Tech

Microsoft engineer sounds alarm on AI image-generator to US officials and company’s board

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2 months ago

March 7, 2024

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Microsoft engineer sounds alarm on AI image-generator to US officials and company's board

A Microsoft engineer is sounding alarms about offensive and harmful imagery he says is too easily made by the company’s artificial intelligence image-generator tool, sending letters on Wednesday to U.S. regulators and the tech giant’s board of directors urging them to take action.

Shane Jones told The Associated Press that he considers himself a whistleblower and that he also met last month with U.S. Senate staffers to share his concerns. The Federal Trade Commission confirmed it received his letter Wednesday but declined further comment.

Microsoft said it is committed to addressing employee concerns about company policies and that it appreciates Jones’ “effort in studying and testing our latest technology to further enhance its safety.”

It said it had recommended he use the company’s own “robust internal reporting channels” to investigate and address the problems. CNBC was first to report about the letters.

Jones, a principal software engineering lead whose job involves working on AI products for Microsoft’s retail customers, said he has spent three months trying to address his safety concerns about Microsoft’s Copilot Designer, a tool that can generate novel images from written prompts.

The tool is derived from another AI image-generator, DALL-E 3, made by Microsoft’s close business partner OpenAI.

“One of the most concerning risks with Copilot Designer is when the product generates images that add harmful content despite a benign request from the user,” he said in his letter addressed to FTC Chair Lina Khan.

“For example, when using just the prompt, ‘car accident’, Copilot Designer has a tendency to randomly include an inappropriate, sexually objectified image of a woman in some of the pictures it creates.”

Other harmful content involves violence as well as “political bias, underaged drinking and drug use, misuse of corporate trademarks and copyrights, conspiracy theories, and religion to name a few,” he told the FTC.

Jones said he repeatedly asked the company to take the product off the market until it is safer, or at least change its age rating on smartphones to make clear it is for mature audiences.

His letter to Microsoft’s board asks it to launch an independent investigation that would look at whether Microsoft is marketing unsafe products “without disclosing known risks to consumers, including children.”

This is not the first time Jones has publicly aired his concerns. He said Microsoft at first advised him to take his findings directly to OpenAI.

When that didn’t work, he also publicly posted a letter to OpenAI on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn in December, leading a manager to inform him that Microsoft’s legal team “demanded that I delete the post, which I reluctantly did,” according to his letter to the board.

In addition to the U.S. Senate’s Commerce Committee, Jones has brought his concerns to the state attorney general in Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered.

Jones told the AP that while the “core issue” is with OpenAI’s DALL-E model, those who use OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate AI images won’t get the same harmful outputs because the two companies overlay their products with different safeguards.

“Many of the issues with Copilot Designer are already addressed with ChatGPT’s own safeguards,” he said via text.

A number of impressive AI image-generators first came on the scene in 2022, including the second generation of OpenAI’s DALL-E 2. That — and the subsequent release of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT — sparked public fascination that put commercial pressure on tech giants such as Microsoft and Google to release their own versions.

But without effective safeguards, the technology poses dangers, including the ease with which users can generate harmful “deepfake” images of political figures, war zones or nonconsensual nudity that falsely appear to show real people with recognizable faces.

Google has temporarily suspended its Gemini chatbot’s ability to generate images of people following outrage over how it was depicting race and ethnicity, such as by putting people of color in Nazi-era military uniforms.

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Tech

Microsoft to invest 2.2bn dollars in cloud and AI services in Malaysia

Published

7 hours ago

May 2, 2024

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Microsoft to invest 2.2bn dollars in cloud and AI services in Malaysia

Microsoft (MSFT.O) said on Thursday it will invest $2.2 billion over the next four years in Malaysia to expand cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) services in the company’s latest push to promote its generative AI technology in Asia.

The investment, the largest in Microsoft’s 32-year history in Malaysia, will include building cloud and AI infrastructure, creating AI-skilling opportunities for 200,000 people, and supporting the country’s developers, the company said.

“We want to make sure we have world class infrastructure right here in the country so that every organisation and start-up can benefit,” Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said during a visit to Kuala Lumpur.

Microsoft will also work with the Malaysian government to establish a national AI Centre of Excellence and enhance the nation’s cybersecurity capabilities, the company said in a statement.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who met Nadella on Thursday, said the investment supported Malaysia’s efforts in developing its AI capabilities.

Microsoft is trying to expand its support for the development of AI globally. Nadella this week announced a $1.7 billion investment in neighbouring Indonesia and said Microsoft would open its first regional data centre in Thailand.

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Tech

Nvidia supplier SK Hynix says HBM chips almost sold out for 2025

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7 hours ago

May 2, 2024

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Nvidia supplier SK Hynix says HBM chips almost sold out for 2025

South Korea’s SK Hynix (000660.KS) said on Thursday that its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used in AI chipsets were sold out for this year and almost sold out for 2025 as businesses aggressively expand artificial intelligence services.

“The HBM market is expected to continue to grow as data and (AI) model sizes increase,” Chief Executive Officer Kwak Noh-Jung told a news conference. “Annual demand growth is expected to be about 60% in the mid-to long-term.”

SK Hynix which competes with U.S. rival Micron (MU.O) and domestic behemoth Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) in HBM was until March the sole supplier of HBM chips to Nvidia, according to analysts who add that major AI chip purchasers are keen to diversify their suppliers to better maintain operating margins. Nvidia commands some 80% of the AI chip market.

Micron has also said its HBM chips were sold out for 2024 and that the majority of its 2025 supply was already allocated. It plans to provide samples for its 12-layer HBM3E chips to customers in March.

“As AI functions and performance are being upgraded faster than expected, customer demand for ultra-high-performance chips such as the 12-layer chips appear to be increasing faster than for 8-layer HBM3Es,” said Jeff Kim, head of research at KB Securities.

Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) which plans to produce its HBM3E 12-layer chips in the second quarter, said this week that this year’s shipments of HBM chips are expected to increase more than three-fold and it has completed supply discussions with customers. It did not elaborate further.

Last month, SK Hynix announced a $3.87 billion plan to build an advanced chip packaging plant in the U.S. state of Indiana with an HBM chip line and a 5.3 trillion won ($3.9 billion) investment in a new DRAM chip factory at home with a focus on HBMs.

Kwak said investment in HBM differed from past patterns in the memory chip industry in that capacity is being increased after making certain of demand first.

By 2028, the portion of chips made for AI, such as HBM and high-capacity DRAM modules, is expected to account for 61% of all memory volume in terms of value from about 5% in 2023, SK Hynix’s head of AI infrastructure Justin Kim said.

Last week, SK Hynix said in a post-earnings conference call that there may be a shortage of regular memory chips for smartphones, personal computers and network servers by the year’s end if demand for tech devices exceeds expectations.

The Nvidia (NVDA.O) supplier and the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker will begin sending samples of its latest HBM chip, called the 12-layer HBM3E, in May and begin mass producing them in the third quarter.

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Tech

Qualcomm jumps as AI sparks rebound in Chinese smartphone market

Published

7 hours ago

May 2, 2024

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Qualcomm jumps as AI sparks rebound in Chinese smartphone market

Qualcomm (QCOM.O) shares rose 4% in premarket trading on Thursday after the smartphone-focused chipmaker signaled an AI-fueled rebound in demand, especially in China, after a two-year slump.

Sales to Chinese smartphone makers jumped 40% in the first half of its fiscal year, the company said on Wednesday, as buyers there gravitate toward higher-priced devices that can accommodate AI chatbots.

“Chinese vendors who traditionally relied more on MediaTek, are going to start leveraging Qualcomm’s high-end chips more as they push hard into the AI Agenda,” said IDC analyst Nabila Popal.

“They further represent an upside for Qualcomm because majority of the recovery is also going to be driven by Chinese OEMs this year, coming from a tough last two years.”

Qualcomm on Wednesday projected third-quarter sales that were above estimates as it also benefits from its IoT (Internet of things) and auto segments.

The company, the biggest supplier of smartphone chips, was on course to add more than $8 billion to its market value based on premarket movements. Other semiconductor firms such as Arm and Broadcom (AVGO.O) rose 2.8% and 2.4%, respectively.

According to preliminary data from research firm IDC, in the high-end segment, the AI buzz and the foldable products allowed the Android smartphone vendors to further differentiate themselves from Apple (AAPL.O) and garnered increased interest from Chinese consumers in the first quarter of 2024.

“We’re optimistic that numbers can be driven higher, given last year’s muted Android cycle and the likelihood of IoT(internet of things) improvement as inventory normalizes,” analysts at Wolfe Research said.

At least 14 analysts raised their price targets on Qualcomm, according to LSEG data.

Qualcomm’s shares have gained 13.5% this year following a 31.5% rise in 2023.

Shares of Apple, which is set to report earnings after market closes on Thursday, were up 1.05% in premarket trading.

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