A new AI-powered wildlife tracking breakthrough in the UK

Welcome to The Dispatch! We are the newsletter that keeps you informed about AI. Each weekday, we scour the web to aggregate the many stories related to artificial intelligence; we pass along the news, useful resources, tools or services, guides, technical analysis and exciting developments in open source.

In today’s Dispatch:

• The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is contemplating introducing regulations to curb AI-generated content. Sparked by a petition from advocacy group Public Citizen, which seeks to prevent candidates and political parties from using AI to falsely portray opponents, the FEC has commenced a public comment period to gauge the public's stance. Notably, the Republican National Committee and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis have already leveraged AI in attack campaigns.

• The Black Hat 2023 keynote delves into the transformative potential and vulnerabilities of generative AI in cybersecurity. As generative AI propels us into a new technological era, it reshapes traditional IT problems into prediction challenges. However, with its rise come novel security concerns, especially as it becomes embedded in businesses and software platforms.

• Amid the deadliest wildfire in modern US history, California's ALERTCalifornia AI program is harnessing the power of over 1,000 strategically placed cameras to detect wildfires early, aiding swift intervention by first responders. Recently, the system successfully identified a fire in the remote Cleveland National Forest at 3 a.m., facilitating a rapid response that quelled the flames within 45 minutes. The program was developed by the University of California San Diego.

Plus: A new AI-powered era of wildlife tracking, how much ChatGPT costs OpenAI per day, inside Nvidia’s insane surge past a $1t valuation, trending tools and more!

‘Only AI made it possible’: breakthrough in tracking British wildlife

From The Guardian: Researchers in Britain have devised AI-driven camera and microphone arrays to identify and monitor the movement of wildlife. This innovation could be a major boon to the UK's escalating biodiversity challenges and can pinpoint several hard-to-track species without any human intervention.

More details:

• The AI-based systems were trialed at three sites near rail lines around London. These areas, owned by Network Rail, are fenced off and seldom visited, allowing easy access for the project.

• During testing, the technology recognized a variety of birds from their songs and identified mammals like foxes, deer, hedgehogs, and bats from the gathered visuals and sounds.

• The scale of data collection and analysis is vast. Anthony Dancer from the Zoological Society of London emphasized that managing such an amount of data manually would be impractical; the breakthrough was made feasible with AI.

• Key species like the Eurasian blackcap, blackbird, and great tit, which indicate a healthy environment, were detected by the AI using acoustic signals. Six species of bat, including the common pipistrelle, were also identified.

• This new method provides improved insights into wildlife populations compared to older methods, which relied on post-mortem observations of animals found near tracks.

Takeaways: The integration of machine learning technology for wildlife tracking is an amazing use case for AI. Beyond the sheer scale of data processing, AI provides an opportunity to gather more accurate and comprehensive information on various species and up-to-date habitat locations. While the UK grapples with biodiversity concerns, this breakthrough could help to buoy conservation efforts. With climate change also affecting movement patterns, having real-time and extensive data can also guide necessary interventions and land management strategies.

Is OpenAI in financial trouble? ChatGPT costs OpenAI $700,000 per day

From Firstpost: OpenAI could be approaching a financial crisis. ChatGPT alone costs the company a whopping $700,000 daily to function. The article suggests bankruptcy is a possibility as soon as 2024 and that the company’s current lifeline might be Microsoft's $10 billion investment back in January 2023.

More details:

• Despite efforts to monetize products like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, revenues are not meeting the expenditure, creating a financial concern.

• ChatGPT's user base is starting to see a decline, with a notable 12% drop in July 2023.

• OpenAI's APIs are a double-edged sword: they allow easy access to a powerful AI, but there's competition from open-source language models. These open-source alternatives can be tailored for specific organizational needs without licensing constraints.

• There's a divide between the goal to be profitable and Sam Altman's public comments that repeatedly express concerns over the unregulated advancement of AI.

• Financially, OpenAI's losses have hit $540 million since ChatGPT's inception. Even though ambitious revenue targets are set for the upcoming years, achieving them seems challenging.

• Adding to the company’s potential woes are staffing issues - with many top talents being headhunted by rivals - and global GPU shortages.

Takeaways: What began for OpenAI as a promising journey in revolutionizing the AI conversation space is morphing into a tale of challenges – both financial and operational. The mounting daily expenses of running ChatGPT, paired with declining userbase and competition from both paid and open-source platforms, mean it’s not just ‘clear skies ahead’ for the pioneering company. Additionally, the world of tech sees the tension between commercial aspirations and ethical/regulatory considerations. The organization will need to have keen and clear strategies and goals in an increasingly competitive AI landscape.

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Social media/Video/Podcast:

• Meet the hackers trying to make AI go rogue [Podcast]

• Can’t teach an old dev to love a computer (AI Boyfriend) [YouTube]

• I had a several hour conversation with the Microsoft Azure AI VP, here's what they had to say: [Reddit]

• Custom instructions are now available to ChatGPT users on the free plan, except for in the EU & UK where we will be rolling it out soon [X]

• AudioCraft by Meta AI is a one-stop codebase for generative audio [X]

Did you know?

Researchers from Stanford and Google have created a virtual village inhabited by 25 AI bots that exhibit surprisingly human-like behavior. In “Smallville", the bots autonomously go about daily routines, socialize through gossip and party planning, and form opinions of each other. This experiment highlights advancements in generative AI's ability to assume life-like virtual personas when equipped with memory and reflection. The human-like AI aims to be socially believable, though risks remain around more complex real world interactions.

Trending AI Tools & Services:

• Motiv8: The Goal Exploration and Self Betterment App

• Supabase Studio 3.0: Write SQL without knowing SQL!

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• Parea AI: The developer toolkit for debugging and monitoring LLM apps