Confidential documents presented at a recent internal Google summit detail the tech giant's plan to create an artificial intelligence (AI) designed to become its users' 'Life Story Teller.' But to do it, the AI will require unprecedented access to each user's personal data. It's unclear where this experimental AI, currently dubbed'Project Ellmann,' will reside among Google's apps and services, but the team behind it works for Google Photos -- and their presentation suggested a tailored AI chatbot. 'We can't answer tough questions or tell good stories without a bird's-eye view of your life,' read one portion of the presentation, made by a Google product manager. Confidential documents presented at a recent internal Google summit detail the tech giant's plan to create an AI designed to become their users' 'Life Story Teller.' Building off the company's ChatGPT rival Gemini, it new project will scrape reams of a user's personal data Building off the company's ChatGPT rival Gemini, Project Ellmann will use'large language models' (LLMs) to synthesize personal information from context said to include biographies of users and their loved ones, as well as stored photo'moments.' But the new developments may spark alarm from those outraged by Google's secret collection of millions of individual's sensitive medical records, code-named Project Nightingale in 2019 -- or anyone who eagerly collects digital privacy tips.

Some senior employees described Sam Altman as psychologically abusive, creating chaos at OpenAI. The complaints were a major factor in the board’s decision to fire the CEO.

OpenAI's recent drama hasn't only caught UK regulators' attention. Bloomberg reported Friday that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into Microsoft's investment in the Sam Altman-led company and whether it violates US antitrust laws. FTC Chair Lina Khan wrote in a New York Times op-ed earlier this year that "the expanding adoption of AI risks further locking in the market dominance of large incumbent technology firms." Bloomberg's report stresses that the FTC inquiry is preliminary, and the agency hasn't opened a formal investigation. But Khan and company are reportedly "analyzing the situation and assessing what its options are." One complicating factor for regulation is that OpenAI is a non-profit, and transactions involving non-corporate entities aren't required by law to be reported.

Next year will likely be the first year of the AI PC, and chipmakers are racing to be the ones powering it. This week, AMD launched its Ryzen 8040 series of mobile CPUs alongside new Instinct hardware for the datacenter. AMD explained it all in a special episode of The Full Nerd podcast. First up: Jason Banta, AMD's client CPU chief, who spoke to Adam Patrick Murray and myself about the Ryzen 8000 series of mobile chips and how they'll enable local chatbot and AI-powered features. Pay attention to the release of the Ryzen AI Software, which "quantizes" a ChatGPT-esque large language model AI into a format that can be used on a Ryzen CPU.

This is Atlantic Intelligence, an eight-week series in which The Atlantic's leading thinkers on AI will help you understand the complexity and opportunities of this groundbreaking technology. Earlier this year, The Atlantic published a story by Gary Marcus, a well-known AI expert who has agitated for the technology to be regulated, both in his Substack newsletter and before the Senate. Marcus argued that "this is a moment of immense peril," and that we are teetering toward an "information-sphere disaster, in which bad actors weaponize large language models, distributing their ill-gotten gains through armies of ever more sophisticated bots." I was interested in following up with Marcus given recent events. In the past six weeks, we've seen an executive order from the Biden administration focused on AI oversight; chaos at the influential company OpenAI; and this Wednesday, the release of Gemini, a GPT competitor from Google.

Why is the little ol' Competition & Markets Authority, a UK regulator, inserting itself into the entertaining and important – but distant – drama at San Francisco-based OpenAI? Even if the CMA finds eventually that Microsoft, another US company, is pulling the strings at Sam Altman's show, what could it actually do? Doesn't it all paint the UK as an unfriendly place for tech investment, notwithstanding Rishi Sunak's eagerness to host AI summits and conduct cosy chats with Elon Musk? All fair questions, and the CMA should brace for more in that vein. It is indeed slightly odd that the UK regulator is the first out of traps in wondering, albeit in a preliminary manner, if Microsoft has gained effective control over OpenAI and, if it has, whether that amounts to a problem. But there is another way to look at developments: thank goodness a regulator somewhere is seeking clarity about what just occurred at OpenAI.

Microsoft Corp.'s partnership with OpenAI Inc. is facing the potential of a full-blown UK antitrust investigation three weeks after a mutiny at the ChatGPT creator laid bare deep ties between the two companies. The Competition and Markets Authority said Friday it was gathering information from stakeholders to determine whether the collaboration between the two firms threatens competition in the UK, home of Google's AI research lab Deepmind. Microsoft fell 0.7% in premarket trading. Microsoft has benefited richly from its investments, totaling as much as $13 billion, in OpenAI. By integrating OpenAI's products into virtually every corner of its core businesses, the software giant very quickly established itself as the undisputed leader of AI among big tech firms.

We haven't always been right (RIP, Baxter), but we've often been early to spot important areas of progress (we put natural-language processing on our very first list in 2001; today this technology underpins large language models and generative AI tools like ChatGPT). Every year, our reporters and editors nominate technologies that they think deserve a spot, and we spend weeks debating which ones should make the cut. Here are some of the technologies we didn't pick this time--and why we've left them off, for now. Alzmeiher's patients have long lacked treatment options. Several new drugs have now been proved to slow cognitive decline, albeit modestly, by clearing out harmful plaques in the brain.

Steven Johnson has written 13 books, on topics ranging from a London cholera outbreak to the value of video games. He's been a television presenter and a podcast host. He's a keynote speaker who doesn't have to call himself that in his LinkedIn profile. And for over a year now, he's been a full-time employee of Google, a status that's clear when he badges me into the search giant's Chelsea offices in New York to show me what his team has been creating. It's called NotebookLM, and the easiest way to think of it is as an AI collaborator with access to all your materials that sits on your metaphorical shoulder to guide you through your project.

The UK's competition watchdog has paved the way for a formal investigation into the partnership between Microsoft and ChatGPT developer OpenAI by asking for comments on the arrangement. The Competition and Markets Authority made the announcement on Friday after a bout of leadership and boardroom turmoil at OpenAI, which is based in San Francisco. The company was established as a non-profit entity whose board controls a commercial unit, in which Microsoft is the biggest investor. The CMA said "recent developments" had prompted the organisation to review whether the partnership had resulted in "an acquisition of control". Last month, OpenAI's board fired and then reappointed its chief executive, Sam Altman, and announced the formation of a new board. Microsoft now has a non-voting observer seat on the OpenAI board.