What to watch in 2024 across policy, responsible AI, and where AI is going. Reid Hoffman on the case for AI optimism. Sam Altman on ‘what I wish someone had told me.’ Plus, what role will generative AI play in the future of robotics?

Reflecting on the End of the Year

"There's this false idea that you have to choose between scale and responsibility," says Gaurab Bansal, Executive Director of RIL. "Increased responsibility will give you more durability as you scale. Being transparent when communicating with your customers about what you've improved is key for fostering relationships. You're bringing them into the process." (more here) You can see more about RIL’s work this year here and here.

Policy

Americas

• US government moves to regulate development and use of AI models
• Europe’s AI act draws attention to Congress’ timeline for action
• ICYMI: NIST’s draft guidance on evaluating a privacy protection technique for the AI era

Europe

• EU to expand support for AI startups to tap its supercomputers for model training
• EU's Digital Europe Programme eyes funding boost for AI, cyber security innovation

Asia

• What can we learn from Singapore’s AI journey?

Watch in 2024

• A skeptical Sacramento prepares 12+ AI bills for California’s next legislative session and the final text of the EU AI Act is expected in 2024.

Responsible AI

Product and alignment

• OpenAI’s preparedness framework
• ICYMI: Anthropic on evaluating and mitigating discrimination in language model decisions

Climate

• Google’s Kate Brandt on how AI could accelerate progress toward the world’s climate goals around COP28 (more here, here)

Security and safety

• Cyberattacks against US water supply inspire policymakers, system operators to step up security practices
• Child abuse images found in AI training data
• FBI seizes BlackCat ransomware website, offers decryption key and suffers a setback

Watch in 2024

• Google on how they’re approaching the 2024 US elections
• Splunk on AI governance in 2024

Where AI is going

Humanity

• Reid Hoffman on the case for AI optimism
• Opinion: A thought experiment against pseudanthropy (TechCrunch)

Capabilities

• Google DeepMind used a LLM to solve an unsolved math problem
• UC Berkeley’s Ken Goldberg on what role will generative AI play in the future of robotics?

Ecosystem

• Apple is working to optimize AI running on phones
• Mistral AI's co-founder Cédric O: “Europe could be marginalised”

Society and technology

• SEC Chair Gensler: AI is the most transformative technology of our time (more here)
• Advocates push to bring the Civil Rights Act into the AI age (more here)
• LinkedIn’s Chief Economist on how AI will change the global labor market (but not how you think)

Releases, raises, more

• Releases: Suno (AI music), Midjourney v6, ‘Llama recipes’ repo, Google’s VideoPoet, Intel's Xeon processor
• Raises: TuMeke ($10M, computer vision), Atavistik Bio ($40M), Meltwater ($65M, media monitoring), Harvey ($80M, legal AI), True Anomaly ($100M, space security), Lightmatter ($155M, computing), Tome Biosciences ($213M); DCVC ($300M climate fund)
• More: Anthropic reportedly in talks to raise $750M at $18B+ valuation

Watch in 2024

• Advances in quantum computing (ex. IBM, DARPA), computer-brain interfaces (ex. Synchron, Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, Motif Neurotech), healthcare and more
• Developer influence, maritime upgrades, and new video intelligence

Extra bits

• Sam Altman on ‘what I wish someone had told me’
• Former Carta and Pave sales director on how to sell B2B (part 1)
• How leading AI startup investors approached AI in 2023
• ICYMI: AI to Z: terms to know on AI (The Conversation)