ChatGPT Can Spread Malware, Web3 is Stronger than Ever, 5 Things to Do, & More
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ChatGPT Can Spread Malware, Web3 is Stronger than Ever, 5 Things to Do, & More
FUTURE OF THE WORLD - Edition 32
Hey everyone,
Future of the World EVENTS is launching soon. Watch out for an email with more details about topics, guests, and how to participate.
In this edition, as usual, I will wrap up the key events this week in AI and web3. My goal is always to cut through the noise and focus on the events that matter.
Have an awesome weekend!
Misha
In today’s newsletter:
This week in AI
This week in Web3
5 Things to Do
This Week in AI:
The AI mania is cooling down.
The pushback from tech leaders like Musk, Max Tegmark and others is having an effect, and the ban in Italy and potentially other parts of Europe is stemming the tide.
This quote from DeepMind Founder & CEO Demis Hassabis sums it up:
The world needs an international agency for artificial intelligence.
New generative-ai tools like Openai’s Chatgpt, the fastest-growing consumer internet application of all time, have taken the world by storm. They have uses in everything from education to medicine and are astonishingly fun to play with. Many ai experts are deeply worried about their potential to create a tsunami of misinformation. Scientists have warned that these new tools could be used to design novel, deadly toxins. Others speculate that in the long term there could be a genuine risk to humanity itself.
Get the story here: The world needs an international agency for artificial intelligence, say two AI experts | The Economist
Stanford put out its AI Index Report 2023.
This year’s report measures and evaluates the rapid rate of AI advancement from research and development to technical performance and ethics, the economy and education, AI policy and governance, diversity, public opinion and more. The latest edition includes data from a broad set of academic, private, and non-profit organizations as well as more self-collected data and original analysis than any previous editions.
Read the full report here: Artificial Intelligence Index (stanford.edu)
Big AI models are already over.
OpenAI has delivered a series of impressive advances in AI that works with language in recent years by taking existing machine-learning algorithms and scaling them up to previously unimagined size. GPT-4, the latest of those projects, was likely trained using trillions of words of text and many thousands of powerful computer chips. The process cost over $100 million.
But the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, says further progress will not come from making models bigger. “I think we're at the end of the era where it's going to be these, like, giant, giant models,” he told an audience at an event held at MIT late last week. “We'll make them better in other ways.”
Get the full story here: OpenAI’s CEO Says the Age of Giant AI Models Is Already Over | WIRED
ChatGPT can spread malware!
AI applications are being turned to more nefarious uses, including spreading malware. Take the traditional scam email, for example: It's usually littered with obvious mistakes in its grammar and spelling—mistakes that the latest group of AI models don't make, as noted in a recent advisory report from Europol.
Think about it: A lot of phishing attacks and other security threats rely on social engineering, duping users into revealing passwords, financial information, or other sensitive data. The persuasive, authentic-sounding text required for these scams can now be pumped out quite easily, with no human effort required, and endlessly tweaked and refined for specific audiences.
Get the full article here: How ChatGPT—and Bots Like It—Can Spread Malware | WIRED
Google’s AI panic forces merger of rival divisions, DeepMind and Brain
Google is feeling the pressure after falling behind in the AI race:
Google's 'Code Red' panic over the rise of ChatGPT and its failure to excite the world with its AI products is resulting in a big merger. Alphabet's two big AI teams, the independent Alphabet company DeepMind and the "Google Brain" AI division, are merging to form "Google DeepMind." Google and DeepMind have both released blog posts. Google CEO Sundar Pichai says merging the two units will "help us build more capable systems more safely and responsibly."
Full story from Ars Technica: Google's AI panic forces merger of rival divisions, DeepMind and Brain
Large Language Models will transform financial services.
Generative AI via large language models (LLMs) represents a monumental leap and is transforming education, games, commerce, and more. While traditional AI/ML is focused on making predictions or classifications based on existing data, generative AI creates net-new content.
This ability to train LLMs on vast amounts of unstructured data, combined with essentially unlimited computational power, could yield the largest transformation the financial services market has seen in decades. Unlike other platform shifts—internet, mobile, cloud—where the financial services industry lagged in adoption, here we expect to see the best new companies and incumbents embrace generative AI, now.
Full article here: Financial Services Will Embrace Generative AI Faster Than You Think | Andreessen Horowitz (a16z.com)
This Week in Web3:
Despite public perception, the state of crypto & web3 is strong.
As previously mentioned in this newsletter, venture fund a16zcrypto recently put out their State of Crypto Report 2023.
The gist of it?
Crypto and web3 are stronger than ever.
a16zcrypto CTO Eddy Lazzarin gives us an in-depth overview on this episode of Bankless.
Dive in here: a16z Crypto CTO: State of Crypto 2023
DeFi is on the rebound.
Web3 development platform Alchemy released a report Tuesday that found that decentralized exchanges (DEXs) saw a boost after Silicon Valley Bank crumbled on March 10.
While overall DEX trading volumes decreased 38% yearly, it rebounded 43% in the first quarter of 2023.
Trading volume for NFTs also bounced back, up 126% year over year after a cold 2022, according to the report. This was helped in part by surging token prices for bitcoin, ether and solana throughout this year.
Full story here: DeFi to Rebound After Crypto Winter, Says Web3 Report - Blockworks
Web3 and AI converge in ZKML.
Machine-learning technologies like GPT-4 have taken the world by storm. Combining those models with zero-knowledge cryptography will enable a new era of private, secure, and powerful AI applications.
Learn more in this thread from ALEO.
ZK can be applied to machine learning in a number of ways:
1. Model Authenticity: You want assurance that the machine learning model some entity claims has been run is indeed the one that ran.
2. Model Integrity: You want assurance that the same machine learning algorithm is being run on different users’ data the same way.
3. Attestations: You want to integrate attestations from external verified parties (e.g., any digital platform or piece of hardware that can produce a digital signature) into a model or any other kind of smart contract running on-chain.
4. Decentralized Inference or Training: You want to perform machine-learning inference or training in a decentralized way and allow people to submit data to a public model.
5. Proof of Personhood: You want to verify that someone is a unique person without compromising their privacy.
Read the full article here: Checks and balances: Machine learning and zero-knowledge proofs - a16z crypto
Crypto has been classed as property in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s High Court has deemed crypto to be property, marking the first time such a decision regarding digital assets has been made in the city-state.
“The confirmation that holdings of cryptocurrencies constitute ‘property’ that is on a par with other intangible assets such as stocks and shares, brings Hong Kong into line with other common law jurisdictions.”
Get the story here: Hong Kong Court Recognizes Crypto as Property - Blockworks
5 Things to Do:
TRY: ChatGPT for BuyItForLife | Looria
Super cool and useful.
Type in a product or category and it will spit out a list of recommendations.
This bot is trained on over 200k comments and posts from BuyItForLife subreddits to embody the collective knowledge of the Reddit community.
READ: Token Economy - Money, NFTs & DeFi by Shermin Voshmgir
Voshmgir’s work is mandatory reading for web3ers, natives and newcomers. She writes clearly and succinctly, avoiding the jargon that commonly plagues the work of most tech insiders.
If you want to understand the future of money, start with this book.
This book will first introduce core concepts of tokenization, before delving into the question of what constitutes money and credit.
Both chapters provide an important foundation from which we can then analyze various use cases for fungible and non-fungible tokens that represent different types of assets.
Later chapters will introduce the concepts of financial markets and analyze how asset tokens can be used as collateral in a growing ecosystem of tokenized financial applications — ranging from DeFi (Decentralized Finance) to CeFi (Centralized Finance).
WATCH: 5 “signal emotions” we suppress at work
You might suppress your emotions when you walk through the door at work. But your colleagues can still feel them.
Cassandra Worthy, the author of Change Enthusiasm: How to Harness the Power of Emotion for Leadership and Success, believes that emotions can have a uniquely strong influence on our personal and professional lives.
Emotions don’t turn off when we walk into a business setting or turn on our laptops, and we can catch the emotions of those around us, both positive and negative. This phenomenon is called emotional contagion, and it can have a significant impact on our mood and productivity.
PRACTICE: 15 Mins Pranayama Practice | 5 Deep Breathing Exercises you should do Daily
This is a 15 mins pranayama practice.
You can do this daily before or after your asana practice.
his video includes Yogic breathing, Kapalbhati, Bhastrika, Nadi Shodhan and Bhramari Pranayama in this practice.
When done on a daily basis, these pranayama help in activating internal energy, releasing stress and calming the mind.
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