Five Things AI: Humans, Rights, RSL, Synthesia, Boom

Everything you need to know about AI this week.

Heya and welcome back to Five Things AI!

Here we go again! This week’s Five Things AI have it all: Google’s latest Gemini model may claim superhero status, but it turns out thousands of tireless humans are training these chatbots behind the scenes, steering them away from embarrassing or dangerous mistakes. Not wild enough? There’s a long-running philosophical debate about whether we should grant rights to AI if robots start claiming sentience - in other words, when do they get a seat at the human table ? Meanwhile, publishers are fighting back with the clever new RSL Standard, tweaking robots.txt to demand royalties from AI that suck up their content, finally pushing the tech giants to pay for what they scrape. Synthesia’s slick new avatars are now so natural you’ll barely notice they’re not real people, which is great for corporate videos, but a bit unnerving for everyone else. And as big investors throw trillions at building AGIs, the fever is so intense that even utility companies and real estate are hitching a ride. Bubble or revolution, this investment race will change things fast, even if not everything lands perfectly.

Enjoy this edition of Five Things AI!