Each week we will share the latest artificial intelligence news and insights, curated for professionals, board members, and entrepreneurs, as we learn to navigate together the opportunities and threats arising from the evolution of AI and technology.
This week in AI
Welcome to AI Forum’s weekly report where we share AI news and insights, curated for students, practitioners, executives and entrepreneurs.
In this week’s report, we discuss Cognitive Liberty and the latest funding news.
During the last few videos we have explored the maturity of Generative AI, Emotion AI and the evolution of Emotional Contagion in the Digital era.
Last week we delved into the weirdness of AI including nuclear power stations made of cheese and how many Giraffes have been to the moon.
This week we continue to explore the impact of AI on society by covering the emerging threats to Cognitive Liberty.
Cognitive Liberty
Cognitive Liberty is the principle of a human controlling their own mental processing, thoughts and opinions, free from interference by the state or other actors. It is closely aligned to freedom of thought and is tangential to our earlier video on emotional contagion.
This topic was associated with state sponsored activity, historically through psychiatric intervention and the administration of drugs, to alter behaviour.
The treatment of this phenomenon has been the subject of many psychological horror movies including the adaptation of George Orwell’s book “1984” with his introduction to popular culture of the Thought Police.
Freedom of Thought is protected by Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, there is no equivalent right in international treaties on protecting HOW we think, free from control from external influences, particularly without our knowledge.
As AI goes increasingly mainstream, there is an urgent need to legislate and to protect against state and non-state actors accessing our thoughts and manipulating preferences and emotions.
As neuroscience technologies proliferate, new fields such as neuroethics and neuroprivacy are emerging to protect citizens from manipulation as AI technology grows more powerful and so obviously open to abuse as a High Risk AI application.
The Battle for your Brain by Professor Nita Farahany will be published on the 14th March 2023. This perfectly timed publication provides analysis and information in an era when our brains will not only be tracked but also potentially hacked.
From a promotional introduction to the book on Amazon,
“Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
Neuroscience has already made all of this possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the “universal controller” for all of our interactions with technology. This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can seriously threaten our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination.”
AI Funding News
In this week’s funding news, in the absence of any mega deals and with aggregate volume markedly down, the following transactions were notable.
SESAMm , based in Paris, France, utilises Natural Language Processing to provide insight into millions of companies in minutes, and is available in one hundred languages.
The firm raised thirty five million Euros in a Series B(2) financing round. From their press release,
“In a context where it is increasingly critical for decision makers to feed their assessments with deeper data points, we found SESAMm’s product very relevant to help identify, filter out, weigh, and report key data insights on companies ranging from small private firms to larger corporations. We have found deep common ground with the team and are very proud to support SESAMm in its journey onward,” said Thibaut Schlaeppi, Managing Director at Opera Tech Ventures.”
Quantifind, based in Menlo Park, California, USA raised twenty three Million US Dollars in a Venture Round led by DNS Capital.
The firm deploys AI-powered financial crimes risk management solutions with the latest funding being deployed to build on successful sales in 2022.
From their Press Release,
Sigtuple combine robotics and AI for healthcare and diagnosis. Based in Bangalore, Karnataka, India increased their Series C funding to total Twenty Three million US dollars, with follow-on investment from Accel Partners and Endiya Partners.
From their LinkedIn Page announcing the deal,
“This is a huge acknowledgment of the work that the SigTuple team has been doing in the past 3 years, both in terms of product development and business growth.
We continue to focus on bringing in AI powered medical diagnosis solutions which will make diagnostics better, faster and more affordable!”
That’s all for this week. If you want to publish your news and Press Releases, email our news desk by Close of Business Thursday each week on newsdesk@ai-forum.com and to stay informed, visit our website ai-forum.com and click to subscribe.
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