AI takeover
en.wikipedia.org
... An AI takeover is a scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, as computer programs or robots effectively take control of the planet away from the human species.

Possible scenarios include replacement of the entire human workforce due to automation, takeover by a superintelligent AI, and the popular notion of a robot uprising. Stories of AI takeovers are very popular throughout science fiction.

Some public figures, such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future superintelligent machines remain under human control.[1] ...

What to know about landmark AI regulations proposed in California
abcnews.go.com

... Sweeping advances in artificial intelligence have elicited warnings from industry leaders about the potential for grave risks, including weapon systems going rogue and massive cyberattacks.

A state legislator in California, home to many of the largest AI companies, proposed a landmark bill this week that would impose regulations to address those dangers.

The bill requires mandatory testing for wide-reaching AI products before they reach users. Every major AI model, the bill adds, should be equipped with a means for shutting the technology down if something goes wrong.

"When we're talking about safety risks related to extreme hazards, it's far preferable to put protections in place before those risks occur as opposed to trying to play catch up,"

state Sen. Scott Wiener, the sponsor of the bill, told ABC News. "Let's get ahead of this." ...

Microsoft Infrastructure - AI & CPU Custom Silicon Maia 100, Athena, Cobalt 100 (November 2023)
www.semianalysis.com

... Microsoft is currently conducting the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen. While that may seem like hyperbole, look at the annual spend of mega projects such as nationwide rail networks, dams, or even space programs such as the Apollo moon landings, and they all pale in comparison to the >$50 billion annual spend on datacenters Microsoft has penned in for 2024 and beyond. This infrastructure buildout is aimed squarely at accelerating the path to AGI and bringing the intelligence of generative AI to every facet of life from productivity applications to leisure.

While the majority of the AI infrastructure is going to based on Nvidia's GPUs in the medium term, there is significant effort to diversify to both other silicon vendors and internally developed silicon. We detailed Microsoft's ambitious plans with AMD MI300 in January and more recently the MI300X order volumes for next year. Outside of accelerators there are also significant requirements for 800G PAM4 optics, coherent optics, cabling, cooling, CPUs, storage, DRAM, and various other server components.

Today we want to dive into Microsoft's internal silicon efforts. There are 2 major silicon announcements for today's Azure Ignite event, the Cobalt 100 CPUs and the Maia 100 AI accelerators (also known as Athena or M100). Microsoft's systems level approach is very notable, and so we will also go into rack level design for Maia 100, networking (Azure Boost & Hollow Core Fiber) and security. We will dive into Maia 100 volumes, competitiveness with AMD MI300X, Nvidia H100/H200/B100, Google's TPUv5, Amazon's Trainium/Inferentia2, and Microsoft's long-term plans with AI silicon including the next generation chip. We will also share what we hear about GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 model performance for Maia 100. ....

Woof.

Microsoft engineer warns company's AI tool creates violent, sexual images, ignores copyrights
www.cnbc.com

... On a late night in December, Shane Jones, an artificial intelligence engineer at Microsoft

, felt sickened by the images popping up on his computer.

Jones was noodling with Copilot Designer, the AI image generator that Microsoft debuted in March 2023, powered by OpenAI's technology. Like with OpenAI's DALL-E, users enter text prompts to create pictures. Creativity is encouraged to run wild.

Since the month prior, Jones had been actively testing the product for vulnerabilities, a practice known as red-teaming. In that time, he saw the tool generate images that ran far afoul of Microsoft's oft-cited responsible AI principles.

The AI service has depicted demons and monsters alongside terminology related to abortion rights, teenagers with assault rifles, sexualized images of women in violent tableaus, and underage drinking and drug use. All of those scenes, generated in the past three months, have been recreated by CNBC this week using the Copilot tool, which was originally called Bing Image Creator. ...

AI Is Taking Water From the Desert
www.msn.com

... One scorching day this past September, I made the dangerous decision to try to circumnavigate some data centers. The ones I chose sit between a regional airport and some farm fields in Goodyear, Arizona, half an hour's drive west of downtown Phoenix. When my Uber pulled up beside the unmarked buildings, the temperature was 97 degrees Fahrenheit. The air crackled with a latent energy, and some kind of pulsating sound was emanating from the electric wires above my head, or maybe from the buildings themselves. With no shelter from the blinding sunlight, I began to lose my sense of what was real.

Microsoft announced its plans for this location, and two others not so far away, back in 2019"a week after the company revealed its initial $1 billion investment in OpenAI, the buzzy start-up that would later release ChatGPT. From that time on, OpenAI began to train its models exclusively on Microsoft's servers; any query for an OpenAI product would flow through Microsoft's cloud-computing network, Azure. In part to meet that demand, Microsoft has been adding data centers at a stupendous rate, spending more than $10 billion on cloud-computing capacity in every quarter of late. One semiconductor analyst called this "the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen."

I'd traveled out to Arizona to see it for myself. The Goodyear site stretched along the road farther than my eyes could see. A black fence and tufts of desert plants lined its perimeter. I began to walk its length, clutching my phone and two bottles of water. According to city documents, Microsoft bought 279 acres for this location. For now, the plot holds two finished buildings, thick and squat, with vents and pipes visible along their sides. A third building is under construction, and seven more are on the way. Each will be decked out with rows of servers and computers that must be kept below a certain temperature. The complex has been designated partly for OpenAI's use, according to a person familiar with the plan. (Both Microsoft and OpenAI declined to comment on this assertion.) And Microsoft plans to absorb its excess heat with a steady flow of air and, as needed, evaporated drinking water. Use of the latter is projected to reach more than 50 million gallons every year. ...