Artist Stephanie Lepp hosts Reckonings, a narrative podcast that explores how people shift their political worldviews, transcend extremism, and make other kinds of transformative change. Recently, she has been experimenting with a maligned technology, deepfakes, to create Deep Reckonings, a series of synthetic videos that imagine controversial public figures having a reckoning; in the deepfake footage, Alex Jones, Brett Kavanaugh, and Mark Zuckerberg reflect on the damage they have inflicted on society. I spoke to Stephanie about the impact of her project, and the positive potential of deepfake technology. What inspired you to create Deep Reckonings? We think of social change as requiring large numbers of people pushing for change. But there's also the question of, what are the fewest number of people it would take to create broad-based social change?

Recently the concept of transformative AI (TAI) has begun to receive attention in the AI policy space. TAI is often framed as an alternative formulation to notions of strong AI (e.g. artificial general intelligence or superintelligence) and reflects increasing consensus that advanced AI which does not fit these definitions may nonetheless have extreme and long-lasting impacts on society. However, the term TAI is poorly defined and often used ambiguously. Some use the notion of TAI to describe levels of societal transformation associated with previous 'general purpose technologies' (GPTs) such as electricity or the internal combustion engine. Others use the term to refer to more drastic levels of transformation comparable to the agricultural or industrial revolutions. The notion has also been used much more loosely, with some implying that current AI systems are already having a transformative impact on society. This paper unpacks and analyses the notion of TAI, proposing a distinction between TAI and radically transformative AI (RTAI), roughly corresponding to societal change on the level of the agricultural or industrial revolutions. We describe some relevant dimensions associated with each and discuss what kinds of advances in capabilities they might require. We further consider the relationship between TAI and RTAI and whether we should necessarily expect a period of TAI to precede the emergence of RTAI. This analysis is important as it can help guide discussions among AI policy researchers about how to allocate resources towards mitigating the most extreme impacts of AI and it can bring attention to negative TAI scenarios that are currently neglected.

Over the last few weeks, Computer Weekly has looked at how a number of organisations are combining automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver measurable business benefits. During the Microsoft Future Decoded event in London, the use of Microsoft tools, and Thoughtonomy's intelligent automation platform at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, were used to demonstrate how AI and automation can combine to deliver benefits in the public sector. In logistics, Canandian transportation company Polaris Transportation is using AI and automation in a project to streamline the handling of scanned-in customs paperwork, enabling it to reduce many hours of manual work. The company used the WorkFusion intelligent automation platform to scan and "read" customs paperwork associated with cross-border shipping documents. According to Cindy Rose, CEO of Microsoft UK, more advanced organisations are accelerating their use of AI, which has enabled them to see its benefits on their bottom line.

The emergence of digital technologies has been driving transformative changes across all industries, and the European Region has been no exception. Germany is all likely to be at the center of the region's new initiatives towards research and development with respect to artificial intelligence. FREMONT, CA: Central to these overall changes in the society and economy is artificial intelligence (AI) which has come to the forefront owing to enhanced processing power, and algorithms besides the tremendous increase in the quantity of data being generated everywhere. The potential of AI as a technology to function in such a way to transform the way we carry out businesses is undoubtedly proven. The technology can drive new possibilities for responding faster to customer requirements, besides market conditions paving the way for enterprises across various sectors to drive profits, increase revenue, and stay competitive.