The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis - What TIME's AI100 List Says About the State of AI

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

Breaking down TIME’s AI100 list, which highlights the most influential people shaping AI today. From tech giants like Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman to innovators in startups, AI safety leaders, and policy shapers. This episode explores the key players driving AI development and the critical questions surrounding ethics, politics, and society. Concerned about being spied on? Tired of censored responses? AI Daily Brief listeners receive a 20% discount on Venice Pro. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://venice.ai/nlw ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and enter the discount code NLWDAILYBRIEF. Learn how to use AI with the world's biggest library of fun and useful tutorials: https://besuper.ai/ Use code 'podcast' for 50% off your first month. The AI Daily Brief helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI. Subscribe to the podcast version of The AI Daily Brief wherever you listen: https://pod.link/1680633614 Subscribe to the newsletter: https://aidailybrief.beehiiv.com/ Join our Discord: https://bit.ly/aibreakdown

Today we're breaking down everything about the Time AI 100. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. To join the conversation followed the Discord link in our show notes. Hello, friends, quick note. Today's episode is not broken up as normal into a headlines and main section. It is just this main section all about the Time AI 100. Time has once again put out a list of the 100 most influential, important, significant, some criteria, at least people in AI. Now, it is technically the most influential list.

And in terms of how Time thinks about this list, they write that their goal is to put leaders who sometimes have different points of view into dialogue and open up their views to Times readers. The specific examples they gave are on the one hand Sundarpa Chai, the CEO of Google. And on the other hand, Meredith Whitaker, a former Googler herself, who is now a huge critic of the company as the president of Signal, who, quote, expressed his alarm at the dangers posed by the fact that so much of the AI revolution depends on the infrastructure and decisions of only a handful of big players in tech. Some of the themes they point out, quote, if the world of AI was dominated by the emergence of startup labs like OpenAI Anthropic and their competitors in 2023, this year,

as critics and champions alike have noted, we've seen the outsized influence of a small number of tech giants. Without them, upstart AI companies would not have the funding and computing power they need to propel their rapid acceleration. So what we're going to do is go section by section the way that they've broken things down and make note of what I think is most interesting about any of the particular selections therein. The first category they have is leaders, and many of these are basically definitionally filled out already. There is Sundarpe Chai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet. Sachi Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft. Sam Haltman, the CEO of OpenAI. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Invidia. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meadow. Demis Sassiz, the CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind.

But a number of the other conclusions are a little bit more interesting. Sasha Lucione is the AI and climate lead at Hugging Face, and her inclusion, I think, reflects both the significant. significance of open source in the space, but also the environmental considerations that are a growing part of the conversation, at least socially, about the AI revolution. If you wondered if the AI safety movement is going to make an appearance here, well, have no doubt. That question gets resolved right away with the inclusion of open philanthropy president Carrie Tuna. It is way beyond the scope of this particular episode to get in the ins and outs of open philanthropy, but it is undeniably at the epicenter of the AI safety movement.

Another theme that's clear from the leaders is the presence of China and the competition with China as a serious consideration in the development of AI. Wang Xiaoshuan, the founder of Bai uan, makes an appearance on the list. His company, which was founded just in April 20203, is now valued at $2.7 billion and represents one of the most credible Chinese LLM competitors. Liang Rubo, the CEO and co-founder of Bite Dance shows up, who are obviously making a huge investment in AI, as is Zhwang Rang Wen, the director of cyberspace administration in China itself. As time puts it, Schwang's decisions will help shape whether China can keep pace with its Western counterparts and realize its aspirations to become an AI powerhouse.

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today. The next category is the innovators, which you'll see, I think, reflects the challenge of neatly drawing these lines. It's nominally a little bit more for the start. startup, but it also has Lisa Sue, the CEO of AMD right there at the top. So which are the startups that get called out in here? Inference player Grock, which has become increasingly well known, has their CEO Jonathan Ross represented. Another company in the infrastructure space, Cerebris, has their CEO Andrew Feldman on the list. Brett Adcock, the CEO of robotic startup figure is there, as are leaders from Mistral 11 Labs, Synthesia, and the much beloved perplexity. There's also one regulator, Lena Kahn from the FTC. It's not exactly clear why she's

the Innovator section. One other interesting inclusion is Wallonius Hatcher, who, while you might not have heard of him, you've definitely heard his song BBL Drizzi. As time put it, this summer as Kendrick Lamar and Drake fired vicious disses back and forth, an unlikely third party ended up creating one of the defining songs at the high-profile rap feud. The next section is thinkers, and again, there are some who are fairly expected. Ray Kurzweil's there, Ilya Sutskiver, who's obviously made news with his safe superintelligence, and another ex-openinger leader, Andre Carpathie, who recently announced his Eureka Labs. Going back to the question of AI safety, former OpenAI board member, Helen Toner, who is one of the people most trying to push Sam Altman out, makes an appearance

on this list. As does Jan Liki, who used to lead superalignment at OpenAI and now leads alignment science at Anthropic. Anthropic, in fact, has a number of entrants on this list. Professor Ethan Malik, the author of the book Co-intelligence, and absolute MVP of the AI LRS episodes, makes an appearance, as does fellow podcaster Dwar Kesheh Patel. More than anything, I would say the subcurrent in the thinker section is the fact that there are seriously big questions that lurk just underneath the surface of AI and that feel as yet unresolved. The next section, shapers, is where most of the politicians and policy leaders reside. California state senator and SB 1047 proponent Scott Wiener is there. Elizabeth Kelly, the director of the United States

AI Safety Institute, which just signed a voluntary deal with OpenAI and Anthropic around advanced model testing. Reflecting the EU's AI Act, Tieri Britain is there. As well of some of the combatants who have been involved in legal battles around AI, like Meredith Stein, the president of the Writers Guild of America West. This is also the only section that has an appearance from Apple showing still how far comparatively behind that company is, although it might catch up soon. John Gianrea, the SVP of Machine Learning and AI strategy at Apple, is in this shaper's section, although if Apple intelligence goes well, we could see more entrance, I think, next year. It's also notable that there are only a couple of investors on this list overall,

including Vinod Kosla and Nat Friedman, who both appear in the Shaper section. I think if I had to sum up the theme of this year's Time 100 AI, it's big tech and big questions. We are clearly in a moment where big tech has an outsized influence on the shape of AI, and even the big startup labs are clearly the next most significant drivers. And of course, underlying all this are big questions, societally, ethically, politically, and otherwise. One thing that is extremely noticeably absent from this list is any sort of corporate or enterprise presence. Now, whether this reflects the fact that enterprise leaders don't really have a

big seat at the AI influence table right now, or whether it reflects simply a blind spot for time is something that I'll leave you to decide. Anyways, a really interesting list. I think the way to think about these is never as some sort of definitive statement and more as an interesting thought starter and conversation piece. That, however, is going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief. Appreciate you listening or watching as always. And until next time, peace.