Chipmaker Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has created substantial shareholder value in recent months. The stock has soared 517% since the beginning of 2023 amid surging interest in artificial intelligence (AI). But several billionaire hedge fund managers sold down their positions in Nvidia during the fourth quarter, while purchasing other AI stocks.

Those three billionaires have two important traits in common. They rank among the 15 most successful hedge fund managers in history, and they beat the S 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) over the past three years. Those qualities lend them credibility.

With that in mind, all three hedge fund managers bought shares of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in the fourth quarter. Englander and Tepper also started positions in (NYSE: HUBS). Those companies have already achieved a strong presence in certain AI markets -- Amazon in cloud AI developer services, and HubSpot in AI sales assistant software -- but both are leaning into AI product development in a way that could create more shareholder value.

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Forget Nvidia: Billionaires Are Selling It and Buying 2 Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Instead - sharewise

The sun rises over El Jadida, a fortified city in south-western Morocco, bathed by the Atlantic Ocean. Pathologist Hicham El Attar is already at work. As a co-founder of DataPathology, he analyses and diagnoses 3D images to detect the slightest cell that could indicate cervical cancer.

A few years ago, Hicham El Attars mother died from the second most-frequent cancer in women. A tragic loss, which made him decide to work on providing an efficient and affordable service to medical practitioners and patients to combat this significant public health problem.

Along with Mohammed El Khannoussi, an information systems and data consultant, he managed to design a solution. Together, they founded DataPathology, a Medtech start-up specializing in medical pathology, in 2020. Combining pathology diagnosis and data digitization, the company uses artificial intelligence and image processing technologies to analyse tissue samples and detect signs of cancer accurately.

By speeding up the diagnostic process and reducing the risks of human error, DataPathology is helping tackle non- or late detection of cervical cancer in patients in Morocco and elsewhere in Africa, thanks to latest-generation screening systems and a network of connected laboratories.

DataPathology has implemented its AI-PAP solution, a complete process that covers everything from distributing a medical sampling kit to a digital platform. The solution is designed to record, analyse and diagnose the results in one of the many laboratories connected to the network.

Easy to access and use, the system offers gynaecologists, general practitioners and laboratory technicians the ability to take the sample themselves and therefore increase the number of patients screened. Using the kit provided, they take a cervical smear on site, enter the associated patient code on the digital platform developed by DataPathology and send in the samples. There is then a battery of tests before the final diagnosis is shared with the patients doctor. The entire process takes two to three days.

The platform we use can deal with up to 250 tests a day, which is an extraordinary improvement: in the past, only around 10 tests a day could be processed. We can do it thanks to artificial intelligence and data digitization, explains Dr El Attar.

DataPathology works with multiple partners and strives continuously to make the screening test as affordable as possible. There is both an economic impact and an impact on survival, because a screening tests that costs USD 100 means you can avoid cancer treatment that would cost you much more than that, say USD 10,000 to 20,000. We hope that one day, the test will be free of charge, comments Hicham El Attar.

However, vaccination remains a critical step before the use of screening, which women can access from age 25. The World Health Organization (WHO), as part of its plan to eliminate cervical cancer by 2030, has set a target of vaccinating 90% of girls, screening 70% of women and treating 90% of women with invasive cancer.

However, although there is a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer linked to the papillomavirus, diagnosing it faces a number of hurdles in Africa. For Dr El Attar, implementing strategies that involve both the public and private sectors, the African Development Bank, private banks and insurance companies, i.e. everyone who has a part to play, would be the most effective direction to take.

Thanks to its innovative approach, DataPathology is currently working on establishing connected laboratories throughout Morocco but also in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in Dakar, in Senegal. In June 2023, the start-up raised USD 1 million from the Azur Innovation Fund, supported by the African Development Bank, to support its expansion in Africa.

Hicham El Attar is more determined than ever, and wants to continue to improve access to high-quality care and save lives by diagnosing cancers earlier.

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DataPathology: combining artificial intelligence and digital technology to combat cervical cancer - African Development Bank

This year marks a turning point for artificial intelligence (AI). The EU parliament has voted to approve the EU AI Act after three years of negotiations, moving the conversation around responsible AI from theory to reality and setting a new global standard for AI policy.

IBM welcomed this legislation and its balanced, risk-based approach to regulating AI. Why? Because history has shown us time and again that with every new disruptive technology, we must balance that disruption with responsibility.

Weve known for years that AI will touch every aspect of our lives and work, and theres been much attention paid to the incredible potential of this technology to solve our most pressing problems. But not all of AIs impact will be flashy and newsworthyits success will also lie in the day-to-day ways that it will help humans be more productive.

Right now, technology is advancing faster than ever, but productivity is not. A recent McKinsey report shows labor productivity in the U.S. has grown at a lackluster 1.4%. The findings show that regaining historical rates of productivity growth would add $10 trillion to U.S. GDPa boost needed to confront workforce shortages, debt, inflation, and the energy transition. Similar productivity slowdown is happening globally, despite the technology boom of the past 15 years.

Anthropologist Jason Hickel said nearly every government in the world rich and poor alike, is focused single-mindedly on GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth. This is no longer a matter of choice.

The formula for GDP growth has historically been population growth + productivity growth + debt growth. Two-thirds of this formula, population and debt growth, are unlikely to move in the near future. Aging populations and a shrinking workforce could lead to significant talent gaps, especially in terms of highly skilled and educated workers and as skills-first training and hiring continue to ramp up. Debt access is tightening after 15 years of the lowest interest rates in modern history come to an end.

That leaves productivity gains as our main driver of GDP growth. The world needs increased productivity to drive financial success for companies, as well as economic growth for countries.

AI is the answer to the productivity problembut only if it can be developed and deployed responsibly and with clear purpose.

Gartner estimates $5 trillion in technology spending in 2024, growing to $6.5 trillion by 2026. This will be the ultimate catalyst for the next stage of growth in the global economy.

However, one in five companies surveyed for the 2023 IBM Global AI Adoption Index say they dont yet plan to use AI across their business. Cited among their concerns: limited AI skills and expertise, too much data complexity, and ethical concerns. This is the status quo component in our current paradox. But responsibility and disruption canand mustco-exist.

As governments focus on smart AI regulation, business leaders must focus on accelerating responsible AI adoption. I meet with clients dailyand Ive seen four priorities emerge in the path to adoption: Model choice, governance, skills, and open AI.

Providing model choice is critical to accelerating AI adoption. Different models will be better at some tasks than they are at other tasks. The best model will depend on the industry, domain, use case, and size of model, meaning most will utilize many smaller models versus one larger model.

And with the right governance, companies can be assured that their workflows are compliant with existing and upcoming government regulations and free of bias.

In todays economy, jobs require skills, not just degrees. Technology is evolving faster than many can follow, creating a gap between demand and skills. Leaders must now prioritize skills-first hiring and training and upskilling the existing workforce to thrive in the AI era.

Finally, leveraging open-source models and proprietary models, with well-documented data sources, is the best way to achieve the transparency needed to advance responsible AI. Open is good for diversity because it makes it much easier to identify bias, for sovereignty because all the data sources are easily identifiable, and for education because it naturally lends itself to collaboration across the community.

AI can drive a level of GDP growth that none of us have ever seen in our lifetimes. It may mean the evolution of jobs in the near term. But just as with any other technological revolution, as upskilling occurs, there will eventually be new jobs, markets, and industries.

For business and government, 2024 must be the year of adoption, where we move from the experimentation phase to the deployment phase. With the right vision and approach to responsible AI adoption, we will begin to see widespread economic benefits of this technology in the next three years, with many more years of sustained growth and prosperity to come.

Rob Thomas is SVP of Software and Chief Commercial Officer at IBM.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs ofFortune.

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AI is pervasive. Here's when we'll see its real economic benefits materialize - Fortune

Artificial intelligence or AI. Its a topic that generates a lot of talk, a lot of hope, and a lot of concerns these days.

On the positive side, AI has the potential to aid in solving an array of vexing societal problems and to help average people work better and faster in numerous ways.

On the other hand, of course, AI also raises real concerns both with respect to the ability of humans to control and manage it and the possibility that it will be abused by bad actors in order to mislead people with false or phony communications. This latter concern is of particular relevance as Americans prepare to vote in the 2024 election. Fortunately, a lot of smart people are paying close attention to these kinds of issues and recently NC Newsline caught up with one of them for a special extended conversation on the topic, the head of online expression policy at the UNC-Chapel Hill Center on Technology Policy Dr. Scott Brennen.

In Part One of our conversation, we delved into the subject of artificial intelligence (or AI) and some of the good and bad things it can do when it comes to communication. In Part Two of our chat, we continued this discussion with a special focus on political communication both with respect to the 2024 election and more generally. And as Brennen told me, while he remains optimistic that phony AI messaging poses only a limited risk to the national election, there are risks and some important steps that elected officials can and should consider taking to help preserve the health of our democracy.

Read: The new political ad machine: Policy frameworks for political ads in an age of AI

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Dr. Scott Brennen of UNC-CH's Center on Technology Policy discusses Artificial Intelligence NC Newsline - NC Newsline