Power, Policy & Play: The Many Faces of AI Today

Hey there Ai5ers,

Apple’s novel approach to data privacy, NATO’s AI acquisition, and White House memos are reshaping AI’s role in society. Bonus: Stocks to watch—and a fun creative prompt to design your own action figure.

Happy reading!

Today's Ai5:

🧐 Apple has a complicated plan.
🪖 NATO acquires military AI
🤓 White House releases guidance on AI use
💰 2 Potentially Lucrative AI Stocks
🤨 When Will AI Be Smarter Than Humans?

Prompt of the Day 🎨

PROMPT (ChatGPT-4o) Create your own action figure: "Generate an image. Create a toy of the person in the photo. Let it be an action figure. Next to the figure, there should be the toy’s equipment, each in its individual blisters. 1) [i.e. book] 2) [i.e. backpack] 3) [i.e favorite personal item 4) [another personal item] 5) [another personal item]. The card holding the blister should be light blue. Also, on top of the box, write ['name'] and underneath it, [‘i.e. a phrase']. The figure and equipment must all be inside blisters. Visualize this in a realistic way." (You will need to attach a picture of yourself)

Apple has a complicated plan. 🧐

Apple says it’s found a way to make its AI models better without training on its users’ data or even copying it from their iPhones and Macs.

Apple devices will be able to determine which synthetic inputs are closest to real samples, which they will relay to the company by sending “only a signal indicating which of the variants is closest to the sampled data.” That way, according to Apple, it doesn’t access user data, and the data never leaves the device.

Full article by Emma Roth

NATO aquires military AI 🪖

Nato has acquired an artificial intelligence-powered military system from Palantir.

The choice comes amid rising anxiety among European members over a potential US withdrawal after Trump threatened to stop protecting the continent if capitals did not drastically increase defense spending. Nato is also racing to keep up with the development of rivals’ AI military capabilities such as China.

Full article by Henry Foy and Tim Bradshaw

White House releases guidance on AI 🤓

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released two memos directed to the heads of all executive branch departments and agencies establishing policies on federal AI use and purchase of AI in government.

The memos, which align with an Executive Order President Donald Trump signed in January, replace former President Joe Biden's previous guidance (M-24-10 and M-24-18) but maintain some of the same recommendations.

Full article by Jessica Hagen

2 Potentially Lucrative AI Stocks 💰

The stock market may seem like a difficult place right now, with indexes taking new directions from day to day and even from hour to hour. President Donald Trump's tariffs on imports have stoked concern about corporate profits moving forward and the health of the general economy.

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been the star of the AI show so far, and that's likely to continue thanks to this tech giant's focus on innovation. The company makes the highest-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), or chips, that exist today. As a result, customers are willing to wait their turn to get their hands on the latest versions.

You probably know Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) best thanks to the apps on your phone. Meta owns the world's most popular ones, from Facebook and Messenger to Instagram and WhatsApp. So, you may not imagine Meta as a major AI player. But this social media giant has jumped into the AI arena with billions of dollars in investment over the past few years and aims to make this technology a core part of its business.

Full article by Adria Cimino

When Will AI Be Smarter Than Humans? 🤨

If AGI(Artificial General Intelligence) now suddenly seems closer, it’s because the large-language models underlying ChatGPT and its ilk appear to be both more humanlike and more general-purpose.

But in an important sense, LLMs are still “narrow AI.” They can ace one job while being lousy at a seemingly adjacent one — a phenomenon known as the jagged frontier.

A core problem with the idea of AGI is that it’s based on a highly anthropocentric notion of what intelligence is.

More measured voices like Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Meta’s Yann LeCun see it being at least five to 10 years out.

Full article by Gideon Lichfield