Welcome to our This Week in AI roundup. Our goal with this roundup is to provide an overview of the week's most important news and industry developments.
This week we have stories about AI diagnosing dementia, OpenAI, Pony.ai, and more.
AI May Diagnose Dementia in a Day
Scientists are developing and testing an AI system that might diagnose dementia based on a single brain scan. The system may also be able to predict whether the disease will remain stable for a long time, deteriorate gradually, or require emergency care. This would be a major breakthrough as it currently can take several scans to diagnose the disease.
As Zoe Kourtzi, a professor at Cambridge University and a fellow of The Alan Turing Institute said:
If we intervene early, the treatments can kick in early and slow down the progression of the disease and at the same time avoid more damage.
OpenAI Launches Codex in Private Beta
OpenAI released Codex, the AI that translates natural language to code, to a private beta this week. The system is capable of writing code in more 10+ programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Perl, PHP, and others
OpenaAI Codex is a natural language processing model trained on billions of lines of public code and also powers Github Copilot, a service that gives developers suggestions for complete lines of code.
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Pony.ai Puts Plan to Go Public On Hold Amid China Crackdown
The self-driving startup Pony.ai has put its plan to go public in the US via a merger with a blank-cheque business at a US$12 billion valuation on hold after failing to secure guarantees from Beijing that it would not be targeted in a crackdown on Chinese technology companies, according to individuals familiar with the matter.
Pony.ai is now one of the most well-known companies to put its US listing plans on hold, after China's decision to prohibit Didi Global Inc from signing up new customers only days after its spectacular initial public offering (IPO) in June.
This was followed by crackdowns on other Chinese technology businesses on worries about the security of user data, leading to the cancellation of several companies' plans to list in the United States, including LinkDoc Technology and Hello Inc.
AMC Beats Q2 Earnings Estimates: Using AI to Analyze the Stock
AMC Entertainment (AMC) reported better than expected earnings after the close of Monday, with the stock trading up over 5% after hours. In this article, we look at a few highlights from the quarter and use AI to analyze the stock.
Kai-Fu Lee On Automation & the Workforce
Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of Sinovation Ventures and author of AI Superpowers says that companies may start inventing fakes tasks to assess employee fitness for senior roles as they continue to automate low-level jobs. As Lee says:
We may need to have a world in which people have ‘the pretense of working,’ but actually they’re being evaluated for upward mobility,
Higher-level work, which needs more in-depth and creativity, is more difficult to automate and must be done by humans. Companies, on the other hand, have little motivation to employ and develop young people if entry-level labor is entirely automated. As a result, Lee says companies will need to develop a new approach to hire entry-level staff and create a promotion route.
That's it for this edition of This Week in AI, if you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it you can sign up here.
