Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic have agreed to open up their AI models to the U.K. government for research and safety purposes, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced at London Tech Week on Monday. From a report: The priority access will be granted in order "to help build better evaluations and help us better understand the opportunities and risks of these systems," Sunak said. The announcement came in a speech that championed the promise of AI to transform areas such as education and healthcare and heralded the U.K.'s potential as an "island of innovation."

"AI is surely one of the greatest opportunities before us," said Sunak. By combining AI models with the power of quantum, "the possibilities are extraordinary," he marvelled. "But we must and we will do it safely," he continued. "I know people are concerned."

The European Commission has approved 8.1 billion euros ($8.7 billion) of state aid for microelectronics and communication technology projects as part of the European Union's drive to be at the cutting edge of technological innovation. From a report: The EU executive said on Thursday that 14 member countries could provide the aid to 68 projects involving companies including Airbus, ASML and Ericsson. The projects have been collectively designated an Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI), qualifying them for easier EU state aid rules. They follow an earlier batch of IPCEI projects in the same sector approved in 2018.

The projects, which involve a total of 56 companies, include research and development into materials and tools, as well as chip design and manufacturing processes. They target 5G and 6G telecoms technology, along with autonomous driving, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. The first novel products could come to market as early as 2025, while the overall project is expected to be completed by 2032.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has no plans to go public any time soon, Chief Executive Sam Altman said at a conference in Abu Dhabi. "When we develop super intelligence, we are likely to make some decisions that most investors would look at very strangely," Altman said. "I don't want to be sued by ... public market, Wall Street etc, so no, not that interested," he said in response to a question on whether he will take OpenAI public.

OpenAI has so far raised $10 billion from Microsoft (MSFT.O) at a valuation of almost $30 billion as it invests more on building computing capacity. "We have a very strange structure. We have this cap to profit thing," he said. OpenAI started off as a non-profit organization but later created a hybrid "capped-profit" company, that allowed it to raise external funds with a promise that the original non-profit operation still benefits.

Altman is on a whirlwind tour across the world, meeting heads of states of several countries, and was in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday. He plans to travel next to Qatar, India and South Korea. While in Europe he got into controversy for saying OpenAI may leave the region if it becomes too hard to comply with planned laws on AI, inviting criticism from several lawmakers, including EU industry chief Thierry Breton. OpenAI later reversed the stance. "We did not threaten to leave the EU," Altman said on Tuesday. "We expect to be able to comply. There's still more clarity we are waiting for on the EU AI Act, but we are very excited to operate in Europe."

Companies deploying generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Bard with the potential to generate disinformation should label such content as part of their efforts to combat fake news, European Commission deputy head Vera Jourova said on Monday. From a report: Unveiled late last year, Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT has become the fastest-growing consumer application in history and set off a race among tech companies to bring generative AI products to market. Concerns however are mounting about potential abuse of the technology and the possibility that bad actors and even governments may use it to produce far more disinformation than before.

"Signatories who integrate generative AI into their services like Bingchat for Microsoft, Bard for Google should build in necessary safeguards that these services cannot be used by malicious actors to generate disinformation," Jourova told a press conference. "Signatories who have services with a potential to disseminate AI generated disinformation should in turn put in place technology to recognise such content and clearly label this to users," she said. Companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta Platforms that have signed up to the EU Code of Practice to tackle disinformation should report on safeguards put in place to tackle this in July, Jourova said.

Linux Foundation Europe "has announced the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) Project to help facilitate more performant, commercial-ready software for the RISC-V processor architecture," reports Phoronix.

"Among the companies joining the RISE Project on their governing board are Andes, Google, Intel, Imagination Technologies, Mediatek, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Red Hat, Rivos, Samsung, SiFive, T-Head, and Ventana."

It's top goal is "accelerate the development of open source software for RISC-V," according to the official RISE web site. The project's chair says it "brings together leaders with a shared sense of urgency to accelerate the RISC-V software ecosystem readiness in collaboration with RISC-V International." The CEO of RISC-V International, Calista Redmond, said "We are grateful to the thousands of engineers making upstream contributions and to the organizations coming together now to invest in tools and libraries in support of the RISC-V software ecosystem." RISE Project members will contribute financially and provide engineering talent to address specific software deliverables prioritized by the RISE Technical Steering Committee (TSC). RISE is dedicated to enabling a robust software ecosystem specifically for application processors that includes software development tools, virtualization support, language runtimes, Linux distribution integration, and system firmware, working upstream first with existing open source communities in accordance with open source best practices.

"The RISE Project is dedicated to enabling RISC-V in open source tools and libraries (e.g., LLVM, GCC, etc) to speed implementation and time-to-market," said Gabriele Columbro, General Manager of Linux Foundation Europe.
Google's director of engineering on Android said Google was "excited to partner with industry leaders to drive rapid maturity of the RISC-V software ecosystem in support of Android and more."

And the VP of system software at NVIDIA said "NVIDIA's accelerated computing platform — which includes GPUs, DPUs, chiplets, interconnects and software — will support the RISC-V open standard to help drive breakthroughs in data centers, and a wide range of industries, such as automotive, healthcare and robotics."

Microsoft has warned investors about a "non-public" draft decision by Irish regulators against LinkedIn for allegedly dodgy ad data practices, explaining it had set aside some cash to pay off any potential fine. From a report: How much? Oh, a mere $425 million. The software giant said the funds were connected to a 2018 investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) looking into whether LinkedIn's targeted advertising practices violated the the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). At the time of the complaint, the 2016 law had been recently implemented and the watchdog was just settling into its role as EU overlord of judging data practices of the tech giants. Microsoft denies it broke any GDPR rules and said it "intends to defend itself vigorously in this matter."

Biden administration officials are divided over how aggressively new artificial intelligence tools should be regulated -- and their differences are playing out this week in Sweden. From a report: Some White House and Commerce Department officials support the strong measures proposed by the European Union for AI products such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, people involved in the discussions said. Meanwhile, US national security officials and some in the State Department say aggressively regulating this nascent technology will put the nation at a competitive disadvantage, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn't public. This dissonance has left the US without a coherent response during this week's US-EU Trade and Technology Council gathering in Sweden to the EU's plan to subject generative AI to additional rules. The proposal would force developers of artificial intelligence tools to comply with a host of strong regulations, such as requiring them to document any copyrighted material used to train their products and more closely track how that information is used. National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said the Biden administration is working across the government to "advance a cohesive and comprehensive approach to AI-related risks and opportunities."

The European Commission has published its biannual list of foreign countries with problematic copyright policies. One of the highlighted issues is a lack of pirate site blocking, which is seen as an effective enforcement measure, writes TorrentFreak, a news website that tracks piracy news. Interestingly, the EU doesn't mention the United States, which is arguably the most significant country yet to implement an effective site-blocking regime.

The European Union and the United States are set to step up cooperation on artificial intelligence with a view to establishing minimum standards before legislation enters force, the EU's tech chief Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday. From a report: The European Union's AI Act could be the world's first comprehensive legislation governing the technology, with new rules on facial recognition and biometric surveillance, but EU governments and lawmakers still need to agree a common text. Vestager, a vice-president of the European Commission, told a briefing on Tuesday that process might be completed by the end of the year.

"That would still leave one if not two years then to come into effect, which means that we need something to bridge that period of time," she said. Vestager said AI would be one area of focus at the fourth ministerial-level meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) in Sweden on May 30-31, with discussions on generative AI algorithms that produce new text, visual or sound content, such as ChatGPT. "There is a shared sense of urgency. In order to make the most of this technology, guard rails are needed," she said. "Can we discuss what we can expect companies to do as a minimum before legislation kicks in?"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Agence France-Presse: The French government unveiled a plan on Monday to accelerate cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions, targeting a reduction of 50 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. Unveiled by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the roadmap includes detailed figures for reductions for individual sectors of the economy, ranging from the transport industry to households. The objectives -- from speeding up the transition to electric cars or switching freight from road to rivers -- are aimed at bringing France's ambitions for slashing carbon pollution into line with the EU's target for 2030.

France has so far cut its emissions by 25 percent compared with 1990 levels, requiring major fresh efforts if it is to hit the new 50-percent target. "We're asking for a bit from the smallest (polluters) and a lot from the biggest," an aide to Borne told reporters, meaning around half of efforts would be for companies, a quarter for households and a quarter for local administrations. "Among other developed countries, the United Kingdom has the most ambitious short-term goals of any major economy, with an objective of 2030 emissions being 68 percent below 1990 levels," notes AFP. "The United States has committed to cut greenhouse gases 50-52 percent by 2030 below 2005 levels, while Germany has set a 65 percent reduction target compared to 1990."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Spain has advocated banning encryption for hundreds of millions of people within the European Union, according to a leaked document obtained by WIRED that reveals strong support among EU member states for proposals to scan private messages for illegal content. The document, a European Council survey of member countries' views on encryption regulation, offered officials' behind-the-scenes opinions on how to craft a highly controversial law to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in Europe. The proposed law would require tech companies to scan their platforms, including users' private messages, to find illegal material. However, the proposal from Ylva Johansson, the EU commissioner in charge of home affairs, has drawn ire from cryptographers, technologists, and privacy advocates for its potential impact on end-to-end encryption.

For years, EU states have debated whether end-to-end encrypted communication platforms, such as WhatsApp and Signal, should be protected as a way for Europeans to exercise a fundamental right to privacy -- or weakened to keep criminals from being able to communicate outside the reach of law enforcement. Experts who reviewed the document at WIRED's request say it provides important insight into which EU countries plan to support a proposal that threatens to reshape encryption and the future of online privacy. Of the 20 EU countries represented in the document leaked to WIRED, the majority said they are in favor of some form of scanning of encrypted messages, with Spain's position emerging as the most extreme. "Ideally, in our view, it would be desirable to legislatively prevent EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption," Spanish representatives said in the document. The source of the document declined to comment and requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share it.

In its response, Spain said it is "imperative that we have access to the data" and suggests that it should be possible for encrypted communications to be decrypted. Spain's interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has been outspoken about what he considers the threat posted by encryption. When reached for comment about the leaked document, Daniel Campos de Diego, a spokesperson for Spain's Ministry of Interior, says the country's position on this matter is widely known and has been publicly disseminated on several occasions. Edging close to Spain, Poland advocated in the leaked document for mechanisms through which encryption could be lifted by court order and for parents to have the power to decrypt children's communications. Several other countries say they would give law enforcement access to people's encrypted messages and communications. "Cyprus, Hungary, and Spain very clearly see this law as their opportunity to get inside encryption to undermine encrypted communications, and that to me is huge," says Ella Jakubowska, a senior policy advisor at European Digital Rights (EDRI) who reviewed the document. "They are seeing this law is going far beyond what DG home is claiming that it's there for."

Facebook owner Meta was hit by a record $1.3 billion European Union privacy fine and given a deadline to stop shipping users' data to the US after regulators said it failed to protect personal information from the prying eyes of American security services. Bloomberg News: The social network giant's continued data transfers to the US didn't address "the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms" of people whose data was being transfered across the Atlantic, according to a decision by the Irish Data Protection Commission announced on Monday. On top of the fine, which eclipses a $806 million EU privacy penalty previously doled out to Amazon, Meta was given five months to "suspend any future transfer of personal data to the US" and six months to stop "the unlawful processing, including storage, in the US" of transferred personal EU data. A data-transfers ban for Meta was widely expected and once prompted the US firm to threaten a total withdrawal from the EU. But its impact has now been muted by the transition phase given in the decision and the prospect of a new EU-US data flows agreement that could already be operational by the middle of this year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: When the French government formed a new anti-piracy agency called Hadopi, the mission was to significantly disrupt BitTorrent and similar peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. Hadopi was a pioneer of the so-called "graduated response" scheme which consists of monitoring a file-sharer's internet activities and following up with a warning notice to deter their behavior. Any future incidents attract escalating responses including fines and internet disconnections. Between 2010 and 2020, Hadopi issued 12.7 million warning notices at a cost to French taxpayers of 82 million euros. The program's effect on overall piracy rates remains up for debate but according to French internet rights groups, Hadopi doesn't just take citizens' money. When it monitors citizens' internet activities, retains huge amounts of data, and then links identities to IP addresses to prevent behavior that isn't a "serious crime," Hadopi violates fundamental rights.

Despite its authorization under the new law, the official launch of the Hadopi agency in 2009 met with significant opposition. File-sharers had issues with the program for obvious reasons but for digital rights group La Quadrature du Net, massive internet surveillance to protect copying rights had arrived at the expense of citizens' fundamental right to privacy. La Quadrature's opposition to the Hadopi anti-piracy program focuses on the law crafted to support it. One of the implementing decrees authorizes the creation of files containing internet users' IP addresses plus personal identification data obtained from their internet service providers. According to the digital rights group's interpretation of EU law, that is unlawful.

With support from the Federation of Associative Internet Service Providers, French Data Network, and Franciliens.net, in 2019 La Quadrature filed an appeal before the Council of State (Conseil d'Etat), requesting a repeal of the decree that authorizes the processing of personal information. The Council of State referred the matter to the Constitutional Council and its subsequent decision gave La Quadrature the impression that Hadopi's position was untenable. For their part, Hadopi and the government reached the opposite conclusion. The Council of State heard La Quadrature's appeal and then referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for interpretation under EU law. In CJEU Advocate General Szpunar's non-binding opinion issued last October, friction between privacy rights and the ability to enforce copyrights were on full display. [...] Faced with an opinion that recognizes difficulties faced by rightsholders but runs up against case-law, AG Szpunar proposed "readjustment of the case-law of the Court." This would ensure that rightsholders retain the ability to enforce their rights, when an IP address is the only means by which an infringer can be identified (CJEU, pdf). The first court hearing occurred on Tuesday, and a further legal opinion is expected in late September 2023. The ruling from the CJEU is expected before the end of the year.

The UK government has announced an investment of up to $1.25 billion in the domestic semiconductor industry, but has been criticised for declining to join the spending race that has seen the US and EU announce significantly bigger programmes. From a report: Labour accused the government of lacking ambition in its announcement, while one UK startup said the 1bn pound figure was less than the cost of one basic semiconductor plant. The U's long-awaited national semiconductor strategy would focus on the country's existing strengths in the technology. Semiconductors, or microchips, are the "brains" of electronic devices, formed by wafers of silicon that are key to most forms of modern technology, from cars, smartphones and kitchen devices to power stations. Under the strategy, the planned decade-long investment would be targeted at areas such as design, research and development. "Semiconductors underpin the devices we use every day and will be crucial to advancing the technologies of tomorrow," said the prime minister, Rishi Sunak. "Our new strategy focuses our efforts on where our strengths lie, in areas like research and design, so we can build our competitive edge on the global stage."

Big tech companies accounting for more than 5% of a telecoms provider's peak average internet traffic should help fund the rollout of 5G and broadband across Europe, according to a draft proposal by the telecoms industry. From a report: The proposal is part of feedback to the European Commission which launched a consultation into the issue in February. The deadline for responses is Friday. Alphabet's Google, Apple, Facebook-owner Meta, Amazon, Netflix and TikTok would most likely be hit with fees, according to industry estimates. Google, Apple, Meta, Netflix, Amazon and Microsoft together account for more than half of data internet traffic.

The document, which was reviewed by Reuters and has not been published, was compiled by telecoms lobbying groups GSMA and ETNO. They represent 160 operators in Europe, including Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and Telecom Italia. Telecom operators have lobbied for years for leading technology companies to help foot the bill for 5G and broadband roll-out, saying that they create a huge part of the region's internet traffic. This is the first time they have tried to define a threshold for who should pay.

European Union states on Tuesday gave the final nod to the world's first comprehensive set of rules to regulate cryptoassets on Tuesday, piling pressure on countries such as Britain and the United States to play catch up. From a report: An EU finance minister meeting in Brussels approved rules that were thrashed out with the European Parliament, which gave its approval in April. The rules are expected to be rolled out from 2024. Regulating crypto has become more urgent for regulators after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. "Recent events have confirmed the urgent need for imposing rules which will better protect Europeans who have invested in these assets, and prevent the misuse of crypto industry for the purposes of money laundering and financing of terrorism," said Elisabeth Svantesson, finance minister for Sweden, which holds the EU presidency.

The rules require firms that want to issue, trade and safeguard cryptoassets, tokenised assets and stablecoins in the 27 country bloc to obtain a licence. Ministers took steps to combat tax evasion and the use of cryptoasset transfers for money laundering by making transactions easier to trace. They agreed on a requirement that from January 2026 service providers obtain the name of senders and beneficiaries in cryptoassets, regardless of the amount being transferred.

Microsoft's Azure cloud business has been targeted by the European Union's antitrust arm, amid concerns the US software firm is leveraging its market power to squeeze out rivals. From a report: As part of an informal probe, regulators are quizzing competitors and customers about how Microsoft may be abusing its access to business-sensitive information belonging to cloud firms it has commercial dealings with, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. EU antitrust enforcers want to know whether Microsoft then leverages such confidential information to compete with cloud-service providers on the market, said two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The EU's escalation follows on the heels of a series of complaints from cloud firms over Microsoft's behavior -- including CISPE, an industry group with links to Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services. The scrutiny of cloud competition coincides with Microsoft's efforts to convince regulators around the world to approve its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, publisher of blockbuster game Call of Duty. The European Commission, the EU watchdog, on Monday conditionally approved the tie-up, just weeks after the UK's competition authority vetoed it.

European regulators have approved Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, handing the technology giant a victory at a time when the deal is being challenged in other countries. From a report: While the merger could harm competition in some respects, particularly in the fast-growing market for cloud gaming services, concessions by Microsoft were enough to mitigate antitrust concerns stemming from the deal, the European Commission said in a statement. Among Microsoft's offers were a 10-year commitment letting European consumers play Activision titles on any cloud gaming service. Microsoft also committed that it would not downgrade the quality or content of its games made available on rival streaming platforms.

The European Union plans to force crypto companies to give tax authorities details of their clients' holdings, according to a draft bill released to CoinDesk under freedom of information laws. From a report: The data-sharing law, based on a model from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is set to be agreed by finance ministers next week, and will allow tax authorities to share data within the 27-nation bloc. Commission officials have said the bill received unanimous acclaim at a meeting on Wednesday, though people familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that some finance ministers have not yet received formal approval from parliaments.

The bill, dated May 5, closely matches proposals made by the European Commission in December 2022, as part of a bid to stop EU residents stashing crypto abroad to hide it from the taxman. The commission would have to set up a register of crypto asset operators' by December 2025, bringing forward a previous deadline by one year, and the rules will apply as of Jan. 1, 2026. Controversially, the law -- known as the eighth directive on administrative cooperation (DAC8) -- still includes platforms for trading non-fungible tokens that can be used for payment or investment, and providers from outside the bloc that have EU clients.

The EU is planning an undersea internet cable to improve connectivity to Georgia and reduce dependence on lines running through Russia, amid growing concerns about vulnerabilities to infrastructure transmitting global data. From a report: The $49mn cable will link EU member states to the Caucasus via international waters in the Black Sea, stretching a span of 1,100km. The project aims to reduce the region's "dependency on terrestrial fibre-optic connectivity transiting via Russia," the European Commission said in a policy document. The EU and Georgia jointly identified the need for the Black Sea internet cable in 2021 to improve Georgia's digital connectivity. However, the war in Ukraine has added impetus to the project, given the need to avoid relying on "connections that are not secure or stable," said a person with knowledge of the proposal.

Internet cables have come under scrutiny because of global concerns around espionage, as land-based lines and the stations where submarine cables come ashore are seen as vulnerable to interception by governments, hackers and thieves. Concerns around intentional sabotage of undersea cables and other maritime infrastructure have also grown since multiple explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September, which media reports recently linked to Russian vessels. Two cables off the coast of Norway were cut in 2021 and 2022, sparking concerns about malicious attacks.