Global IT Outlook -
December 2023.

USA

An initial public offering (IPO) seeking up to $1 billion has been filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Elon Musk's xAI artificial intelligence business. According to the document, out of the total amount that was offered, the company has already raised $134.7 million in equity funding. A maximally curious AI devoid of explicitly programmed morals is Musk's goal; he is well-known for his focus on developing safer AI.

In July, Musk introduced xAI, marketing it as a maximum truth-seeking AI that could take on rivals like Bard from Google and Bing AI from Microsoft. A chatbot called Grok was recently presented by the startup to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. The team behind it includes experts from DeepMind at Google and other top AI research companies. As a separate app, Musk intends to sell xAI and incorporate it into his social networking platform, X.

Authorities are wary of the dissemination of false information and possible abuse of AI, despite the AI funding landscape's promise.

UK

US computer scientist Stephen Thaler's request for patent protection for innovations made by artificial intelligence was denied by the UK Supreme Court. An inventor must be either a natural person or a firm, according to the court's upholding of the UK Intellectual Property Office's ruling.

The failure of UK patent law to adequately safeguard innovations created by AI was the central argument in Thaler's appeal. Decisions in the US, Europe, and Australia are in line with this ruling. A review of regulations pertaining to ideas made by AI has been recognised by the Intellectual Property Office. The High Court of London determined in a different instance that patent protection is available to artificial neural networks in the United Kingdom.

UAE

According to a new Cisco study, 78% of UAE consumers believe applications and digital services are vital for a fun holiday, therefore you can bet that they will play a big role over the next holiday season. The prospect of a digital service outage ruining their Christmas festivities worries 65% of people. Compared to the world average of 45%, this concern is significantly higher. Brands that want to cash in on the holiday demand surge should prioritize application availability, performance, and security, according to the report. Half or more of customers are worried that a broken digital service could ruin their family vacation (53%). This is especially true when it comes to banking apps (45%), messaging platforms (43%), and shopping apps (38%). Application owners must take responsibility for ensuring optimal performance, according to the study's conclusions, which suggest using application observability to proactively uncover and fix problems.

2023-A Year of Change and Concerns: The Impact of Generative AI on the Internet

A sea change occurred in the digital sphere in November 2022, when OpenAI debuted ChatGPT. There was an upsurge in surreal visuals, phony identities advertising cryptocurrency, and edited movies due to the proliferation of generative models like ChatGPT and Midjourney. This caused ethical problems to arise and skepticism to grow.

Generative models pushed artificial intelligence (AI) closer to individuals, while it had long impacted many parts of our lives, such as weather predictions and self-driving automobiles. There was an explosion of false information on social media because of how easy it was to post, and the elderly were especially susceptible to believing things that weren't true.

The advent of AI hallucinations in 2023 brought attention to the generation of answers that were confident but not based on any solid evidence because there was a lack of training data. When internet companies like Google promoted false information generated by AI, they too received criticism, leading many to question the accuracy of the data they were given.

Another noteworthy change was the emergence of deep-fakes, which are highly edited images and movies that pose a threat to the veracity of visual content. Though it encouraged original thought, deep-fakes brought up legitimate worries about people abusing technology for evil. The use of Scarlett Johansson's voice in AI advertisements is only one example of the unethical usage of celebrity identities that has been brought to light by generative AI.

In conclusion, generative AI has had a revolutionary effect on the Internet in the last year, opening the door to creative inquiry while simultaneously raising worries about the veracity of visual content, the spread of false information, and hallucinations.