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What to know about Trump strategist’s embrace of AI to help conservatives – Yahoo! Voices

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) Brad Parscale was the digital guru behind Donald Trump's surprise victory in the 2016 election and was promoted to manage the 2020 campaign. But he didn't last long on that job: His personal life unraveled in public and he later texted a friend that he felt guilty for helping Trump win after the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

He's since become an evangelist about the power of artificial intelligence to transform how Republicans run political campaigns. And his company is working for Trump's 2024 bid, trying to help the presumptive Republican nominee take back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden.

Here's what to know about Parscale and his new role:

NEW AI-POWERED CAMPAIGN TOOLS

Parscale says his company, Campaign Nucleus, can use AI to help generate customized emails, parse oceans of data to gauge voter sentiment and find persuadable voters. It can also amplify the social media posts of anti-woke influencers, according to an Associated Press review of Parscales public statements, his company documents, slide decks, marketing materials and other records not previously made public.

Soon, Parscale says, his company will deploy an app that harnesses AI to assist campaigns in collecting absentee ballots in the same way drivers for DoorDash or Grubhub pick up dinners from restaurants and deliver them to customers.

FROM UNKNOWN TO TRUMP CONFIDANT

Parscale was a relatively unknown web designer in San Antonio, Texas, when he was hired to build a web presence for Trump's family business.

That led to a job on the future presidents 2016 campaign. He was one of its first hires and spearheaded an unorthodox digital strategy, teaming up with scandal-plagued Cambridge Analytica to help propel Trump to the White House.

I pretty much used Facebook to get Trump elected in 2016, Parscale said in a 2022 podcast interview.

Following Trumps surprise win, Parscales influence grew. He was promoted to manage Trump's reelection bid and enjoyed celebrity status. A towering figure at 6 feet, 8 inches with a Viking-style beard, Parscale was frequently spotted at campaign rallies taking selfies with Trump supporters and signing autographs.

Parscale was replaced as campaign manager not long after a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drew an unexpectedly small crowd, enraging Trump.

ROLE IN 2024 CAMPAIGN

Since last year, Campaign Nucleus and other Parscale-linked companies have been paid more than $2.2 million by the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their related political action and fundraising committees, campaign finance records show.

Parscale did not respond to questions from the AP about what hes doing for the Trump campaign. Trump has called artificial intelligence so scary and dangerous, while his campaign, which has shied away from highlighting Parscales role, said in an emailed statement that it did not engage or utilize tools supplied by any AI company.

Parscale-linked companies have been paid to host websites, send emails, provide fundraising software and digital consulting, campaign finance records show.

The Biden campaign and Democrats are also also using AI. So far, they said they are primarily deploying the technology to help them find and motivate voters and to better identify and overcome deceptive content.

TIES TO A WEALTHY GOP DONOR

Last year, Parscale bought property in Midland, Texas, in the heart of the nations highest-producing oil and gas fields. It is also the hometown of Tim Dunn, a billionaire born-again evangelical who is among the states most influential political donors.

In April of last year, Dunn invested $5 million in a company called AiAdvertising that once bought one of Parscales firms under a previous corporate name. The San Antonio-based ad firm also announced that Parscale was joining as a strategic adviser, to be paid $120,000 in stock and a monthly salary of $10,000.

Boom! Parscale tweeted. (AiAdvertising) finally automated the full stake of technologies used in the 2016 election that changed the world.

AiAdvertising added two key national figures to its board: Texas investor Thomas Hicks Jr. former co-chair of the RNC and longtime hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. and former GOP congressman Jim Renacci. In January, Dunn gave AiAdvertising an additional $2.5 million via an invesment company, and AiAdvertising said in a news release that the cash infusion would help it generate more engaging, higher-impact campaigns.

Dunn declined to comment, and AiAdvertising did not respond to messages seeking comment.

PARSCALE'S VISION

Parscale occasionally offers glimpses of the AI future he envisions. Casting himself as an outsider to the Republican establishment, he has said he sees AI as a way to undercut elite Washington consultants, whom he described as political parasites.

In January, Parscale told a crowd assembled at a grassroots Christian event in a Pasadena, California, church that their movement needed to have our own AI, from creative large language models and creative imagery, we need to reach our own audiences with our own distribution, our own email systems, our own texting systems, our own ability to place TV ads, and lastly we need to have our own influencers.

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Burke reported from San Francisco. AP National Political Writer Steve Peoples in Washington and Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

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This story is part of an Associated Press series, The AI Campaign, that explores the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.

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Contact APs global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

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The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

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Providing further transparency on our responsible AI efforts – Microsoft On the Issues – Microsoft

The following is the foreword to the inaugural edition of our annual Responsible AI Transparency Report. The FULL REPORT is available at this link.

We believe we have an obligation to share our responsible AI practices with the public, and this report enables us to record and share our maturing practices, reflect on what we have learned, chart our goals, hold ourselves accountable, and earn the publics trust.

In 2016, our Chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella, set us on a clear course to adopt a principled and human-centered approach to our investments in artificial intelligence (AI). Since then, we have been hard at work building products that align with our values. As we design, build, and release AI products, six values transparency, accountability, fairness, inclusiveness, reliability and safety, and privacy and security remain our foundation and guide our work every day.

To advance our transparency practices, in July 2023, we committed to publishing an annual report on our responsible AI program, taking a step that reached beyond the White House Voluntary Commitments that we and other leading AI companies agreed to. This is our inaugural report delivering on that commitment, and we are pleased to publish it on the heels of our first year of bringing generative AI products and experiences to creators, non-profits, governments, and enterprises around the world.

As a company at the forefront of AI research and technology, we are committed to sharing our practices with the public as they evolve. This report enables us to share our maturing practices, reflect on what we have learned, chart our goals, hold ourselves accountable, and earn the publics trust. Weve been innovating in responsible AI for eight years, and as we evolve our program, we learn from our past to continually improve. We take very seriously our responsibility to not only secure our own knowledge but also to contribute to the growing corpus of public knowledge, to expand access to resources, and promote transparency in AI across the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

In this inaugural annual report, we provide insight into how we build applications that use generative AI; make decisions and oversee the deployment of those applications; support our customers as they build their own generative applications; and learn, evolve, and grow as a responsible AI community. First, we provide insights into our development process, exploring how we map, measure, and manage generative AI risks. Next, we offer case studies to illustrate how we apply our policies and processes to generative AI releases. We also share details about how we empower our customers as they build their own AI applications responsibly. Last, we highlight how the growth of our responsible AI community, our efforts to democratize the benefits of AI, and our work to facilitate AI research benefit society at large.

There is no finish line for responsible AI. And while this report doesnt have all the answers, we are committed to sharing our learnings early and often and engaging in a robust dialogue around responsible AI practices. We invite the public, private organizations, non-profits, and governing bodies to use this first transparency report to accelerate the incredible momentum in responsible AI were already seeing around the world.

Click here to read the full report.

Tags: AI, generative ai, Responsible AI, Responsible AI Transparency Report, transparency, White House Voluntary Commitments

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The Unsexy Future of Generative AI Is Enterprise Apps – WIRED

However, that amount includes massive funding from corporate backers, like Microsofts infusion of capital into OpenAI and Amazons funding of Anthropic. Stripped down to conventional VC investments, funding in 2023 for AI startups was much smaller, and only on pace to match the total amount raised in 2021.

PitchBook senior analyst Brendan Burke noted in a report that venture capital funding was increasingly being funneled towards underlying core AI technologies and their ultimate vertical applications, instead of general-purpose middleware across audio, language, images, and video.

In other words: A GenAI app that helps a company generate ecommerce sales, parse legal documents, or maintain SOC2 compliance is probably a surer bet than one that drums up a clever video or photo once in a while.

Clay Bavor, the cofounder of Sierra, says he believes its not necessarily computing or cloud API costs driving AI startups towards B2B models, but more likely the benefits of targeting a specific customer and iterating on a product based on their feedback. I think everyone, myself included, is fairly optimistic that the capabilities of these AI models are going to go up while costs come down, Bavor says.

Theres just something really powerful about having a clear problem to solve for a particular customer, he says. And then you can get feedback on, Is this working? Is this solving a problem? And if you build a business with that, its very powerful.

Although ChatGPT triggered an AI boom in part because it can nimbly generate code one second and sonnets the next, Arvind Jain, the chief executive of AI startup Glean, says the nature of technology still favors narrow tools. On average a large company uses more than a thousand different technical systems to store company data and information, he says, creating an opportunity for a lot of smaller companies to sell their tech to these corporations.

We are in this world where there are basically a bunch of functional tools, each solving a very specific need. Thats the way of the future, says Jain, who spent more than a decade working on search at Google. Glean powers a workplace search engine by plugging into various corporate apps. It was founded in 2019 and has raised over $200 million in venture capital funding from Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Coatue, and others.

Tuning a generative AI product to serve business customers has its challenges. The errors and hallucinations of systems like ChatGPT can be more consequential in a corporate, legal, or medical environment. Selling gen AI tools to other businesses also means meeting their privacy and security standards, and potentially the legal and regulatory requirements of their sector.

Its one thing for ChatGPT or Midjourney to get creative for an end user, Bavor says. Its quite another thing for AI to get creative in the context of business applications.

Bavor says Sierra has dedicated a huge amount of effort investment to establishing safeguards and parameters so it can meet security and compliance standards. This includes using more AI to tune Sierras AI. If youre using an AI model that generates correct responses 90 percent of the time, but then layer in additional technology that can catch and correct some of the errors, you can achieve a much higher level of accuracy, he explains.

You really have to ground your AI systems for enterprise use cases, says Jain, the CEO of Glean. Imagine a nurse in a hospital system using AI to make some decision about patient careyou simply cant be wrong.

A less predictable threat to smaller AI companies selling their wares to enterprise customers: What if a giant gen AI unicorn like OpenAI, with its burgeoning sales team, decides to roll out the exact tool that a singular startup has been building?

Many of the AI startups WIRED spoke with are trying to move away from depending entirely on OpenAIs technology by using alternatives like Anthropics Claude or open-source large language models like Metas Llama 3. Some startups are even intent on eventually building their own AI technology. But many AI entrepreneurs are stuck paying for access to OpenAIs tech while potentially competing with it in the future.

Peiris, of Tome, considered the question, then said that hes singularly focused on sales and marketing use cases now and being amazing at high-quality generation for these folks.

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Warren Buffett warns on AI, teases succession, and hints at possible investment during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual … – Fortune

Berkshire Hathaway held its annual meeting on Saturday with Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett tackling a range of topics, including artificial intelligence, who will be responsible for the portfolio in the future, and the next potential investment.

But Woodstock for capitalists took place without Charlie Munger, Buffetts longtime business partner who passed away in November. The meeting featured a video tribute to Munger, who served as vice chairman, and praise from Buffett, who said Munger was the best person to talk to about managing money, according to remarks broadcast on CNBC.

I trust my children and my wife totally, but that doesnt mean I ask them what stocks to buy, he said.

Artificial intelligence risks

Buffett also recalled seeing an AI-generated image of himself and warned on the technologys potential for scamming people.

Scamming has always been part of the American scene, he told shareholders. But this would make meif I was interested in investing in scammingits going to be the growth industry of all time.

He then likened AI to nuclear weapons, saying I dont know any way to get the genie back in the bottle, and AI is somewhat similar, according to CNBC.

Succession outlook

Buffett, 93, had already indicated three years ago that Vice Chairman of Non-Insurance Operations Greg Abel would take over for him.

But he dropped a hint on Saturday about when new management would actually come into office, saying you dont have too long to wait on that. While he said he feels fine, he quipped that he shouldnt sign any four-year employment contracts.

Buffett also confirmed that Abel will be in charge of investing decisions, saying that responsibility ought to be entirely with the next CEO.

Questions had arisen about Berkshires closely followed portfolio as Buffett has acknowledged he delegated some calls and that certain stock picks were made by others.

Canada investment?

Buffett has lamented the lack of attractive investment opportunities in recent years, allowing Berkshires massive stockpile of cash and cash equivalents to reach fresh record highs.

Indeed, it surged to $189 billion at the end of the first quarter from $167.6 billion at the end of the fourth quarter.

On Saturday, Buffett reiterated that when it comes to investments, we only swing at pitches we like. But he also teased, We do not feel uncomfortable in any way shape or form putting our money into Canada. In fact, were actually looking at one thing now.

Those comments came after he touched on his investment in Japanese trading houses, saying its unlikely we will make any large commitments in other countries.

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Warren Buffett warns on AI, teases succession, and hints at possible investment during Berkshire Hathaway's annual ... - Fortune

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Nick Bostrom Made the World Fear AI. Now He Asks: What if It Fixes Everything? – WIRED

Philosopher Nick Bostrom is surprisingly cheerful for someone who has spent so much time worrying about ways that humanity might destroy itself. In photographs he often looks deadly serious, perhaps appropriately haunted by the existential dangers roaming around his brain. When we talk over Zoom, he looks relaxed and is smiling.

Bostrom has made it his lifes work to ponder far-off technological advancement and existential risks to humanity. With the publication of his last book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, in 2014, Bostrom drew public attention to what was then a fringe ideathat AI would advance to a point where it might turn against and delete humanity.

To many in and outside of AI research the idea seemed fanciful, but influential figures including Elon Musk cited Bostroms writing. The book set a strand of apocalyptic worry about AI smoldering that recently flared up following the arrival of ChatGPT. Concern about AI risk is not just mainstream but also a theme within government AI policy circles.

Bostroms new book takes a very different tack. Rather than play the doomy hits, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, considers a future in which humanity has successfully developed superintelligent machines but averted disaster. All disease has been ended and humans can live indefinitely in infinite abundance. Bostroms book examines what meaning there would be in life inside a techno-utopia, and asks if it might be rather hollow. He spoke with WIRED over Zoom, in a conversation that has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Will Knight: Why switch from writing about superintelligent AI threatening humanity to considering a future in which its used to do good?

Nick Bostrom: The various things that could go wrong with the development of AI are now receiving a lot more attention. It's a big shift in the last 10 years. Now all the leading frontier AI labs have research groups trying to develop scalable alignment methods. And in the last couple of years also, we see political leaders starting to pay attention to AI.

There hasn't yet been a commensurate increase in depth and sophistication in terms of thinking of where things go if we don't fall into one of these pits. Thinking has been quite superficial on the topic.

When you wrote Superintelligence, few would have expected existential AI risks to become a mainstream debate so quickly. Will we need to worry about the problems in your new book sooner than people might think?

As we start to see automation roll out, assuming progress continues, then I think these conversations will start to happen and eventually deepen.

Social companion applications will become increasingly prominent. People will have all sorts of different views and its a great place to maybe have a little culture war. It could be great for people who couldn't find fulfillment in ordinary life but what if there is a segment of the population that takes pleasure in being abusive to them?

In the political and information spheres we could see the use of AI in political campaigns, marketing, automated propaganda systems. But if we have a sufficient level of wisdom these things could really amplify our ability to sort of be constructive democratic citizens, with individual advice explaining what policy proposals mean for you. There will be a whole bunch of dynamics for society.

Would a future in which AI has solved many problems, like climate change, disease, and the need to work, really be so bad?

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Nick Bostrom Made the World Fear AI. Now He Asks: What if It Fixes Everything? - WIRED

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Hands-on with the visual AI in Metas Ray-Ban smart glasses – The Verge

For the last several weeks, Ive been playing with Metas AI assistant in its Ray-Ban smart glasses. It works by responding to the voice command Hey Meta and can answer a question or examine what youre looking at. Its far from perfect. But when it does work, it feels like a glimpse into the future.

Meta didnt expect generative AI to play such a large role in the glasses until very recently. When CEO Mark Zuckerberg first revealed that multimodal AI was coming to them in an interview with me last fall, he described it as a whole new angle on smart glasses that may end up being the killer feature before super high-quality holograms.

Given the billions Meta has poured into AR glasses over the last six years and the lackluster reception to the first generation of Meta Ray-Bans, version two needed to be a win. Early indications are good. Ive seen third-party estimates that over 1 million have been sold. During Metas last earnings call, Zuckerberg mentioned that many styles were sold out. Now, with multimodal AI enabled, Meta may have the best AI wearable on the market.

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Hands-on with the visual AI in Metas Ray-Ban smart glasses - The Verge

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Brad Parscale helped Trump win in 2016 using Facebook ads. Now he’s back, and an AI evangelist – Yahoo! Voices

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) Donald Trumps former campaign manager looked squarely into the camera and promised his viewers they were about to witness a bold new era in politics.

Youre going to see some of the most amazing new technology in artificial intelligence thats going to replace polling in the future across the country, said Brad Parscale in a dimly lit promotional video accentuated by hypnotic beats.

Parscale, the digital campaign operative who helped engineer Trumps 2016 presidential victory, vows that his new, AI-powered platform will dramatically overhaul not just polling, but campaigning. His AI-powered tools, he has boasted, will outperform big tech companies and usher in a wave of conservative victories worldwide.

Its not the first time Parscale has proclaimed that new technologies will boost right-wing campaigns. He was the digital guru who teamed up with scandal-plagued Cambridge Analytica and helped propel Trump to the White House eight years ago. In 2020, he had a public blowup then a private falling out with his old boss after the Capitol riot. Now hes back, playing an under-the-radar role to help Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, in his race against Democratic President Joe Biden.

Parscale says his company, Campaign Nucleus, can use AI to help generate customized emails, parse oceans of data to gauge voter sentiment and find persuadable voters, then amplify the social media posts of anti-woke influencers, according to an Associated Press review of Parscales public statements, his company websites, slide decks, marketing materials and other documents not previously made public.

Since last year, Campaign Nucleus and other Parscale-linked companies have been paid more than $2.2 million by the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their related political action and fundraising committees, campaign finance records show.

While his firms have received only a small piece of Trumps total digital spending, Parscale remains close to top Republicans, as well as senior officials at the campaign and at the RNC, according to a GOP operative familiar with Parscales role who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.

Lara Trump, the RNCs new co-chair and Trumps daughter-in-law, once worked as a consultant to a company co-owned by Parscale. And U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson's campaign recently hired Campaign Nucleus, campaign finance records show.

Parscale, however, is not involved in day-to-day Trump campaign operations, the GOP operative said.

Parscales ability to use AI to micro target supporters and tap them for campaign cash could prove critical for Trumps campaign and other fundraising organizations. They have seen a falloff in contributions from smaller donors and a surge in spending at least $77 million so far on attorneys defending the former president in a slew of criminal and civil cases.

Beyond Trump, Parscale has said hes harnessed AI to supercharge conservative candidates and causes across the globe, including in Israel, the Balkans and Brazil.

NEW AI-POWERED CAMPAIGN TOOLS

Parscale is hardly alone in using machine learning to try to give candidates an edge by predicting, pinpointing and motivating likely supporters to vote and donate money. Politicians at all levels are experimenting with chatbots and other generative AI tools to write speeches, ad copy and fundraising appeals.

Some Democrats have voiced concern over being outmaneuvered by Republicans on AI, much like they were on social media advertising eight years ago. So far, the Biden campaign and other Democrats said they are using AI to help them find and motivate voters and to better identify and defeat disinformation.

Election experts say they are concerned about AIs potential to upend elections around the world through convincing deepfakes and other content that could mislead voters. Free and low-cost generative AI services have grown in sophistication, and officials worry they can be used to smear a candidate or steer voters to avoid the polls, eroding the publics trust in what they see and hear.

Parscale has the financial backing to experiment to see what works in ways that other AI evangelists may not. That is thanks, in part, to his association with an evangelical Texas billionaire who is among the states most influential political donors.

Parscale did not respond to multiple messages from AP seeking comment. The RNC declined comment as well.

AI IS SO SCARY

Trump has called artificial intelligence so scary " and "dangerous." His campaign, which has shied away from highlighting Parscale's role, said in an emailed statement that it did not engage or utilize tools supplied by any AI company.

The campaign uses a set of proprietary algorithmic tools, like many other campaigns across the country, to help deliver emails more efficiently and prevent sign up lists from being populated by false information, said campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.

While political consultants often hype their tactics to land new contracts, they can also be intensely secretive about the details of that work to avoid assisting rivals. That makes it difficult to precisely track how Parscale is deploying AI for the Trump campaign, or more broadly.

Parscale has said Campaign Nucleus can send voters customized emails and use data analytics to predict voters feelings. The platform can also amplify anti-woke influencers who have large followings on social media, according to his companys documents and videos.

Parscale said his company also can use artificial intelligence to create stunning web pages in seconds that produce content that looks like a media outlet, according to a presentation he gave last month at a political conference, where he was not advertised in advance as a speaker.

Empower your team to create their own news, said another slide, according to the presentation viewed by AP.

Soon, Parscale says, his company will deploy an app that harnesses AI to assist campaigns in collecting absentee ballots in the same way DoorDash or Grubhub drivers pick up dinners from restaurants and deliver them to customers.

Chris Wilson, a Republican strategist who recently worked for a SuperPAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis failed presidential bid, said he has seen Campaign Nucleus platform and was envious of its capabilities and simplicity.

Somebody could download Nucleus, start working with it and really begin to use it, said Wilson.

Other political consultants, however, called Parscales AI-infused sales pitch largely a rehash of what campaigns already have mastered through data scraping, ad testing and modeling to predict voter behavior.

Some of this stuff is just simply not new, its been around for a long time. The only thing new is that were just calling it AI, said Amanda Elliott, a GOP digital strategist.

FROM UNKNOWN TO TRUMP CONFIDANT

Parscale, a relatively unknown web designer in San Antonio, got his start working for Trump when he was hired to build a web presence for the business moguls family business.

That led to a job on the future presidents 2016 campaign. He was one of its first hires and spearheaded an ambitious and unorthodox digital initiative that relied on an extensive database of social media accounts and content to target voters with Facebook ads.

I pretty much used Facebook to get Trump elected in 2016, Parscale said in a 2022 podcast interview.

To better target Facebook users, in particular, the campaign teamed up with Cambridge Analytica, a British datamining firm bankrolled by Robert Mercer, a wealthy and influential GOP donor. After the election, Cambridge Analytica dissolved, facing investigations over its role in a breach of 87 million Facebook accounts.

Following Trumps surprise win, Parscales influence grew. He was promoted to manage Trump's reelection bid and enjoyed celebrity status. A towering figure at 6 feet, 8 inches with a Viking-style beard, Parscale was frequently spotted at campaign rallies taking selfies with Trump supporters and signing autographs.

Parscale was replaced as campaign manager not long after a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drew an unexpectedly small crowd, enraging Trump.

His personal life unraveled, culminating in a standoff with police at his Florida home after his wife reported he had multiple firearms and was threatening to hurt himself. One of the responding officers reported he saw bruising on the arms of Parscales wife. Parscale complied with a court order to turn in his firearms and was not charged in connection with the incident.

Parscale briefly decided to quit politics and privately expressed regret for associating with Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. In a text to a former campaign colleague, he wrote he felt guilty for helping him win in 2016, according to the House committee that investigated the Capitol attack.

His disgust didnt last long. Campaign Nucleus set up Trumps website after Silicon Valley tech companies throttled his access to their platforms.

By the summer of 2022, Parscale had resumed complimenting his old boss on a podcast popular among GOP politicos.

With President Trump, he really was the guy driving the message. He was the chief strategist of his own political uprising and management, Parscale said. I think what the family recognized was: I had done everything that really the campaign needs to do.

PARSCALES PLATFORM

Trumps 2024 campaign website now links directly to Parscales company and displays that its Powered by Nucleus, as Parscale often refers to his new firm. The campaign and its related political action and campaign committees have paid Campaign Nucleus more than $800,000 since early 2023, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Two other companies Dyspatchit Email and Text Services and BCVM Services are listed on campaign finance records as being located at the same Florida address used by Campaign Nucleus. The firms, which are registered in Delaware and whose ownership is unclear, have received $1.4 million from the Trump campaign and related entities, FEC records show.

When an AP reporter last month visited Campaign Nucleus small, unmarked office in a tony section of Fort Lauderdale, an employee said she did not know anything about Dyspatchit or BCVM.

We dont talk to reporters, the employee said.

The three companies have been paid to host websites, send emails, provide fundraising software and provide digital consulting, FEC records show.

Parscale markets Campaign Nucleus as a one-stop shop for conservative candidates who want to automate tasks usually done by campaign workers or volunteers.

The company says it has helped its clients raise $119 million and has sent nearly 14 billion emails on their behalf, according to a promotional video.

At his recent appearance at the political conference, Parscale presented a slide that said Campaign Nucleus had raised three times as much as tech giant Salesforce in head-to-head tests for email fundraising.

Campaign Nucleus specializes in mining information from a politicians supporters, according to a recent presentation slide.

For example, when someone signs up to attend an event, Nucleus uses AI to analyze reams of personal data to assign that person a numerical score. Attendees who have been to past events receive a high score, for example, ranking them as most likely to show up, according to a company video posted online.

Campaign Nucleus also can track where people who sign up live and can send them customized emails asking for donations or solicit their help on the campaign, the video shows.

Parscale said two years ago in a podcast that he had received more than 10,000 requests about Campaign Nucleus from nearly every country with a conservative party. More recently, he said his team has been active in multiple countries, including in India and Israel, where hes been helping over there a lot with the war with Hamas.

The company says it has offices in Texas, Florida and North Carolina and has been on a recruiting tear. Recent job listings have included U.S. and Latin America-based intelligence analysts to use AI for framing messages and generating content, as well as a marketer to coordinate influencer campaigns.

Campaign Nucleus has also entered into partnerships with other companies with an AI focus. In 2022, the firm announced it was teaming up with Phunware, a Texas-based company that built a cellphone app for Trumps 2020 bid that allowed staff to monitor the movements of his millions of supporters and mobilize their social networks.

Since then, Phunware obtained a patent for what a company official described as experiential AI that can locate peoples cellphones geographically, predict their travel patterns and influence their consumer behavior.

Phunware did not answer specific questions about the partnership with Nucleus, saying the company's client engagements were confidential.

However, it is well-known that we developed the 2020 Trump campaign app in collaboration with Campaign Nucleus. We have had discussions with Trump campaign leadership about potentially developing their app for the 2024 election," said spokeswoman Christina Lockwood.

PARSCALES VISION

Last year, Parscale bought property in Midland, Texas, in the heart of the nations highest-producing oil and gas fields. It is also the hometown of Tim Dunn, a billionaire born-again evangelical who is among the states most influential political donors.

Over the years, the organizations and campaigns Dunn has funded have pushed Texas politics further to the right and driven successful challenges to unseat incumbent Republican officials deemed too centrist.

In April 2023, Dunn invested $5 million in a company called AiAdvertising that once bought one of Parscales firms under a previous corporate name. The San Antonio-based ad firm also announced that Parscale was joining as a strategic adviser, to be paid $120,000 in stock and a monthly salary of $10,000.

Boom! Parscale tweeted. (AiAdvertising) finally automated the full stack of technologies used in the 2016 election that changed the world.

In June, AiAdvertising added two key national figures to its board: Texas investor Thomas Hicks Jr. former co-chair of the RNC and longtime hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. -- and former GOP congressman Jim Renacci. In December, Dunn also gave $5 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC and Campaign Nucleus client. And in January, SEC filings show Dunn provided AiAdvertising an additional $2.5 million via his investment company. A company press release said the cash infusion would help it generate more engaging, higher-impact campaigns.

Dunn declined to comment, although in an October episode of his podcast he elaborated on how his political work is driven by his faith.

Jesus wont be on the ballot, OK? Now, eventually, hes going to take over the government and we can look forward to that, Dunn told listeners. In the meanwhile, were going to have to settle.

In business filings, AiAdvertising said it has developed AI-created personas to determine what messages will resonate emotionally with its customers target audience. Parscale said last year in a promotional video that Campaign Nucleus was using AI models in a similar way.

We actually understand what the American people want to hear, Parscale said.

AiAdvertising did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Parscale occasionally offers glimpses of the AI future he envisions. Casting himself as an outsider to the Republican establishment, he has said he sees AI as a way to undercut elite Washington consultants, whom he described as political parasites.

In January, Parscale told a crowd assembled at a grassroots Christian event at a church in Pasadena, California, that their movement needed to have our own AI, from creative large language models and creative imagery, we need to reach our own audiences with our own distribution, our own email systems, our own texting systems, our own ability to place TV ads, and lastly we need to have our own influencers.

To make his point plain, he turned to a metaphor that relied on a decidedly 19th-century technology.

We must not rely on any of their rails, he said, referring to mainstream media and companies. This is building our own train tracks.

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Burke reported from San Francisco. AP National Political Writer Steve Peoples and Courtney Subramanian in Washington, and Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

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This story is part of an Associated Press series, The AI Campaign, that explores the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.

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Contact APs global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

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The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

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Samsung or SK Hynix? One Nvidia supplier is the better AI play, the pros say – CNBC

Big Tech names like Nvidia have been on fire, thanks to the artificial intelligence boom and other chipmakers are sharing the limelight. The supply chain for AI is extensive. It includes companies in Asia-Pacific and ranges from producers of AI graphics processing units to printed circuit boards. Memory chips in particular have been in the spotlight as AI ramps up. For example, memory with high performance and bandwidth is used in Nvidia's H100 graphics processing units. GPUs underpin most generative AI tools, and Nvidia's GPUs dominate the market. Two stocks have dominated the memory chip market: Samsung and SK Hynix . Samsung is the world's largest manufacturer of dynamic random-access memory chips. DRAM is a type of semiconductor memory needed for data processing. But SK Hynix is a strong contender in the space: It said on March 19 that it became the first in the industry to mass produce HBM3E (high bandwidth memory 3E), the next generation of high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI chipsets. SK Hynix is already the primary supplier of HBM3 chips to Nvidia's AI chipsets. Both South Korean companies reported earnings in late April. Samsung beat expectations , with operating profit for the first quarter soaring more than 900%. SK Hynix broke its run of net losses for five consecutive quarters , logging a net profit of 1.92 trillion South Korean won ($1.39 billion) in the first quarter. Which is the better play on the AI boom? CNBC Pro spoke to the pros to find out. SK Hynix Trent Masters, global portfolio manager at Alphinity Investment Management, says he prefers SK Hynix. "First I think their early leadership in HBM3 stands them in good stead with customers as HBM demand continues to increase materially," he said. He added, "While Samsung and Micron are starting to close the technology gap, the trust and dependability of SK Hynix during the initial HBM ramp will ensure that they will retain a strong presence with these customers into the future." SK Hynix's recent partnership with TSMC to develop HBM4 will also position it as a leader again as this technology goes through its iterations, said Masters. Mass production of the HBM4 chips is expected to start in 2026. "Also, I prefer SK Hynix over Samsung as it is the pure memory play," Masters said, adding that Samsung is a "much more sprawling" conglomerate spanning smartphones, TVs and other products. "A view of memory market strength (HBM demand and tight legacy DRAM markets leading to pricing strength) is best reflected through ownership of SK Hynix," he said. Nam Hyung Kim, partner at Arete Research, also prefers SK Hynix, giving it a buy rating and Samsung a neutral rating. "SK Hynix stands out as a pure-play memory stock with leadership in AI technology, dominating the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) market, which is crucial for AI servers," he said. "Samsung, in contrast, is attempting to catch up." Nam also pointed out that SK Hynix has higher profit margins in the sector than Samsung. He noted that Samsung's portfolio includes more than memory, with over half of its sales derived from low-value consumer appliances, TVs and smartphones. In addition, he said that Samsung's foundry business is facing "ongoing challenges." "Consequently, we recommend investors remain cautious with Samsung and consider pure-play memory firms like SK Hynix until Samsung can showcase renewed technological leadership in memory," Nam said. Over the past 12 months and year-to-date, SK Hynix has "significantly outperformed" Samsung in terms of stock price, he noted. "We anticipate this trend will continue throughout the upcoming memory up-cycle." Samsung But the buying opportunity for each stock also depends on timing, according to one analyst. Sung Kyu Kim, analyst atDaiwaCapital Markets, said he has buy ratings for both Samsung and SK Hynix on the "strong" memory upturn cycle. Though SK Hynix maintained its HBM3 leadership last year, he sees "intensifying competition" in HBM3E in the second half of this year and 2025. In conclusion, he prefers Samsung, predicting it will catch up in the near term and will have more upside to its stock price. "[But I] also anticipate a buying opportunity on SK Hynix once it is adjusted due to intensifying competition in HBM3E," said Kim. CNBC's Sheila Chiang contributed to this report.

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We need some real perspective on AI and evangelization – Catholic World Report

A screenshot of "Father Justin," an AI chatbot simulating a priest who answered questions for the Catholic Answers apostolate.(Image: Screenshot/Catholic Answers)

A few years ago on YouTube, there was a brief and fascinating fad for tensegrity tables. Tensegrity is a portmanteau combining tensional and integrity, and refers to structures whose parts are held together by a careful balance of continuous strain mediated through ropes or cables. The resulting objects are almost uncanny, with surfaces appearing to float in defiance of gravity.

When I first saw one of these tables, it struck me as a useful metaphor for the Christian life. The walk of a Christian often involves maintaining a careful equilibrium of attitudes apparently in tension. We are to be meek, yet courageous; just and merciful; patient but zealous; wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

If I would fault Catholic Answers with anything in the recent brouhaha over the release of its apologetics AI chatbot, it would be in having allowed dovelike innocence to overcome serpentine shrewdness. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. Yet the ensuing mayhem following Father Justins online incardination might have been expected. The Catholic world experienced its own Tay AI moment, reminiscent of when Microsoft in 2016 released its own early iteration of a machine learning bot on Twitter. Within less than a day, the thing was sabotaged into docile adoption of the persona of a teenage neo-Nazi). To (reluctantly) quote Taylor Swift, This is why we cant have nice things.

I may share the criticism of Catholic Answers slight navete with others, but I find myself mostly out of sympathy with the majority of appraisals Ive read. On the contrary, to my reading, the general conversation over what we must now call simply Justin has been something of a masterclass in argumentative fallacies. The Catholic commentariat has done a roaring trade in the mongering of red herrings before now, of coursejust about every time Pope Francis speaks in public comes to mind. But there was something particularly breathtaking in the breathlessness with which every outlet in the Catholic media world got in line to pillory this poor fictional priest before the digital paint of his bucolic background was even dry.

The chosen metaphor isnt simply a rhetorical flourish. Its an important point and a reminder of a fact many critics seem to have forgotten: namely, that artificial intelligence is much more artifice than it is intelligence. This is seen most clearly in those whose primary objections seemed to stem from the fact that the bots characterpersonawas that of a priest, which arguably tells more about the critics than the creators. The creators seemed to know that theyd simply created a fictional character and given it a narrative framework and history, which any good fictional character demands. Father Justin was a work of artifice, no more real than Chestertons Father Brown, and similarly neither a disparagement nor diminution of the character of Holy Orders and the work of real priests.

Many critics, however, seemed to topple into the uncanny valley and be unable to climb back out, and were haunted in that shadowy place by an almost superstitious notion that this botmaybe any AI botis actually something more than a bit of very interactive make-believe.

I also cant help but wonder if there isnt something reflexive behind those criticisms that chiefly took the form of jeremiads about how evangelization is supposed to be all about personal human encounter and companionship, and how this chatbot is somehow what one writer called a delegation of the Christian duty to share the Gospel. Granted, sharing the Gospel requires more than the mere sharing of information; on the other hand, however, the sharing of information is an inextricable entailment of the process. And here we do well to recall the Thomistic principle that whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.

It is not uncommon in the work of evangelization to encounter those people who much prefer a hands-off, self-guided approach to studying the faith, people who would sooner read a book on their own than attend a book discussion group. Indeed, many of us, if we can imagine that the shoe was on the other foot, might opt for this kind of path as being at least less awkward than the alternative. Suppose a Watchtower Society or LDS missionary came to the door of an unchurched but open-minded individual. The homeowner might be very genuinely inclined to take the missionarys propositions seriously and give the matter some serious thought. But, at the same time, he might also strongly prefer just taking whatever literature or pamphlet is on offer over the prospect of having a potentially uncomfortable conversation with a stranger on the doorstep.

The bottom line is that its not difficult to imagine a market segment of those for whom a tool like this chatbot is really a preferred way to gain a more comprehensive introduction to the intellectual content of the Faith. The popularity of other large language model (LLM) resources itself suggests this. All Catholic Answers version does is offer information to a certain subset of people in the manner in which they might most prefer to engage it.

In other words, for them, this resource is precisely the mode of accompaniment they need, and its provision is born from having simply followed the first rule of effective encounternamely, actually having listened to what someone is seeking from that encounter.

There is nothing new about emergent technologies and strategies being tested in evangelization. Stained glass, question-and-answer catechisms, casuistic manuals, vademecums, and so many other examples may be cited. In all of these cases, the integration of new means and methods was achieved by striking the right balance amidst possible tensions. A stained glass window could only capture the basics of the story of the Annunciation; it couldnt replace the actual reading of the narrative from Luke. The pat answer in the printed manual possibly lacked in some points the leavening of wisdom possessed by the priest sitting in the box.

The new technology of AI neednt be in conflict with the work of evangelists and catechists engaging people face-to-face. It can never provideand in the instant circumstance never sought to providethe ineluctable gift of human touch or the spark of true soulful empathy. Rather than trying to break these new tools for a moment of internet fame, perhaps our time would be better spent trying to make the technology better, and helping articulate its limitations in a productive way. This would help ensure that this tool, like any other tool, remains properly understood as an augmentary aid and not a replacement for the human element, firmly situated in integral and balanced tension with the virtues and skills no machine can ever mimic.

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iOS 18: Here are the new AI features in the works – 9to5Mac

2024 is shaping up to be the Year of AI for Apple, with big updates planned for iOS 18 and more. The rumors and Tim Cook himself make it clear that there are new AI features for Apples platforms in the works. Heres everything we know about the ways Apple is exploring AI features

There have been a number of rumors about the various AI features in the works inside Apple. Bloomberg has reported that Apple thinks iOS 18 will be one of the biggest iOS updates ever, headlined by a number of new AI features.

Mark Gurman reported last July that Apple created its own Large Language Model(LLM) system, which has been dubbedAppleGPT. The project uses a framework called Ajax that Apple started building in 2022 to base various machine learning projects on a shared foundation. This Ajax framework will serve as the basis for Apples forthcoming AI features across all of its platform.

9to5Macfound evidenceof Apples work on new AI and large language model technology in iOS 17.4. We reported that Apple is relying on OpenAIs ChatGPT API for internal testing to help the development of its own AI models.

Bloomberg has reported that Apples iOS 18 features will be powered by an entirely on-device large language model, which offers a number of privacy and speed benefits.

Here are some of the rumors about new AI features coming to iOS 18:

Did you know that Apple has actually already launched a number of powerful AI frameworks and models? Heres a recap of those:

During a recent Apple earnings call, Tim Cook offered a rare teaser for a future product announcement. According to Cook, Apple is spending a tremendous amount of time and effort on artificial intelligence technologies, and the company is excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year.

Its extraordinarily rare for Cook to even remotely hint at Apples plans for future product announcements. Why did he do it this time? Likely to ease the concerns of investors and analysts worried about Apple falling behind the likes of OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. Whether the teaser is enough to calm those fears until an actual product announcement materializes remains to be seen.

Also during an earnings call recently, Cook touted the advantages that Apple has which will set its AI apart from the competition:

We believe in the transformative power and promise of AI, and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate us in this new era, including Apples unique combination of seamless hardware, software, and services integration, groundbreaking Apple Silicon with our industry-leading neural engines, and our unwavering focus on privacy, which underpins everything we create.

In a surprising twist, Bloomberg has reported that Apple is in active negotiations with Google about potentially licensing Gemini, which is Googles set of generative AI models. The report explains that Apple is specifically looking to partner on cloud-based generative AI models.

In this scenario, Apple would rely on a partner such as Google for its cloud-based features. Other features would still be powered on-device by Apples own technology.

The generative AI features under discussion would theoretically be baked into Siri and other apps. New AI capabilities based on Apples homegrown models, meanwhile, would still be woven into the operating system. Theyll be focused on proactively providing users with information and conducting tasks on their behalf in the background, people familiar with the matter said.

While Apple is said to be in active negotiations for this partnership with Google, the company has also reportedly held talks with OpenAI as well.

In fact, most recently, it was reported that Apple had resumed talks with OpenAI about a partnership. According to reports, Apple would use OpenAIs technology to power an AI-based chatbot in iOS 18.

At this point, the question is which of the many rumors will come to fruition this year.

Id be surprised if all of these rumored AI features are ready for this year. My assumption is that Apple is working on all of this stuff (and more), but will pare down the final list of features included in iOS 18. Features that dont make the cut will likely come in a later update to iOS 18 or with iOS 19 in 2025.

Apple has officially set WWDC for June 10 this year, and thats where we expect the bulk of its AI announcements to be made.

Where do you want to see Apple direct its attention toward for new AI features this year? Let us know down in the comments.

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