Author: IBL News

IBL News | Cambridge, Massachusetts

The MIT and Harvard non-profit organization — Center for Reimagining Learning (or “tCRIL”) — that handles the Open edX platform named its first CEO: Stephanie Khurana [in the picture]. She assumed her role on April 3.

In parallel, this organization which started by the two universities with the $800 million of proceed from the sale of edX Inc to 2U, changed its name into Axim Collaborative.

Axim Collaborative’s mission is to make learning more accessible, more relevant, and more effective.

The name Axim (a hybrid of the two ideas) was selected to underscore the centrality of access and impact,

Khurana brings two decades of experience in social venture philanthropy and in technology innovation space. Most recently she served as managing partner and chief operating officer of Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a global venture philanthropy that identifies and supports innovative social ventures tackling complex societal problems.

Earlier in her career, Khurana was on the founding teams of two technology start-ups: Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP) and Surebridge, both of which went on to be sold.

Khurana also served in numerous roles at Harvard University, working on initiatives to support academic progress and build communities of belonging with undergraduates.

Stephanie Khurana introduced herself to the Open edX community members in a town hall style which took place last Friday, March 31st, at the end of the annual developers conference.

The gathering, celebrated at MIT’s Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last week, attracted over 250 attendants, a similar number to past editions.

One of the stories of the event was the acquisition of French-based company Overhang.IO, creator of the distribution tool Tutor. Pakistani American Edly purchased it for an undisclosed amount.

Régis Behmo, the Founder and only developer in of Overhang, assumed the role of VP of Engineering at Edly.

“Edly understands how contributing to open source creates value both for the company and for the whole edTech community. This partnership will help us drive this movement forward to serve learners and educators worldwide,” Behmo said.

“Régis’s experience and leadership will be invaluable as we increase our impact on educational technology. In coming weeks and months, we’ll be making further announcements around our expanded roadmap for open source contributions to Open edX,” said Yasser Bashir, the founder and CEO of Arbisoft LLC, that operates with Edly its edTech brand.
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IBL News | New York

Italy’s data protection authority said on Friday it will immediately block and investigate OpenAI from processing data of Italian users. The order is temporary until the company respects the European Union’s landmark privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Italy’s ban to ChatGPT come amid calls to block OpenAI’s releases over a range of risks for privacy, cybersecurity and disinformation on both Europe and the U.S.

The Italian authority said reminded that ChatGPT also suffered a data breach and exposed users conversations and payment information last week.

Moreover, ChatGPT has been shown producing completely false information about named individuals, apparently making up details its training data lacks.

Consumer advocacy groups are saying that OpenAI is getting a “mass collection and storage of personal data to train the algorithms of ChatGPT” and is “processing data inaccurately.”

This week, Elon Musk and dozens of AI experts this week called for a six-month pause on training systems more powerful than GPT-4. 

Over 1,100 signatories — including Steve Wozniak, Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology, some engineers from Meta and Google, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque — signed an open letter, that was posted online, calling on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

• “Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

• “AI labs have been locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.”

• “The pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If it cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.”

• “AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts.”

• “This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.”

No one from OpenAI nor anyone from Anthropic signed this letter.

Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke with the WSJ, saying OpenAI has not started training GPT-5.

• Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter:

AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs. As stated in the widely-endorsed Asilomar AI Principles, Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.

Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system’s potential effects. OpenAI’s recent statement regarding artificial general intelligence, states that “At some point, it may be important to get independent review before starting to train future systems, and for the most advanced efforts to agree to limit the rate of growth of compute used for creating new models.” We agree. That point is now.

Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.

AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts. These protocols should ensure that systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt. This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.

AI research and development should be refocused on making today’s powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal.

In parallel, AI developers must work with policymakers to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems. These should at a minimum include: new and capable regulatory authorities dedicated to AI; oversight and tracking of highly capable AI systems and large pools of computational capability; provenance and watermarking systems to help distinguish real from synthetic and to track model leaks; a robust auditing and certification ecosystem; liability for AI-caused harm; robust public funding for technical AI safety research; and well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause.

Humanity can enjoy a flourishing future with AI. Having succeeded in creating powerful AI systems, we can now enjoy an “AI summer” in which we reap the rewards, engineer these systems for the clear benefit of all, and give society a chance to adapt. Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society. We can do so here. Let’s enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall.