🤖 AI insight of the week - World AI thinkers & leaders want to press the ‘pause’ button on GenAI… but can they?

As Italy has banned — or will ban — ChatGPT, a selected group of individuals more or less related to AI have signed an open letter that demands a complete and unwavering halt to the training of “superior to GPT-4” models… now.

Among the signees are people like Elon Musk, Yoshua Bengio, considered one of the top-3 most influential AI scientists in history, and a smattering of other prominent entrepreneurs, researchers, and thinkers.

But why are they asking for this, and more importantly, is it really possible?

Black boxes and a threat to humanity

In an open letter you can read — and sign if you wish — here, AI is described as a turning point for the human race, stating that:

“Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.“

The problem, outlined by the letter, is that LLMs like GPT-4 are black boxes.

In other words, not even OpenAI knows what is really going on inside.

Thus, these models are completely unpredictable in what they will output and, even more worrying, about what new abilities they learn as they increase in size (often referred to as ‘emergent behaviors’).

This, added to the “out-of-control” race between AI labs that the letter argues the AI industry is on, creates the perfect recipe for clumsy, no-guardrail decision-making in the name of profits and margins.

For those reasons, it demands a complete pause on the development of larger models until regulators and researchers alike understand what we’re developing.

The letter goes as far as suggesting that if there’s no coordinated agreement, governments should institute moratoriums (prohibitions).

But is this wish actually feasible or a madman’s dream?

Absolute decisions require totalitarian measures

Such measures would require a globalized agreement between all countries and enforcement agencies on two possible fronts:

• Banning the hardware used for AI; banning consumer and private access to GPUs, not only crippling the AI sector but also other relevant industries like gaming or computer hardware

• Treat model files as illegal assets (contraband)

However, there’s a big problem.

Every decision in this world depends on incentives.

Would China lose the opportunity to get ahead in the AI version of the long-running China⚔️US confrontation?

Would Russia, immersed in an all-out war with Ukraine and a geopolitical one with all of the West, lose the opportunity to level up its AI game?

Would the US or Europe allow the aforementioned countries and respective companies to raise above them and its companies?

Let’s be real, it’s simply not feasible.

That being said, and as the open letter points out, we must protect the AI principles defined and agreed upon in the Asilomar conferences from 2017.

Thus, governments and companies alike should work together in embracing these principles and uphold them beyond a reasonable doubt.

Because, regardless of the feasibility of such a pause on development, one thing’s for certain: the potential for serious harm to humanity from these systems is very, very real.

👾AI news for the week👾

♾ Article about how ChatGPT has now become a computer, and how that changes everything

⛔️ Italy bans ChatGPT. So it begins…

👾 Now you can use ChatGPT as a cybersecurity weapon with Security Copilot. Link includes demo video.

💸 Earn up to $330,000 by being good at prompting language models

🤑 A16Z values PineCone, at $700 million. Why are VCs so obsessed with vector databases for GenAI?

🔐 Crypto insight of the week - Using Crypto with iPhone’s Face or Touch IDs has become true

If you’ve ever performed a Crypto transaction, you’ve had to set up a wallet before, a complex process that feels prehistoric and, above all, forces you to write down a 12/24-word seed phrase on paper and safeguard that paper with your life.

The reason is simple, those words hold the key — quite literally — to all the coins in your wallet.

If you lose them, forget them, or they get stolen… you’ve lost your money.

Luckily, Crypto bros seem to have realized this is dumb, and we now have a real implementation where Apple’s Secure Enclave is used to perform Crypto transactions by using your fingerprint or your face.

No seed phrases. Just your biometrics.

But what on Earth is Apple’s Secure Enclave in the first place?

When iPhones became hardware wallets

If you ever wondered how on Earth you unlock your iPhone with your finger or your face, it’s quite simple to explain actually.

iPhones after the ‘5s’ model incorporate an additional processor beside the main one, called the Secure Enclave.

This processor, completely and physically separated from the rest of the system, is in charge of two things:

• Storing your private keys and biometric (fingerprint/face) data, the elements that guarantee that your data isn’t stolen

• Using these keys to encrypt — secure — data in the iPhone

This, in turn, allows for two other things:

• Your private keys, the keys to your data, are safely stored in a place that no one, not even Apple itself, can access.

• As these keys are protected, all data secured with them can only be modified or seen using the Secure Enclave

Long story short, only you, with your biometric data, can safely use or see this data.

Therefore, if we can manage to store our Ethereum wallet private key in the Secure Enclave, we achieve two things:

• Being able to sign Crypto transactions using your biometric data

• Avoid having to learn or store complex seed phrases and instead use your very own hands or face

Sounds and smells like the future, right?

Well, that future is now very much here.

Unlocking adoption with OpClave

OpClave has achieved this amazing milestone using Account Abstraction to enable smart contract wallets.

They’ve achieved this by setting up these features in a custom rollup for Ethereum built with the OP Stack (the same development kit used for Optimism and Coinbase’s Base rollup).

If you’re interested in reading more or seeing a video explanation, click here.

📉Crypto news for the week📈

👮🏼‍♀️ SBF is funding its defense with money Alameda (him) gifted to his father.

💆🏽‍♀️ Elizabeth Warren wants to build an ‘anti-Crypto’ army

🤺 The US wants Crypto dead, according to CoinDesk’s editorial

☢️ The CFTC sues Binance. If successful, it’s a death sentence

🏠 Real-world assets could be the key to safe Crypto

🤩 “What people call intelligence boils down to curiosity”

Plants cry and we can now hear them. And there goes the weirdest headline you’ve ever read.