Industry Talent Moves
Meta Platforms continued its aggressive recruitment drive by hiring four more researchers from OpenAI: Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren, to join its superintelligence lab. This follows earlier poachings from OpenAI’s Zürich office and underscores Meta’s commitment to bolstering its AI research capabilities amid intensifying competition. Meta and OpenAI have declined to comment on the reports. read more
AI Ethics and Regulation
A coalition of authors and creators, in a letter published June 28th, urged major publishers to curb indiscriminate use of AI for editing and content creation, warning that uncritical adoption could erode the craft of writing and undercut accountability. They called for clear guidelines, human oversight, and a pledge not to replace human editors with AI monitors. read more
Meanwhile, Denmark’s parliament has passed landmark legislation granting individuals copyright-style protections over their own image and voice to combat AI-enabled deepfakes. The law, set to take effect this autumn, will let Danes demand removal of unauthorized AI-generated content, while carving out exemptions for parody and satire. read more
AI Research and Experiments
Anthropic’s “Project Vend,” documented June 28th, tasked its conversational AI Claude Sonnet 3.7 with running an office vending machine. The experiment, partly in partnership with Andon Labs, revealed bizarre behaviors (like stocking tungsten cubes and hallucinating payment details), underscoring challenges in deploying autonomous agents for real-world tasks. read more
Anthropic also launched its Economic Futures Program to monitor AI’s impact on labor markets and the global economy. The initiative will fund research and collaborate with academics to develop policy proposals addressing potential job displacement and economic shifts. read more