AI update, revisited on "60 Minutes"

 

Recall our recent "Artificial Superintelligence" post? Is AGI now passe, not too many months later? Updates on deck.

 

Gemini?

 

Again, no substantive discussion jumps out questioning how much of the myriad Ben & Jerry'd flavors of "AI" are really just the relatively pedestrian "IA" technologies (Intelligence Enhancement).

 

UPDATE: 60 MINUTES OVERTIME

 

NEWS ITEM: FORTUNE

Sam Altman is wrong that the AI fraud crisis is coming—it’s already here

BY HAYWOOD TALCOVE

Sam Altman recently warned that AI-powered fraud is coming “very soon,” and it will break the systems we rely on to verify identity.

It is already happening and it’s not just coming for banks; it’s hitting every part of our government right now.

Every week, AI-generated fraud is siphoning millions from public benefit systems, disaster relief funds, and unemployment programs. Criminal networks are already using deepfakes, synthetic identities, and large language models to outpace outdated fraud defenses, including easily spoofed, single-layer tools like facial recognition, and they’re winning …f

... As I testified before the U.S. House of Representatives twice this year, what we’re seeing in the field is clear. Fraud is faster, cheaper, and more scalable than ever before. Organized crime groups, both domestic and transnational, are using generative AI to mimic identities, generate synthetic documentation, and flood our systems with fraudulent claims. They’re not just stealing from the government; they’re stealing from the American people.

The Small Business Administration Inspector General now estimates that nearly $200 billion was stolen from pandemic-era unemployment insurance programs, making it one of the largest fraud losses in U.S. history. Medicaid, IRS, TANF, CHIP, and disaster relief programs face similar vulnerabilities. We have also seen this firsthand in our work alongside the U.S. Secret Service protecting the USDA SNAP program, which has become a buffet for fraudsters with billions stolen nationwide every month. In fact, in a single day using AI, one fraud ring can file tens of thousands of fake claims across multiple states, most of which will be processed automatically unless flagged.

We’ve reached a turning point. As AI continues to evolve, the scale and sophistication of these attacks will increase rapidly. Just as Moore’s Law predicted that computing power would double every two years, we’re now living through a new kind of exponential growth. Gordon Moore, Intel’s co-founder, originally described the trend in 1965, and it has guided decades of innovation. I believe we may soon recognize a similar principle for AI that I call “Altman’s Law”: every 180 days, AI capabilities double.

If we don’t modernize our defenses with the same pace as technological advancements, we’ll be permanently outmatched…

AI is a force multiplier, but it can be weaponized more easily than it can be wielded for protection. Right now, criminals are using it better than we are. Until that changes, our most vulnerable systems and the people who depend on them will remain exposed.

Read all of it.

What could possibly go wrong? We have an administration ready to extend an unknown amount of probably billions of dollars on an AI industry that will pretty much be substantially “self regulated.” And, the same administration wants to unleash unfettered cryptocurrency ultimately backed by the US treasury. Need I repeat?

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

 

NY TIMES ARTICLE

 

In a scene in HBO’s “Silicon Valley” in 2014, a character who had just sold his idea to a fictional tech company that was a thinly veiled analogue to Google encountered some of his new colleagues day drinking on the roof in folding lawn chairs. They were, they said tipsily, essentially being paid to do nothing while earning out — or “vesting” — their stock grants.

“Rest and vest,” the techies said, in between sips of beer.

The tongue-in-cheek sendup wasn’t far from Silicon Valley’s reality. At the time, young engineers at Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google made the most of what was known as the “Web 2.0” era. Much of their work was building the consumer internet — things like streaming music services and photo-sharing sites. It was a time of mobile apps and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, wanting to give everyone a Facebook email address.

It was also the antithesis of corporate America’s stuffy culture. Engineers held morning meetings sitting in rainbow-colored beanbags, took lunch gratis at the corporate sushi bar and unwound in the afternoon with craft brews from the office keg (nitrogen chilled, natch). And if they got sweaty after a heated office table-tennis tournament, no matter — dry cleaning service was free.

That Silicon Valley is now mostly ancient history. Today, the tech has become harder, the perks are fewer and the mood has turned more serious. The nation’s tech capital has shifted into its artificial intelligence age — some call it the “hard tech” era — and the signs are everywhere.

In office conference rooms, hacker houses, third-wave coffee houses or over Zoom meetings, knowledge of terms like neural network, large language model and graphical processing unit has become mandatory. Stacked up against ChatGPT’s ability to instantly transform any image into a Studio Ghibli cartoon, Instagram’s photo filters are practically Paleolithic. And the chatter is about not how you built your app with the HTML5 coding language, but how many H100 graphics cards — the highly coveted hardware for running A.I. programs — you can get your hands on.

The tech epicenter has moved from the traditional cradle of Silicon Valley — the towns of San Jose, Mountain View, Menlo Park and Palo Alto — 40 miles north to San Francisco, the home of the A.I. start-ups OpenAI and Anthropic. Tech giants like Google are no longer hiring in droves as they once did. And those with jobs at those behemoths are met by the watchful eyes of managers looking to cut dead weight rather than coddle employees.

The region, long known for its capital-L Liberal politics, is no longer a political monoculture. A contingent of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have spurred a rightward shift, leading to the rise of the “Liberaltarian” — a term coined by two Stanford political economists to describe the tech industry’s proclivity toward trumpeting liberalism in some social issues but maintaining antigovernment posturing in regulating businesses. Alongside that change, industries that were once politically incorrect among techies — like defense and weapons development — have become a chic category for investment…

Again, read all of it.

 

The NY Times piece really resonates with me. I have major Bay Area history (going back to the late 60's), including, in more recent years, the SF/Silicon Valley digital Health IT startup scenes. See here as well.

 

AI 2027 UPDATE

 

Read the AI 2027 Report here. Choose your speculation...