Canada's AI restrictions

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Today we will discuss-

• 🔫Canada announces restrictions on AI research funding

• 😎Malaysia's Prime Minister prioritizes AI upskilling investment

• 👾Altman says the future of AI depends on energy breakthrough

• 😱9 fantastic AI tools you might not have heard of

All this and more - Let's dive in!

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👩‍🍳What’s cooking in the newsroom?

Canada tightens research funding to prevent data sharing with China, Iran, Russia

🧐News - The Canadian government has unveiled new restrictions on research funding, aiming to prevent the sharing of advanced technologies developed by Canadian universities with China, Iran, and Russia. This decision, announced on Tuesday, is rooted in national security concerns. The Innovation Minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, emphasized that while Canadian research is at the forefront of discovery, its openness makes it susceptible to foreign influence.

The Canadian government has listed 103 entities, including foreign universities (85 from China, 12 from Iran, and six from Russia), believed to pose risks to national security. Canadian researchers will no longer be eligible for federal funding for collaborative research with these entities.

👩‍💻What is it that the govt. is trying to protect? The government has identified a comprehensive list of sensitive research areas that it wishes to protect. This includes artificial intelligence, quantum science, robotics, biotechnology, advanced weapons, space and satellite technology, and human-machine integration. Minister Champagne explained that such openness could make Canadian research a target for foreign influence, posing potential risks to national security.

🤶Why was this decision taken? This move follows a warning from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service about China using joint academic research partnerships to acquire cutting-edge technologies for economic and military advantages. Reports suggest that researchers at 50 Canadian universities have published joint scientific papers with scientists linked to China's military, covering areas such as quantum cryptography, computing, and space technologies.

Malaysia's Prime Minister launches AI upskilling courses to ‘future-proof’ economy

👩‍🏫News - Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is steering Malaysia away from its reliance on dwindling oil reserves and towards a future powered by artificial intelligence. He launched an e-learning course named 'AI For The People' designed to upskill workers who may be vulnerable to job losses due to the increasing dominance of machine learning.

Developed in collaboration with tech giant Intel, this free online course is part of Anwar's administration's digitalization efforts, aiming to position Malaysia as a leader in generative AI and potentially contribute up to a quarter of its GDP, amounting to US$113.4 billion.

🤷‍♀️What do we know about the course? The "AI For The People" course, offered in Malay, English, Mandarin, and Tamil, caters to the country's diverse population. It provides four hours of introductory material, acting as a stepping stone for Malaysians to climb the employment ladder in the AI age.

This is just the beginning. Anwar's administration is taking a proactive approach to prepare its workforce for the inevitable AI revolution. By investing in skills development and embracing new technologies, Malaysia is aiming to secure a prosperous future for its people, one powered not by black gold, but by the boundless potential of artificial intelligence.

Future AI development depends on energy innovation, OpenAI CEO asserts at Davos

News - OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, emphasized the imperative need for an energy breakthrough to sustain the increasing power demands of future artificial intelligence. Speaking at a Bloomberg event during the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Altman highlighted that the power consumption of AI is likely to surpass current expectations significantly.

He identified a silver lining, indicating that environmentally friendly energy sources along with more affordable solar power and storage, present viable paths forward for AI development. He stated, "There's no way to get there without a breakthrough," expressing the necessity for significant advancements in energy technology. This motivation has also led OpenAI to increase its investment in fusion research.

What’s more? Expressing his preference, Altman expressed a desire for the global embrace of nuclear fission as an additional energy source. In 2021, he contributed $375 million to the private U.S. nuclear fusion company, Helion Energy. Helion Energy has subsequently inked a deal to supply energy to Microsoft, OpenAI's primary financial supporter and provider of computing resources for AI initiatives.

The message is clear: future AI isn't just about algorithms and code. It's about powering those algorithms without burning down the planet.

👩🏼‍💻What else is happening?

• OpenAI's Sam Altman says human-level AI is coming but will change the world much less than we think

• Capgemini and AWS expand strategic collaboration to enable broad enterprise generative AI adoption

• Artificial intelligence helped scientists create a new type of battery 

• Elon Musk wants 25% voting control at Tesla before fulfilling AI goal

• Vodafone signs $1.5 billion Microsoft deal for AI, cloud and IoT

🎃AI life hacks

• Personalized content discovery - Use personalized content discovery to save time and find the content you love. AI algorithms can analyze your past interactions to recommend tailored content, creating a personalized feed that's relevant to you. This can save you the time spent on surfing a vast amount of unrelated or irrelevant content.

• Writing assistants - Employ AI-driven writing assistants to enhance your writing prowess. Grammarly and ProWritingAid are two popular examples that go beyond correcting grammar and spelling errors, offering suggestions to improve sentence structure, clarity, and overall style.

• AI meeting assistants - If you've ever had to review meeting minutes and compose a summary email, you know it can be time-consuming and tedious. AI meeting assistants can help by seamlessly capturing your meetings' audio, video, and slides, efficiently generating summaries, allocating action items, and crafting follow-up emails.

👩🏼‍🚒Discover mind-blowing AI tools

1. VModel - AI-powered tool that uses virtual models to showcase clothing and accessories on e-commerce platforms

2. AngelDocAI - An AI-powered tool designed to streamline the angel investing process

3. Fal.ai - An AI-powered application that allows developers to create their applications

4. Opinly.ai - A competitor research tool that automates and simplifies the process of analyzing competitors

5. COHEZION - AI-driven analytics and insights tool designed to maximize the value of game analytics

6. Pymetrics - A soft skills platform that uses AI to improve the hiring process and talent management

7. GoodVision - A traffic data analytics suite that provides accurate insights for adaptive traffic control and urban planning

8. Dnsfilter - A cloud-based DNS service that provides threat protection and content filtering

9. Netra - AI-powered content comprehension company that analyzes videos, images, text, and audio

📜Historic moments

• 2014 - DeepMind's AI model conquered Atari 2600 games, which was a landmark event. Powered by deep reinforcement learning, the AI mastered various games, learning from raw sensory data—underscoring AI's potential for complex tasks.

• 2017 - The introduction of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) revolutionized art and technology, enabling highly realistic AI-generated images. This sparked profound discussions about creativity and AI's role in shaping artistic vision, blurring the lines between human artists and AI collaborators.

• 2021 - OpenAI's Jukebox debuted by producing diverse music genres and styles, emanating from OpenAI's research. Jukebox stood as a prominent venture within OpenAI's AI research endeavors, showcasing AI's prowess in creativity and elevating the landscape of music composition and production.