Safety concerns are out, optimism is in: that was the takeaway from a major artificial intelligence summit in Paris this week, as leaders from the U.S., France, and beyond threw their weight behind the AI industry. Although there were divisions between major nations--the U.S. and the U.K. did not sign a final statement endorsed by 60 nations calling for an "inclusive" and "open" AI sector--the focus of the two-day meeting was markedly different from the last such gathering. Last year, in Seoul, the emphasis was on defining red-lines for the AI industry. The concern: that the technology, although holding great promise, also had the potential for great harm. The final statement made no mention of significant AI risks nor attempts to mitigate them, while in a speech on Tuesday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said: "I'm not here this morning to talk about AI safety, which was the title of the conference a couple of years ago. I'm here to talk about AI opportunity."

Kate Mosse and Richard Osman have hit back at Labour's plan to give artificial intelligence companies broad freedoms to mine artistic works for data, saying it could destroy growth in creative fields and amount to theft. It is seen as a way of supercharging the growth of AI companies in the UK. Last month Paul McCartney warned that AI "could just take over", and Kate Bush joined Stephen Fry and Hugh Bonneville in signing a petition warning that the "unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted". Mosse told the Guardian: "Using AI responsibly and well and being a world leader – all of this I agree with. It just cannot be at the expense of the creative industries … It is supporting one type of growth and destroying another part of growth. And it cannot be on the basis of theft of our work."

But AI nerds may remember that exactly a year ago, on July 21, 2023, Biden was posing with seven top tech executives at the White House. He'd just negotiated a deal where they agreed to eight of the most prescriptive rules targeted at the AI sector at that time. A lot can change in a year! The voluntary commitments were hailed as much-needed guidance for the AI sector, which was building powerful technology with few guardrails. Since then, eight more companies have signed the commitments, and the White House has issued an executive order that expands upon them--for example, with a requirement that developers share safety test results for new AI models with the US government if the tests show that the technology could pose a risk to national security.

Just six major technology companies are at the heart of the AI sector through an "interconnected web" of more than 90 investments and partnerships links, the UK's competition regulator has warned, sparking increased concern about the anti-competitive nature of the technology. Sarah Cardell, the chief executive of the Competition and Markets Authority, said AI foundation models – general-purpose AI systems such as OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini, on which consumer and business products are frequently built – were a potential "paradigm shift" for society. Speaking in Washington, she added that the immense concentration of power they represented would give a small number of companies "the ability and incentives to shape these markets in their own interests". "When we started this work, we were curious. Now, with a deeper understanding and having watched developments very closely, we have real concerns," Cardell said.

Beijing is poised to implement sweeping new regulations for artificial intelligence services this week, trying to balance state control of the technology with enough support that its companies can become viable global competitors. The government has issued 24 guidelines that require platform providers to register their services and conduct a security review before they're brought to market. Seven agencies will take responsibility for oversight, including the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the National Development and Reform Commission. The final regulations are less onerous than an original draft from April, but they show that China, like Europe, is moving ahead with government oversight of what may be the most promising -- and controversial -- technology of the last 30 years.

Chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports that the U.S. will only shoot down the Chinese spy balloon if officials can assure zero civilian casualties. U.S. investors were involved in at least 37% of all investment transactions in China's artificial intelligence, or AI, sector between 2015 and 2021, according to a new report. Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology found that $40.2 billion of the total money raised by all Chinese AI companies over this time period had U.S. backing. However, the center couldn't determine what percentage of that amount came from U.S. investors or investors abroad. The money went to 251 Chinese AI companies, and 91% of the U.S. investment came as venture capital to earlier-stage businesses.

The UK is aspiring to become an artificial intelligence (AI) superpower, and nothing seems to be able to stop it from achieving its ambitious goal. If we were to take a look at the progress the UK did in the past 10 years, we'll notice the number of AI companies has grown astronomically or, more exactly, by over 600 percent. If back in 2011, the UK had only 180 AI companies, today it numbers over 1,300, and the number keeps growing at a head-spinning rate. Much like in the decades when the superpowers of the world were competing for space supremacy, currently, governments compete to achieve artificial intelligence supremacy. The UK's AI sector has made a name of its own in the world due to phenomenal minds and generous government funding that amounts to £1 billion – public-sector investments and funds coming from private companies and academic partnerships.

WASHINGTON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - U.S. investors including the investment arms of Intel Corp (INTC.O) and Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) accounted for nearly a fifth of investments in Chinese artificial intelligence companies from 2015 to 2021, a report showed on Wednesday. The document, released by CSET, a tech policy group at Georgetown University, comes amid growing scrutiny of U.S. investments in AI, Quantum and semiconductors, as the Biden administration prepares to unveil new restrictions on U.S. funding of Chinese tech companies. According to the report, 167 U.S. investors took part in 401 transactions, or roughly 17% of the investments into Chinese AI companies in the period. Those transactions represented a total $40.2 billion in investment, or 37% of the total raised by Chinese AI companies in the 6-year period. It was not clear from the report, which pulled information from data provider Crunchbase, what percentage of the funding came from the U.S. firms.

Quantum computing startups are starting to pick up a lot of attention from investors. But as they grow their teams, they all face a common challenge: there just isn't enough talent available. These startups are looking for engineers with the knowledge to build quantum hardware and formulate quantum algorithms. But these skills are mostly found in academia. On top of that, startups in quantum are competing with big-pocketed companies with their own quantum departments, such as IBM and Google.

The impact of the economic slowdown for vendors depends on the type of vendor. Some large technology companies, including Google, have frozen nonessential hiring. However, some vendors have yet to feel the impact of the economic slowdown. Pecan AI, a vendor that provides a deep learning platform designed to build predictive models for enterprises, has raised about $100 million in the past year. The Israel-based company raised $66 million in its last funding round in February.