AI with Mastercard's New Weapon Against Scammers

Mastercard Inc. has introduced the Consumer Fraud Risk system, an AI-powered tool designed to help institutions detect authorized push payment (APP) scams more effectively.

This development occurred prior to the Payment Systems Regulator's 2024 mandate requiring banks to compensate consumers affected by APP scams.

Nine of the UK's most prominent institutions, including Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Natwest Group Plc, and Bank of Scotland Plc, have adopted the tool, which predicts the likelihood that funds will be transferred to a fraudulent account.

In a fraction of a second, the system assigns a risk score between 0 and 999 to every attempted bank transfer, allowing banks to construct a comprehensive assessment of the transaction and potentially block it.

Mastercard, which levies a fee based on the volume of transactions, intends to implement the tool globally.

Our Insight: Mastercard's new AI tool signifies a proactive step towards minimizing financial fraud in banking. As stricter regulations loom, tools like these offer an added layer of security for customers and provide banks with a cost-effective way to compensate for fraud losses while strengthening their defenses.

🇺🇸 🇨🇳 Rain on China's Cloud Parade as the U.S. Ponders Restrictions

The US government is contemplating a rule that would severely restrict Chinese firms' access to US cloud-computing services, including those that utilize advanced artificial intelligence processors.

In response to potential vulnerabilities in the current embargo regulations, the proposed legislation would require US cloud-service providers such as Amazon and Microsoft to obtain government approval prior to offering their services to Chinese customers.

The action could also affect Chinese cloud-service providers with US operations, such as Alibaba and Tencent.

This is viewed as a measure toward restricting the export of high-end IT hardware made or designed in the United States to China.

Our perspective: This proposed rule underlines the continuing technological tug-of-war between the US and China. It's an effort to safeguard high-tech American assets and hinder China's AI growth. However, it could also potentially disrupt global business operations that rely on these cloud services, leading to a ripple effect.

🐦 Tweet-tweet, Who's There? It's Threads, Twitter's New Competitor

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms Inc. has strategically introduced a competitor, Threads, in response to the recent turmoil within Twitter following Elon Musk's acquisition.

Twitter-like "text-based conversation app" Threads will leverage Meta's existing user base and financial resources.

The new platform will integrate with Instagram, allowing for a seamless user experience, and aims to provide Twitter's users with an alluring alternative amid ongoing controversy and technical issues.

Our Take: This may indicate a significant shift in social media dynamics in the context of AI and the larger tech ecosystem. Given its "Big Launch Energy" debut, Threads may be integrating AI in novel, user-appealing ways, placing Twitter under pressure to innovate or improve its platform. If Threads implements AI for personalized content, more efficient moderation, or user engagement, Twitter and other platforms may increase their AI efforts. We may be witnessing the beginning of a new chapter in AI-driven social media competition, with implications for user experience, online discourse, and social dynamics.

Snippets

Tesla's CEO Elon Musk donned two hats during a state-endorsed conference in China; an AI enthusiast marveling at the country's tech prowess and a futurist advocating for more AI regulation. His keynote speech again emphasized the robot-dominated vision of tomorrow that he firmly believes in.

The US military is testing large-language models (LLMs) to expedite data-based tasks. This application of generative AI could revolutionize military operations, where many processes remain analog. In one trial, an AI tool completed an information request in just ten minutes, a task that often takes human staffers hours. Though concerns about data poisoning and misinformation remain, such trials aim to gauge the system's reliability and potential for presenting new strategic options.

Despite a sluggish technology economy, the burgeoning enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is acting as a potent revitalizer. It's propelling share values, amplifying growth prospects for numerous tech titans, and sparking the birth of innovative startups.

Penned by Eric Schmidt, the esteemed former CEO of Google, this article serves as a deep dive into the fascinating realm of AI and its revolutionary implications for the scientific world.

As summer sets, extreme weather has become the norm, bringing scorching heatwaves, uncontrolled wildfires, and devastating floods. The urgency to accurately predict such harsh conditions has led to Nvidia, the renowned semiconductor giant, building an AI-driven "digital twin" of our planet.

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