⚙️ Zoom CEO envisions a coming future of digital clones

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Good morning. ChatGPT — and then a few of its competitors — went down yesterday, and Twitter was flooded with people like this: “I’m worried work might notice I don’t know how to do my job.”

In today’s newsletter: 

AI For Good: NASA’s new weather forecasting model 

Last month, NASA — in collaboration with IBM Research — developed a new AI foundation model for weather and climate forecasting called the Prithvi-weather-climate model. 

The model will be made publicly available on Hugging Face later in the year. 

Why it matters: For researchers, the model will reduce costs and increase the resolution of long-term climate models. For society, the model will enable more precise storm & severe weather tracking, which NASA said can lead to improvements in public safety. 

New York to take on social media algorithms

The state of New York, according to the Wall Street Journal, is planning legislation that, instead of targeting social media content, would target the method of delivery: Algorithms. 

The legislation — which the Journal said will be voted on this week — would prohibit social media companies from serving automated feeds & sending overnight notifications to minors without parental consent. 

But: Lobbyists for tech companies have spent recent weeks pushing back against the bill.

Psychologists have said that algorithms are one of the more dangerous sides of social media, as they trap users in “endless scrolling loops.”

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Current and former OpenAI employees say financial incentives and responsible AI do not align 

A group of current and former OpenAI employees (plus a handful from other labs) published an open letter Tuesday in which they said that corporate governance isn’t working. 

Key points: The group believes in the potential for AI to bring “unprecedented benefits” to society, but acknowledges that the only way to achieve those benefits is through proper regulatory governance (because of all the risks). 

The group added that AI companies “possess substantial non-public information” about the capabilities, risks, limitations and “adequacy” of safety measures that they have not shared with the public or governmental organizations.

The letter calls for whistleblower protections and an environment of open criticism. 

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. 

Why it matters: The letter comes in the wake of a safety researcher exodus & criticism from former OpenAI board members, who said that financial incentives and responsible AI do not align. Such instances also come as U.S. regulation still has yet to take shape. 

Go deeper: Big Tech spent millions in lobbying efforts focusing on AI and other issues in 2023.

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Zoom CEO envisions a future of digital clones

Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, told The Verge in a recent interview that Zoom’s semi-near-term vision for the future of AI and video calling is simple (if a little fantastical): Digital clones. 

His pitch is that meetings — and work in general — are “boring” and calendars are awful. In a world where you can spin off fine-tuned AI avatars of yourself (imbued with decision-making capabilities), why work five days a week? Why work at all? 

Zoom out: The idea of agentic AI and large action models isn’t new. It’s a focus for many labs, including OpenAI. 

At the same time, the idea brings up a lot of questions. Here are just a few: 

My thoughts: The utopic idea of sending an AI clone of myself out into the world to generate an income while I can hang out on a beach somewhere sunny, spending my days making music (to be heard by other people’s AI agents?), writing books (to be read by other people’s AI agents?) and mastering the art of painting and yoga sounds great. Maybe?  

And maybe it’s achievable. But there are more practical issues to that idealized vision that crop up the longer I think about it. The technical ability side of things is only one of them. 

I am not convinced that this idea of wholly removing humans from the loop is a good one, for a number of reasons. Perhaps the main one is that my human mind cannot comprehend a world that is run by digital entities. Not working sounds great, but AI — AGI or otherwise — running everything at every level of society feels far more dystopian than not. 

And if we actually have AI that is capable of achieving Yuan’s vision in five years ... I will be quite surprised. 

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-Ian Krietzberg, Editor-in-Chief, The Deep View