Better pay and new agreements with streaming platforms: the actors' strike that brought Hollywood to a standstill a few days ago is mainly about money. But there is something else that film actors are worried about: the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence. It's understandable at any rate, says Peter van der Putten, an assistant professor on the SAILS (Social Artificial Intelligence and Life Sciences) interdisciplinary research programme. We're scared of losing control or becoming redundant. Otherwise it would have vanished a long time ago.

At first glance, generative AI might seem like more of a curiosity than an enterprise-technology tool, said Peter van der Putten, director of the AI Lab at software firm Pegasystems Inc. "Creating cute pictures of a corgi in a house made of sushi isn't exactly a profitable business case, at least not for large enterprises," Mr. van der Putten said. And yet, he said, "generative AI startups are popping up left and right, in areas such as marketing, support, service and other content creation." The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. Jasper, an Austin, Texas-based startup launched last year, has developed a generative AI platform designed to auto-generate promotional blog posts and other marketing materials. Amid a sharp decline in venture-capital investing deals, Jasper last week announced a $125 million Series A fundraising round, which set its private-market valuation above $1 billion, the company said.

Thanks to Hollywood, the first thing people tend to think of when they hear "artificial intelligence" is a dystopian future where humanity is at war with its electronic overlords – Terminator, Ex Machina and I, Robot come to mind. "If you ask a random stranger what AI is, they're likely to talk about robots that take over the world," Peter van der Putten, Director AI Lab at Pegasystems, explained to The Mandarin. In his role, van der Putten determines how AI can drive change and impact business, arts and science, and more in a responsible, customer centric and ethical manner. "Responsible and trustworthy AI can be used to have a meaningful impact, improve the life of citizens, customers, and businesses," he said. With oversight, regulations, responsible data use and the right tools that enable business logic to be coded simply, AI can be fair and free from bias, making the future much brighter than Hollywood suggests.

The UK's data watchdog is launching an investigation into potential bias when using artificial intelligence (AI) during the recruitment process. The probe will focus on alleged racial discrimination from automated recruitment systems. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) investigation is in response to accusations that automated recruitment software has been unfairly ruling out candidates who are members of minority groups. AI is often used in recruitment, both to avoid overloading managers and to remove potential human bias in those hiring. However, there have long been concerns that it may be doing the exact opposite.

Software code is the mathematics-like language that powers computer applications, which underpin many core business functions, from sales and marketing, to human resources, accounting and finance. The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. "The process of writing code has remained mostly manual," Mr. Dohmke said Wednesday at Collision 2022, a startup and investing conference held in Toronto. Instead, he said, the AI coding tool acts like a predictive-text feature on smartphones. As developers work, the tool suggests options for lines of code needed to execute given tasks, within a larger software program.

Wirth Research, an engineering company that specialises in computational fluid dynamics, has become increasingly concerned with environmental sustainability. It initially focused on the design of racing cars, allowing clients to replace expensive wind tunnel work with computerised modelling, but in recent years it has designed equipment that reduces the aerodynamic drag of lorries, and a device which reduces cold air escaping from open-fronted supermarket fridges, cutting energy use by a quarter. The Bicester-based company also wanted to reduce the energy used by its detailed computerised modelling, which for car aerodynamics simulates around half a billion tiny cells of air. It had already adjusted the resolution of cells within each model, with a finer sub-millimetre mesh used near sharp edges. Then, during the pandemic when it realised staff could work effectively from home, Wirth moved its computing from its own site to a renewable energy-powered datacentre in Iceland run by Verne Global.

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) covers a smart but limited set of software tools. But in the future, as artificial intelligence becomes more and more complex and ubiquitous, we be could forced to rethink the rights and wrongs of how we treat AIs – and even how they treat us. Currently, AIs are narrow in nature, performing tasks like image recognition, fraud detection, and customer service. But, as AIs develop, they will become increasingly autonomous. At some point, they're likely to do wrong.

"Trust is a must," she said. "The EU is spearheading the development of new global norms to make sure AI can be trusted. By setting the standards, we can pave the way to ethical technology worldwide." Any fast-moving technology is likely to create mistrust, but Vestager and her colleagues decreed that those in power should do more to tame AI, partly by using such systems more responsibly and being clearer about how these work. The landmark legislation – designed to "guarantee the safety and fundamental rights of people and businesses, while strengthening AI uptake, investment and innovation" – encourages firms to embrace so-called explainable AI.

The COVID-19 pandemic, anti-racism protests, and an impending global recession might have pushed global warming off the public agenda, but don't worry -- the climate crisis is looking worse than ever. A new art project aims to revive interest in the emergency by giving a voice to the environment. Letters from Nature uses AI to write epistles to world leaders warning of the dangers, on behalf of the world's glaciers, coral reefs, ice caps, and disappearing islands. To generate the letters, artist Jeroen van der Most and AI researcher Peter van der Putten fed a short prompt to GPT-3, OpenAI's unnervingly powerful text generator. The model then spat back a climate protest letter, addressed to one of the world's most powerful people, and signed by one of its most threatened entities.

According to Tech Nation, investment in Artificial Intelligence reached record levels in the UK in 2019, making it the third biggest AI investor in the world. The last few years has seen AI and machine learning become must-have technologies for businesses across numerous industries, with AI use growing by 270% over the last four years, according to Leftronic. Many companies have therefore widely publicised the fact that they are investing in this area. However, 2020 may see the focus on the tech world shift away from AI, with the BBC reporting that the hype surrounding the technology could be dying down, approaching an "AI winter". Computer scientist Yoshua Bengio told the BBC that AI's capabilities had been "somewhat overhyped" over the last ten years, and Gary Marcus, a researcher at New York University, said that "real innovation" was needed for the technology to progress further.