Technology

Microsoft faces UK antitrust probe over OpenAI deal structure

The regulator’s examination will assess whether the collaboration constitutes an “acquisition of control,” implying the substantial influence of one party over another.

The United Kingdom’s antitrust regulator is considering initiating a merger investigation into Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar collaboration with OpenAI.

This announcement resulted in a response from Microsoft, declaring that it only plays a non-voting observer role on the board of the ChatGPT maker.

The investigation announcement follows the ChatGPT maker’s disclosure that the United States tech giant would hold a non-voting board seat. The examination will assess whether the collaboration constitutes an “acquisition of control,” implying the substantial influence of one party over another, as stated by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Friday, Dec. 8.

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AI regulations in global focus as EU approaches regulation deal

Concerns over the potential misuse of AI have prompted the U.S., U.K., China and the G7 to speed up regulation of the technology, but Europe is already ahead.

The surge in generative artificial intelligence (AI) development has prompted governments globally to rush toward regulating the emerging technology. The trend matches the European Union’s efforts to implement the world’s first set of comprehensive rules for AI.

The EU AI Act is recognized as an innovative set of regulations. After several delays, reports indicate that on Dec. 7, negotiators agreed to a set of controls for generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.

Concerns about the potential misuse of the technology have also propelled the United States, the United Kingdom, China and other G7 countries to speed up their work toward regulating AI.

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Moody’s launches quantum-as-a-service platform for finance

The platform allows clients to compare and benchmark quantum and classical algorithms for a given task.

According to the Moody’s Analytics website, QFStudio is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that will serve as “a continuous integration, benchmark, and delivery platform” for quantum computing solutions.

The burgeoning quantum computing sector is expected to experience steady growth over the next few decades. A recent forecast predicted that quantum computing technologies would grow from a market capitalization in the United States of about $138 million in 2022 to $1.2 billion by 2030.

Currently, most of the focus in quantum computing is on research and development. Companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, D-Wave and Rigetti have quantum, cloud-based quantum and hybrid quantum computing offerings on the market, but most of these solutions are geared toward early movers exploring use cases.

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IBM, Meta and others form ‘AI Alliance’ to advance AI development

In a joint statement, IBM and Meta outlined the AI Alliance’s objectives, emphasizing a commitment to safety, collaboration, diversity, economic opportunity and universal benefits.

In the race for market supremacy among artificial intelligence (AI) firms, a coalition of technology leaders spearheaded by IBM and Meta established the AI Alliance. Rather than competing, these companies aim to collaborate, emphasizing their commitment to fostering transparent innovation and responsible development in artificial intelligence.

In a joint statement, IBM and Meta outlined the AI Alliance’s objectives, emphasizing a commitment to safety, collaboration, diversity, economic opportunity and universal benefits. The alliance, they noted, encompasses a collective annual research and development investment exceeding $80 billion.

While numerous members endorse open-source development, adherence to this model is not obligatory for membership. Over 50 tech companies, such as AMD, Dell Technologies, Red Hat, Sony Group, Hugging Face, Stability AI, Oracle and the Linux Foundation, have joined with IBM and Meta in the AI Alliance.

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ChatGPT tops Wikipedia’s most-viewed articles of 2023 list

ChatGPT reached 49.5 million views, surpassing and outperforming notable topics like “Deaths in 2023” and sports content.

ChatGPT from OpenAI became the most-viewed English article on Wikipedia in 2023, amassing an impressive 49.5 million page views and showcasing the increasing impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technology on the public’s interest.

The Wikimedia Foundation disclosed that, in 2023, English Wikipedia pages received more than 84 billion page views. ChatGPT outperformed topics like “Deaths in 2023” and sports content, such as the “2023 Cricket World Cup” and the “Indian Premier League.”

Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT rapidly grew its user base to exceed 100 million in its first year.

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Envision partners with HBAR and UN on new digitization platform for carbon markets

Envision Blockchain and the HBAR Foundation have teamed up with the UN to create a new suite of decentralized tech to streamline the complex carbon markets.

The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP28, saw several new initiatives aimed at innovating the fight against climate change and streamlining the complex carbon credit markets.

The dMRV system was developed in collaboration with the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub (GIH) and built on the HBAR blockchain.

The platform offers a suite of features, including artificial intelligence and guided search features for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) methodology library and other standard registries across the carbon market Industry.

The CDM methodology library consists of hundreds of rulesets required to create a carbon credit, independently developed in an analog process supporting the carbon market.

The further scaling of the library of digitized and open-source methodologies allows registries, project developers and other market stakeholders to use digital technologies to resolve trust and transparency issues.

Cointelegraph spoke with Wes Geisenberger, vice president of sustainability and ESG at HBAR Foundation, to understand the importance and workings of the new dMRV platform and how it could help digitize the complex carbon credit market.

Geisenberger told Cointelegraph that the UN GIH/UNFCCC secretariat’s staff were deeply involved in methodology development while supporting the “toughest challenges in climate negotiations.

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DeepMind exec: AI assesses climate issues, falls short of full solution

Google DeepMind climate action lead Sims Witherspoon suggested a strategy dubbed the “Understand, Optimize, Accelerate” framework, outlining three steps for tackling climate change with AI.

Amid efforts by climate scientists and advocates to address environmental challenges, Google DeepMind climate action lead Sims Witherspoon sees potential in artificial intelligence (AI), emphasizing the importance of framing the solution through thoughtful questioning.

At the Wired Impact Conference in London, Witherspoon said she sees climate change as a scientific and technological challenge, expressing optimism about addressing it through artificial intelligence. Earlier this year, Google merged its Brain and DeepMind AI teams under a single banner called Google DeepMind.

Witherspoon suggested a strategy dubbed the “Understand, Optimize, Accelerate” framework, outlining three steps for tackling climate change with AI, which involve engaging with those affected, assessing AI’s applicability, and deploying a solution for impactful change.

DeepMind climate action lead at the Wired Impact Conference in London. Source: YouTube

Examining the path to deployment, Witherspoon observed that certain options become less viable due to existing regulatory conditions, infrastructure constraints, or other limitations and dependencies, such as restricted data availability or suitable partners.

Witherspoon stressed the importance of a collaborative approach, highlighting that while individual expertise is valuable, cooperation is crucial and necessitates the combined contributions of academics, regulatory bodies, corporations, non-governmental organizations and impacted communities.

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Google DeepMind AI predicts 2 million novel chemical materials for real-world tech

A paper published in the science journal Nature says the AI developed by DeepMind underwent training using data sourced from the Materials Project, an international research consortium established at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2011.

Google DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) has predicted the structure of over two million novel chemical materials, marking a breakthrough in enhancing real-world technologies.

In a scientific paper released in Nature on Wednesday, Nov.

According to the paper, identifying and creating new materials is often expensive and time-intensive.

Ekin Dogus Cubuk, a research scientist at DeepMind, expressed optimism that advancements in experimentation, autonomous synthesis and machine learning models could substantially reduce the lengthy 10 to 20-year timeline for material discovery and synthesis.

The paper reveals that the AI developed by DeepMind underwent training using data from the Materials Project, an international research consortium established at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2011.

Related: 12 days of unemployment later, Sam Altman is officially back at OpenAI

The organization expressed its intention to distribute its data to the research community, aiming to expedite additional advancements in the field of material discovery.

After employing AI to forecast the stability of these novel materials, DeepMind has shifted its attention to predicting their synthesizability in laboratory conditions.

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Solana launches emissions dashboard to spur blockchain carbon footprint transparency

The Solana Foundation has launched a real-time carbon emissions tracker to monitor the Solana blockchain.

The Solana Foundation, in collaboration with data platform Trycarbonara, announced the launch of a real-time tracking dashboard to measure carbon emissions on the Solana blockchain. 

According to a blog post from the foundation, this represents the first “major smart-contract blockchain” to measure carbon emissions in real time. The organization hopes this will spur a trend toward carbon emission transparency in the blockchain ecosystem:

“The Solana Foundation hopes to set a new standard for measuring emissions in blockchain by publishing this data.”

The new dashboard can be found on the Solana Climate website. Trackers there currently display the total node count, megawatt-hours, total carbon emissions average and marginal use, alongside numerous other indicators.

Related: Bitcoin mining and increasing energy bills — Sen. Warren vs. Crypto Twitter

The new dashboard also contains several emissions comparison charts where users can view side-by-side conversions depicting Solana usage versus numerous other emission-producing activities.

Burning a gallon of gasoline, according to the chart, produces the equivalent of conducting 140,416.67 transactions on the Solana blockchain, whereas performing a Google search adds up to one and a quarter transactions.

The data used to power the Solana Foundation’s real-time carbon emissions dashboard is available open-source and is modeled on the estimated carbon footprint of the Dell PowerEdge R940.

Whether other blockchain outfits will adopt similar tracking systems remains to be seen, but this move from the Solana Foundation comes amid increasing global efforts to utilize blockchain technology to monitor carbon emissions around the world.

As part of its “Shaping Europe’s digital future” initiative, the European Commission, a politically independent arm of the European Union’s executive that operates in tandem with the European Council, has lauded blockchain’s ability to serve as a foundation for the accurate measurement of carbon emissions in any sector.

In an article on the EU’s digital strategy blog, the commission wrote, “Blockchain can be utilised through smart contracts to better calculate, track and report on the reduction of the carbon footprint across the entire value chain.”

Meanwhile, in the United States, President Joe Biden recently floated budget plans that would add an excise on electricity used for cryptocurrency mining in the amount of 30%.

Ukraine plans to adopt EU’s new cryptocurrency regulations

Immediately after passing the European Parliament, Ukrainian authorities announced plans to adopt the EU’s MiCA regulations on crypto assets.

Hot on the heels of the European Parliament passing the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, Ukrainian regulators have stated publicly that they will adopt the legislative package in their own country as well.

The deputy chairman of the Tax Committee of Ukraine, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, said on his Telegram channel on April 20, “We, along with colleagues from the NKCPFR [National Commission on Securities and the Stock Market] and other regulators, are already working on implementing some provisions of MiCA to make crypto assets legal in Ukraine.”

Yuriy Boyko, a member of the NKCPFR, said, “I am sure Ukraine will be one of the first countries to implement this regulation into national legislation.”

The introduction of MiCA marks a major advancement for the crypto industry within the European Union.

MiCA is the result of long efforts of European policymakers to introduce uniform regulations and create standardized rules for crypto assets across the EU, as crypto businesses are currently required to adhere to 27 distinct regulatory frameworks across EU member countries.

The implementation of MiCA is expected to enhance the competitiveness of startups in the EU, which could lead to a rise in their market share as compared to unregulated competitors.

Related: Ukraine’s central bank sees both promises and threats in Bitcoin

Despite the need for EU lawmakers to still conduct legal and linguistic checks for MiCA as well as publish the bill in the EU journal, different stakeholders in the crypto industry have reacted positively to the development.

Ukraine’s move to adopt EU regulations comes on the backdrop of the Eastern European country receiving candidate status to the EU in June 2022. Per the European Council, European regulators have “acknowledged the considerable efforts that Ukraine has demonstrated towards meeting the objectives underpinning its candidate status for EU membership.”

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