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Meta is putting plans for its AI assistant on hold in Europe after receiving objections from Irelands privacy regulator, the company announced on Friday.

In a blog post, Meta said the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) asked the company to delay training its large language models on content that had been publicly posted to Facebook and Instagram profiles.

Meta said it is disappointed by the request, particularly since we incorporated regulatory feedback and the European [Data Protection Authorities] have been informed since March. Per the Irish Independent, Meta had recently begun notifying European users that it would collect their data and offered an opt-out option in an attempt to comply with European privacy laws.

Meta said it will continue to work collaboratively with the DPC. But its blog post says that Google and OpenAI have already used data from Europeans to train AI and claims that if regulators dont let it use users information to train its models, Meta can only deliver an inferior product. Put simply, without including local information wed only be able to offer people a second-rate experience. This means we arent able to launch Meta AI in Europe at the moment.

European regulators, on the other hand, have welcomed the pause.

We are pleased that Meta has reflected on the concerns we shared from users of their service in the UK, and responded to our request to pause and review plans touse Facebook and Instagram user data to train generative AI, Stephen Almond, the executive director of regulatory risk at the UK Information Commissioners Office, said in a statement.

The DPCs request followed a campaign by the advocacy group NOYB None of Your Business which filed 11 complaints against Meta in several European countries, Reuters reports.NOYB founder Max Schrems told the Irish Independent that the complaint hinged on Metas legal basis for collecting personal data. Meta is basically saying that it can use any data from any source for any purpose and make it available to anyone in the world, as long as its done via AI technology, Schrems said. This is clearly the opposite of GDPR compliance.

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Meta is putting its European AI assistant launch on hold - The Verge

Bill Gate poses for a portrait at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., June 13, 2024. Ben de la Cruz/NPR hide caption

Artificial intelligence may come for our jobs one day, but before that happens, the data centers it relies on are going to need a lot of electricity.

So how do we power them and millions of U.S. homes and businesses without generating more climate-warming gases?

Microsoft founder, billionaire philanthropist and investor Bill Gates is betting that nuclear power is key to meeting that need and hes digging into his own pockets to try and make it happen.

Gates has invested $1 billion into a nuclear power plant that broke ground in Kemmerer, Wyo., this week. The new facility, designed by the Gates-founded TerraPower, will be smaller than traditional fission nuclear power plants and, in theory, safer because it will use sodium instead of water to cool the reactors core.

TerraPower estimates the plant could be built for up to $4 billion, which would be a bargain when compared to other nuclear projects recently completed in the U.S. Two nuclear reactors built from scratch in Georgia cost nearly $35 billion, the Associated Press reports.

Construction on the TerraPower plant is expected to be completed by 2030.

Gates sat for an interview at NPR headquarters with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep to discuss his multibillion dollar nuclear power investment and how he views the benefits and challenges of artificial intelligence, which the plant hes backing may someday power.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Steve Inskeep: Let me ask about a couple of groups that you need to persuade, and one of them is long-time skeptics of the safety of nuclear power, including environmental groups, people who will put pressure on some of the political leaders that you've been meeting here in Washington. Are you convinced you can make a case that will persuade them?

Bill Gates: Well, absolutely. The safety case for this design is incredibly strong just because of the passive mechanisms involved. People have been talking about it for 60 years, that this is the way these things should work.

Meaning if it breaks down, it just cools off.

Exactly.

Something doesn't have to actively happen to cool it.

There's no high pressure on the reactor. Nothing that's pushing to get out. Water, as it's heated up, creates high pressure. And we have no high pressure and no complex systems needed to guarantee the safety. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the best in the world, and they'll question us and challenge us. And, you know, that's fantastic. That's a lot of what the next six years are all about.

Taillights trace the path of a motor vehicle at the Naughton Power Plant, Jan. 13, 2022, in Kemmerer, Wyo. Bill Gates and his energy company are starting construction at their Wyoming site adjacent to the coal plant for a next-generation nuclear power plant he believes will revolutionize how power is generated. Natalie Behring/AP/FR170146 AP hide caption

Let me ask about somebody else you need to persuade, and that is markets showing them that this makes financial sense. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is promoting and investing in nuclear power and is connected with a company that put its stock on the market and it immediately fell. Other projects that started to seem too expensive have been canceled in recent years. Can you persuade the markets?

Well, the current reactors are too expensive. There are companies working on fission and there's companies working on fusion. Fusion is further out. I hope that succeeds. I hope that in the long run it is a huge competitor to this TerraPower nuclear fission. Unlike previous reactors, we're not asking the ratepayers in a particular geography to guarantee the costs. So this reactor, all of the costs of building this are with the private company, TerraPower, in which I'm the biggest investor. And for strategic reasons, the U.S. government is helping with the first-of-the-kind costs.

The U.S. Department of Energy is funding half the costs of TerraPowers project, which includes the cost of designing and licensing the reactor, the AP reports.

I wonder if you can approach an ordinary investor and say, This is a good risk. It's going to pay off in a reasonable time frame?

You know, we're not choosing to take this company public, because understanding all of these issues are very complex. Many of our investors will be strategic investors who want to supply components, or they come from countries like Japan and Korea, where renewables are not as easy because of the geography. And so they want to go completely green. They, even more than the U.S., will need nuclear to do that.

What is the connection between AI and nuclear power?

Well, I suppose people want innovation to give us even cheaper electricity while making it clean. People who are optimistic about innovation in software and AI bring that optimism to the other things they do. There is a more direct connection, though, which is that the additional data centers that we'll be building look like they'll be as much as a 10% additional load for electricity. The U.S. hasn't needed much new electricity but with the rise in a variety of things from electric cars and buses to electric heat pumps to heating homes, demand for electricity is going to go up a lot. And now these data centers are adding to that. So the big tech companies are out looking at how they can help facilitate more power, so that these data centers can serve the exploding AI demand.

I'm interested in whether you see artificial intelligence as something that potentially could exacerbate income inequality, something that you as a philanthropist would think about.

Well, I think the two domains that I'm most involved in seeing how AI can help are health and education. I was in Newark, New Jersey, recently seeing the Khan Academy AI called Khanmigo being used in math classes, and I was very impressed how the teachers were using it to look at the data, divide students up to have personalized tutoring at the level of a kid who's behind or a kid who's ahead.

Whenever I get, like, a medical bill or a medical diagnosis, I put it in the AI and get it to explain it to me. You know, it's incredible at that. And if we look at countries like in Africa where the shortage of doctors is even more dramatic than in the United States, the idea that we can get more medical advice to pregnant women or anybody suffering from malaria, I'm very excited. And so driving it forward appropriately in those two domains I see as completely beneficial.

Did you understand what I was asking, about the concentration of power?

Absolutely. This is a very, very competitive field. I mean, Google is doing great work. Meta. Amazon. And it's not like there's a limited amount of money for new startups in this area. I mean, Elon Musk just raised $6 billion. It's kind of like the internet was in the year 2000. The barriers to entry are very, very low, which means we're moving quickly.

And the other thing about a concentration of power Do you worry about, you know, more money for investors and fewer jobs for ordinary people? Like they can get this wonderful AI technology, but they dont have a job?

I do worry about that. Basically, if you increase productivity, that should give you more options. We don't let robots play baseball. We're just never going to be interested in that. If robots get really good, and AIs get really good, are we in some ways going to want, in terms of job creation, to put limits on that, or tax those things? Ive raised that in the past. They're not good enough yet to be raising those issues. But you know, say in three to five years, they could be good enough.

But for now, your hope is the AI doesn't replace my job. It makes me more productive in the job that I already have.

Well, there are few jobs that will replace you just like computers did. In most things today, AI is a co-pilot, it raises your productivity. But if you're a support person, taking support calls and you're twice as productive, some companies will take that productivity and answer more calls and have more quality of answer. Some companies will need less people, now freeing up labor to do other things. Do they go and help reduce class size or help the handicapped or help with the elderly? If we're able to produce more, then the pie is bigger. But are we smart in terms of tax policies or how we distribute that, so we actually take freed-up labor and put into things wed like to have?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an NPR funder.

The audio version of this story was produced by Kaity Kline and edited by Reena Advani. The digital version was edited by Amina Khan.

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Bill Gates on his nuclear energy investment, AI's challenges - NPR

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the tech term of the moment, and everyone in the PC space wants a piece of it. Every major computer company, from the ones that make the best ultrabooks and laptops to those that put together the best gaming PCs and desktops, as well as most component manufacturers, want to say they're offering an AI PC.

But what is an AI PC, exactly? What does it do differently from the computer you already have? Do you need one at all?

Here's how to cut through the noise to learn what an AI PC actually is:

The many definitions of an AI PC

Since every PC company and component manufacturer wants to say it is offering an AI PC, there are a ton of different definitions out there. Much of the press and the industry has seemingly coalesced around Microsoft's definition, which Intel shared at an AI PC developer program showing off its Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors. That definition had three requirements, suggesting that an AI PC:

This definition did rule out some existing PCs that had AMD and Intel's NPU and Copilot, but hadn't included the Copilot key. Most major laptop releases since then have included that key. If you take the Copilot key away, previous Windows on Arm devices, like those running Qualcomm 8cx would also qualify, as those have NPUs and can run Copilot, too. The Copilot key is little more than a branding exercise as it simply launches Copliot by simulating Shift + WIndows + F23, and one could just hit Windows + C to get the same efffect.

Since then, Microsoft has introduced its Copilot+ PCs, with laptops from Asus, Dell, Acer, Samsung, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Microsoft's Surface brand. Those all use Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors at the moment, though Microsoft has said upcoming AMD Strix Point (aka Ryzen AI 300) and Intel Lunar Lake chips may also fit the bill. To be considered a Copilot+ PC, laptops need to have at least 16GB RAM, 256GB storage, and an on-board NPU that's capable of 40 TOPS (trillions of operations per second). The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips support 45 TOPS on the NPU.

Copilot+ PCs, the first of which will launch on June 18, 2024, will have a series of four unique Windows AI features that other PCs cannot access. These include Cocreator (image generation in Paint), Windows Studio Effects (webcam blurring and special effects), real-time translation and captions for audio and Recall. Recall, the controversial feature which keeps a record of almost everything you do on your PC so you can remember it, was just pulled from the Copilot+ launch date build of Windows.

So, anyone who doesnt buy a Snapdragon X-powered laptop will have to wait on those special Windows features, likely for many months. AMD recently confirmed that its Ryzen AI 300 PCs wont be getting the Copilot+ features when they launch later this year, but will eventually. Desktop users are left out of the cold until at least the launch of Intel Arrowlake in Q4. And anyone with a current-gen laptop or desktop is probably left out permanently.

Given the weak set of Copilot+ features, anyone who is actually paying attention probably isnt that sad about having to miss them or wait for them. There are many other ways to get an offline (or online) AI image generator, to do real-time translation and to blur your webcam background. Recall is somewhat unique, but many people wont want it, because of the privacy risks associated with taking constant screenshots of your work.

Intel, on its website, has taken a more general approach: "An AI PC has a CPU, a GPU and an NPU, each with specific AI acceleration capabilities."

AMD, via a staff post on its forums, has a similar definition: "An AI PC is a PC designed to optimally execute local AI workloads across a range of hardware, including the CPU (central processing unit), GPU (graphics processing unit), and NPU (neural processing unit)."

Who is making AI PCs?

If you're following the definition that most of the industry is using: CPU, GPU, and NPU, then the answer is most laptop manufacturers are making them. They include Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Samsung, Microsoft, among others.

These are laptops with Intel (Core Ultra "Meteor Lake"), AMD (Ryzen 7040 or 8040), or Qualcomm (Snapdragon X Elite or Plus) processors.

What is an NPU, exactly?

A neural processing unit, or NPU, are processors that specialize in parallel computing specifically for the purpose of AI workloads (GPUs often also use parallel processing in order to render advanced graphics). Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple have these attached onto the processor with the CPU and integrated GPU.

They're also highly efficient, allowing for longer battery life than running these processes on a CPU or a GPU (even if, in some cases, those might be the more performant options). NPUs run matrix math, allowing them to do things such as video decoding, upscaling and background removal at a fraction of the power.

An NPU's performance is measured in tera operations per second, or TOPS. Intels Meteor Lake processors and their NPUs can only do about 10 TOPS while Qualcomms Snapdragon X processors, AMDs Ryzen AI 300 processors and Intels Lunar Lake chips will all deliver 45 or more TOPS from their NPUs.

What about desktop PCs? What about GPUs?

At the moment, every PC with an NPU is a laptop (or, in some cases, tablets or gaming handhelds). But neither AMD nor Intel has released a desktop chip with an NPU. A big reason to include the NPU on mobile devices is that they are extremely power efficient, which helps with battery life. Desktop systems don't have batteries, so processor manufacturers can still pump their processors using more wattage.

Additionally, desktops are more likely to have discrete GPUs, which have also proven to be extremely adept at certain AI tasks (though this is mostly high-end parts, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, which has 24GB of RAM to work with).

In fact, in a recent blog post, Nvidia's vice president of consumer AI, Jason Paul, suggested that the company started the AI PC boom all the way back in 2018, when it launched its first GPUs with RTX tensor cores and DLSS with the RTX 20-series and Turing architecture. That's yet another different definition from the ones laptop and CPU companies are making.

While this doesn't fit the conventional, NPU-focused definition that many are working with, there are a number of companies putting the AI label on desktop PCs, too.

Newegg, for example, is selling its ABS desktops (which start with consumer-grade parts like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super and an Intel Core i5-14400F for $1,800 and goes up from there), on an AI PC page alongside laptops using Intel NPUs, as well as desktop parts ("AI CPU," "API GPU"). MSI lists a number of its desktops using 14th Gen Intel processors as "AI Gaming Desktops" because of software that the company includes.

The desktops that make more sense to call AI PCs are workstations that have the power to train some models. Maingear, for instance, sells its Pro AI systems with Intel Xeon chips and Nvidia's RTX 5000 and RTX 6000 Ada GPUs. These range from $28,000 to $60,000 and are definitely not for people looking just to generate images or photos.

Are Macs AI PCs?

Apple is introducing its take on the AI to Mac laptops and desktops this fall. The company is launching a beta version of Apple Intelligence with generative writing, images, custom emoji, and a more capable version of its Siri assistant in macOS Sequoia this fall (as well as iPadOS 18 and iOS 18).

Apple will support Intelligence on Macs and iPads using its M1, M2, M3, and M4 families of processors. On the iPhone, it will support the A17 Pro on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max (and presumably whatever is in the next iPhone this fall).

Because Apple uses its silicon across all of its Macs, its desktops, like the iMac, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro also have NPU (or as Apple refers to them, Neural Engines). That means macOS will have AI-specific features on desktop running on NPUs before Windows.

Do I need an AI PC?

Right now? "Need" is a strong word.

AI features are still in their infancy. In many cases they're still in beta. Many popular chatbots, like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google Gemini, are totally cloud-based, as is most of what Microsoft Copilot does.

That's not to say there's no features you'll miss. On Copilot+ PCs, image generation built into Windows 11 and Restyle photo editing are exclusive to the new Snapdragon systems. Some other software, like the Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Express as well as Da Vinci Resolve will use NPUs for some AI features and the cloud for others. Those NPU features may be slower or non-existent on older computers.

NPUs are also being used to power background blur and other camera effects on some PCs, though you don't inherently need an NPU for that kind of work (though it does free up the CPU and GPU).

But across the board, these features are still just rolling out, and it's unclear which will be the most useful to you. Local AI is more secure, as you don't have to send your information to another company's servers, but if you're using it in limited scenarios, the cloud functionality the most popular apps currently offer should more than suffice.

There's a lot of hype around AI. And while it has some legitimately cool uses, there are still plenty of places where it's unclear how much people will want to use it. If your current PC is still doing what you need it to do and is getting security updates, it may be worth waiting as more powerful tech comes out to support, presumably, more local AI tools, and see what you actually need.

It's already clear that companies will lock certain features to newer PCs. While early adopters may jump at the chance to try them, there's also no harm in letting those people be the beta testers (and many of these AI features are being labeled as beta by the companies that make them) and grab something when you know what you want.

Are AI PCs more secure?

One of the biggest pushes for AI on a laptop, rather than in the cloud, is security. After all, running an AI workload on an NPU in your computer means you don't necessarily need to send your information to the cloud.

That being said, that also means AI features need to be built securely, too. After security researchers discovered how easy it was to steal data from, Recall, Microsofts new AI feature that takes screenshots of all your activity, for later reference was pulled from the initial Copilot+ set of features as Microsoft promised more security and testing with Windows Insider members.

If you are running a business and having an LLM manage top-secret corporate data, having it processed locally would be more meaningful. But most of the AI features currently being marketed are not mission-critical business tools. Perhaps if Microsoft 365 Copilot ran completely locally, that would be a plus for some companies.

No matter what type of PC you're using, you should still adhere to good security practices. Other humans are still outsmarting us there.

Right now, the term AI PC is still somewhat vague. CPU vendors and Microsoft are using the term to sell you new computers (currently, new laptops only) that have powerful NPUs built into their processors. Most of the generative AI features people actually use today (chatbots, image generators) are free to use in the cloud, making them less than must-haves in their local form.

But NPUs do promise to save battery life by performing some common tasks such as video playback at much lower power. Some web browsers, such as Edge, can use the GPU today to do AI upscaling of videos, but soon that will be offloaded to the NPU. For creative professionals who are doing audio, video or photo editing while unplugged, the NPU will tackle tasks such as background noise removal at much lower power than your CPU or graphics card; of course, the software has to be optimized to do so. And, in the near future, well see more tasks transferred to NPUs, which in turn, will increase system efficiency even more.

So, in the end, the killer feature of AI PCs (at least if they are laptops) could really be longer endurance. If your laptop goes from lasting 12 hours on a charge to lasting 20 hours on a charge because of NPU usage, that could be a huge deal. But the generative features are still in their infancy, so if you're not ready to upgrade, there's still time to wait and see what evolves.

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What is an AI PC and do you actually need one? - Tom's Hardware

Illustration: https://urbeuniversity.edu/

By Eduardo N. Cordovi Hernandez

HAVANA TIMES Here, in Havana, despite the blackouts and being technologically on par with other contemporary societies like the Australian Aborigines, the Pygmies of the Congo, or the Tuaregs of the Sahara, we still have a few hours of electricity to keep up with the gossip of the global neighborhood.

Since AI emerged, the praise hasnt stopped and it didnt take long for criticisms to appear in equal profusion. Theres not a day that goes by without at least one article warning about the dangers of its use, its incompetence in certain areas where immediate decision-making from an emotional perspective is crucial, something that AI lacks.

Following the premise of the previous paragraph, it is generally considered that its extreme logic can lead to errors since it may accept ambiguous premises as valid. For example: if asked which US president appears on the hundred-dollar bill, it will answer Benjamin Franklin without clarifying that Franklin was not a president, implicitly suggesting he was, which is false.

The issue is that we demand a level of certainty and guarantee from this tool that we ourselves, as humans, cannot provide, even though many are sure that we are the nonplus ultra of Creation, which I am not here to debate.

A broad sector of human non-artificial intelligence considers that AI can make mistakes, and I am astonished with euphemism: Really? And I immediately ask: And humans dont?

What I see in this problem is the following: If a human makes a mistake, we make them pay for the consequences of their error in some way, whether with their money, their freedom, or their life. In reality, with their freedom or their life, they dont pay anything, but because these are so valuable and at risk of being lost, people sharpen their attention to avoid making mistakes. In simpler or less important cases, they pay by being discredited, mocked, and ridiculed.

The fact is that AI has no sense of humor or fear of making mistakesit doesnt care! It refers to the database it has (which it hasnt worked on, as a Spaniard would say) and thats it.

All the flaws and others, such as those stemming from ambition or the supposed evil of so many other interests, are concentrated in us humans, and no one seems to be concerned that individuals with psychopathic personality traits, certain character problems, or emotional imbalances may or can take on leadership positions in companies or governments!

Its not that such individuals are psychopaths, paranoiacs, or megalomaniacs; its about certain traits that can be anticipated and the individuals remaining within the range of normal acceptance, but that in a supposed normalcy like the one we have, these traits can still be factors that enhance talent.

Well, maybe Im being a bit tragic; but even if we lower the bar, we will see that we remain the same, because someone who does not show emotional maturity, lets say being a bit demanding, someone who loses their cool or their temper quickly, or who, having such a good character, doesnt stress out, is already on the path to being a promising candidate for inefficacy or inefficiency in their own life. Imagine if such a person became president of an important corporation, such as presiding over the government of a nation, and suddenly believed they were the chosen one, and started changing laws to be president for life.

Universal History, meaning the universe, the cosmos, the galaxies, and their adjacent neighborhoods, is full of such cases. I refer to cases that exceeded criminal levels and now! Because a work tool appears with the same potential as a human as Albert Einstein; of whom I read every day in the news suggested by Google, that other scientists think, believe, claim, and even prove that he was wrong, that the Theory of Relativity does not explain many things well resulting, to conclude, that all the wise people on the planet also have an opinion about AI. I would say: And what does another stripe matter to the tiger.

Its totally laughable, at least here in my neighborhood, as they just cut the electricity. How exquisite!

Read more from Eduardo N. Cordovi here.

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My Take on the Reactions to Artificial Intelligence - Havana Times