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🍪 Everything you need to know about the AI executive order

🍪 Everything you need to know about the AI executive order

Happy Thursday friends. This is Bite Sized Beta. We tell you everything you need to know in tech faster than you can unwrap your first Tootsie Roll from Halloween.

Where the Twixes at?!

Let’s get to the good stuff.

In the oven this week:

👩🏽‍⚖️ AI regulation is here
🗳️ Poll of the week: SBF takes the stand
🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines
🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds this week
😂 Snickerdoodles: Thursday memes

FRESHLY BAKED

BIDEN 🥊 AI

It’s official: AI regulation is finally here.

And like a VC at a Patagonia sale, we’re first in line for a front row seat.

Biden signed an executive order to promote AI safety and security. The doc was 100 pages long, but you know we’re about to save you some time out here!

Here's all the important stuff to know:

Biden wants to create a labeling system for AI-generated content so that it’s easier to tell what has been created using AI (e.g. everything generated by AI has to use a specific watermark)
“Red teaming:” Companies with models trained with 10 to the 26th power (100 trillion trillion) floating operations now have to perform safety tests on their models and share the results with the government before releasing anything to the public. (GPT-4 has 20 trillion trillion operations currently, so this is still in the future)
Health and Human Services will have to create a program to evaluate the safety of AI use in healthcare and diagnoses.
The Energy Department and Homeland Security now has to come up with a plan to address threats in critical industries like infrastructure, nuclear energy, and cybersecurity.
Biden is also ordering a report on how AI could disrupt the labor market so that he can determine how the government can help displaced workers.

Soo.. how’s everyone taking it?

Big Tech is pumped.

Microsoft:

Today’s executive order is another critical step forward in the governance of AI technology. This order builds on the White House Voluntary Commitments for safe, secure, and trustworthy AI and complements international efforts through the G7 Hiroshima Process. AI promises to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Brad Smith (@BradSmi)
Oct 30, 2023

Google:

The G7 Code of Conduct marks an important step toward responsibly developing and deploying AI in ways that benefit everyone. We support the Code and look forward to working with governments, industry, and civil society to get this critical moment right.
— Kent Walker (@Kent_Walker)
Oct 30, 2023

Everyone else thinks it’s pretty mid.

Some are questioning whether the government should be regulating AI at all, while others are miffed at the arbitrary thresholds for red teaming.

It’s also pretty fuzzy as to whether any of this will really be enforceable, but this is just a preview of what’s the come.

Hang onto your seats folks - we’ll have to wait and find out. 👀

FROM THE COOKIE JAR

POLL OF THE WEEK: HOW MANY TIMES DOES SBF ‘NOT RECALL’?

Sam Bankman Fried’s trial has been an ongoing spectacle (you know, that thing where he’s on trial for seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to FTX?).

We thought things might get explosive when he took the stand this week, but in reality, he really didn’t remember much.

Funny how that suddenly happens when you’re on trial, eh?

Take a guess - how many times in one day did SBF respond to the prosecution with "I don't know," or "I don't recall?”

Sound off

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED HEADLINES

WeWork is supposedly filing for bankruptcy next week. Its stock has plummeted 37% since news broke yesterday. What a wild ride - it was last valued at $47B in 2019.

Facebook and Instagram are offering a subscription for no ads in Europe to comply with regulatory requirements. Meta says it’ll cost between €10 and €13/month.

ChatGPT Plus can now analyze files. Think uploading a PDF and having a conversation about its contents with ChatGPT.

X had a company all hands and the transcript was made public. In it, Elon reinforced his ambitions to make X a super app and even announced that they are investigating how to “improve the dating situation” by helping you find interesting people based on what they write.

On Monday, X handed out stock grants to employees that showed that the company was worth $19B, down 55% from the $44B that Elon paid for it. Not exactly a great year.. In 2023, monthly active users has dropped ~15%, ads revenue has plummeted 60%, and employee headcount is down 80%. So brutal. Good thing they’ve still got their optimism..