December 21, 2023 – Just over one year ago, most people in the technology and internet world would talk about passing the Turing test as if it were something far in the future.

This “test,” originally called the imitation game by computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950, is a hypothetical test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.

The year 2023 – and the explosive economic, technological, and societal force unleashed by OpenAI since the release of its ChatGPT on November 30, 2022 – make those days only 13 months ago seem quaint.

For example, users of large language models like ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s Llama and many others are daily interacting with machines as if they were simply very smart humans.

Yes, yes, informed users understand that Chatbots like these are simply using neural networks with very powerful predictive algorithms to come up with the probabilistic “next word” in a sequence begun by the questioner’s inquiry. And, yes, users understand the propensity of such machines to “hallucinate” information that isn’t quite accurate, or even accurate at all.

Which makes the Chatbots seem, well, a little bit more human.

Drama at OpenAI

At a Broadband Breakfast Live Online event on November 22, 2023, marking the one-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s public launch, our expert panelists focused on the regulatory uncertainty bequeathed by a much-accelerated form of artificial intelligence.

The event took place days after Sam Altman, CEO of the OpenAI, was fired – before rejoining the company on that Wednesday, with a new board of directors. The board members who forced Altman out (all replaced, except one) had clashed with him on the company’s safety efforts.

More than 700 OpenAI employees then signed a letter threatening to quit if the board did not agree to resign.

In the backdrop, in other words, there was a policy angle behind of corporate boardroom battles that was in itself a big tech stories of the year.

“This [was] accelerationism versus de-celerationism,” said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, during the event.

Washington and the FCC wake up to AI

And it’s not that Washington is closing its eyes to the potentially life-altering – literally – consequences of artificial intelligence.

In October, the Biden administration issued an executive order on AI safety includes measures aimed at both ensuring safety and spurring innovation, with directives for federal agencies to generate safety and AI identification standards as well as grants for researchers and small businesses looking to use the technology.

But it’s not clear which side legislators on Capitol Hill might take in the future.

One notable application of AI in telecom highlighted by FCC chief Jessica Rosenworcel is AI-driven spectrum sharing optimization. Rosenworcel said in a July hearing that AI-enabled radios could collaborate autonomously, enhancing spectrum use without a central authority, an advancement poised for implementation.

AI’s potential contribution to enhancing broadband mapping efforts was explored in a November House hearing. AI faced skepticism from experts who argued that in rural areas where data is scarce and of inferior quality, machine learning would struggle to identify potential inaccuracies. Initially, the FCC regarded AI as having strong potential for aiding in broadband mapping.

Also in November, the FCC voted to launch a formal inquiry on the potential impact of AI on robocalls and robotexts. The agency believes that illegal robocalls can be addressed through AI which can flag certain patterns that are deemed suspicious and analyze voice biometrics for synthesized voices.

But isn’t ChatGPT a form of artificial general intelligence?

As we’ve learned through an intensive focus on AI over the course of the year, somewhere still beyond passing the Turing test is the acclaimed concept of “artificial general intelligence.” That presumably means that it is a little bit smarter than ChatGPT-4.

Previously, OpenAI had defined AGI as “AI systems that are generally smarter than humans.” But apparently sometime recently, the company redefined this to mean “a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work.”

Some, including Rumman Chowdury, CEO of the tech accountability nonprofit Humane Intelligence, argue that framing AGI in economic terms, OpenAI recast its mission as building things to sell, a far cry from its original vision of using intelligent AI systems to benefit all.

AGI, as ChatGPT-4 told this reporter, “refers to a machine’s ability to understand, learn, and apply its intelligence to solve any problem, much like a human being. ChatGPT, while advanced, is limited to tasks within the scope of its training and programming. It excels in language-based tasks but does not possess the broad, adaptable intelligence that AGI implies.”

That sound like something that an AGI-capable machine would very much want the world to believe.

Additional reporting provided on this story by Reporter Jericho Casper.

See “The Twelve Days of Broadband” on Broadband Breakfast

November 22, 2023 – OpenAI announced in an X post early Wednesday morning that Sam Altman will be re-joining the company that built ChatGPT as CEO after he was fired on Friday. 

Altman confirmed his intention to rejoin OpenAI in an X post Wednesday morning, saying that he was looking forward to returning to OpenAI with support from the new board.

Former company president Greg Brockman also said Wednesday he will return to the AI company.

Altman and Brockman will join with a newly formed board, which includes former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor as the chair, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, who previously held a position on the OpenAI board.

Satya Nadella, the CEO of OpenAI backer Microsoft, echoed support for both Brockman and Altman rejoining OpenAI, adding that he is looking forward to continuing building a relationship with the OpenAI team in order to best deliver AI services to customers. 

OpenAI received backlash from several hundred employees who threatened to leave and join Microsoft under Altman and Brockman unless the current board of directors agreed to resign.  

Tech CEOs subpoenaed to attend hearing

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, announced Monday that tech giants Snap, Discord and X have been issued subpoenas for their appearance at the Senate Judiciary Committee on December 6 in relation to concerns over child sexual exploitation online. 

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, X CEO Linda Yaccarino and Discord CEO Jason Citron have been asked to address how or if they’ve worked to confront that issue. 

Durbin said in a press release that the committee “promised Big Tech that they’d have their chance to explain their failures to protect kids. Now’s that chance. Hearing from the CEOs of some of the world’s largest social media companies will help inform the Committee’s efforts to address the crisis of online child sexual exploitation.” 

Durbin noted in a press release that both X and Discord refused to initially accept subpoenas, which required the US Marshal Service to personally deliver those respective documents. 

The committee is looking to have Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testify as well but have not received confirmation regarding their attendance.  

Several bipartisan bills have been brought forth to address that kind of exploitation, including the Earn It Act, proposed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, and Graham, which holds them liable under child sexual abuse material laws. 

EFF urging FTC to sanction sellers of malware-containing devices

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights group, have asked the Federal Trade Commission in a letter on November 14 to sanction resellers like Amazon and AliExpress following allegations mobile devices and Android TV boxes purchased from their stores contain malware.

The letter explained that once the devices were turned on and connected to the internet,  they would begin “communicating with botnet command and control (C2) servers. From there, these devices connect to a vast click-fraud network which a report by HUMAN Security recently dubbed BADBOX.”

The EFF added that this malware is often operating unbeknownst to the consumer, and without advanced technical knowledge, there is nothing they can do to remedy it themselves.

“These devices put buyers at risk not only by the click-fraud they routinely take part in, but also the fact that they facilitate using the buyers’ internet connections as proxies for the malware manufacturers or those they sell access to,” explained the letter. 

EFF said that the devices containing malware included ones manufactured by Chinese companies AllWinner and RockChip, who have been reported on for sending out products with malware before by EFF.

November 20, 2023 – Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced in an X post Monday that former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will be joining Microsoft after being fired from the machine learning company. 

Over the course of the last four days, OpenAI has undergone several shifts in leadership, which includes OpenAI investor Microsoft acquiring OpenAI president and chairman Greg Brockman to lead an AI research team alongside Altman. 

Brockman, who had been concurrently relieved from his role as chairman of the OpenAI board, announced his resignation Friday via X, upon learning that the board had decided to fire Altman. 

OpenAI said in a blog post Friday that Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”

OpenAI then notified The Information Saturday that Emmett Shear, co-founder of streaming site Twitch, would serve as CEO after having CTO Mira Murati serve that role in the interim.  

Following Nadella’s announcement Monday morning, nearly 500 of the 700 OpenAI employees were signatories to a letter threatening to leave their roles to work under Altman and Brockman at Microsoft unless all of the current board members resign. 

As of Monday, OpenAI board member Ilya Sutskever posted a message of regret on X regarding the board decision to remove Altman and Brockman. The phrase “OpenAI is nothing without its people,” is now emerging from employee’s X accounts.  

FCC announces new national broadband map

The head of the Federal Communication Commission announced Friday the third iteration of its national broadband map, showing just over 7.2 million locations lack access to high-speed internet. 

That is less than the 8.3 million identified in May.   

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel noted that map data continue to fluctuate less between iterations, showing improvements in map accuracy. 

Previous iterations of the national broadband map had been criticized for not accurately depicting areas with and without service, with widespread concern that that would impact the allocation of Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding. 

The map outlines where adequate broadband service is and is not available throughout the nation and provides viewers with information on the providers who service those areas and the technology used to do so. 

Providers form spectrum advocacy coalition 

A group of telecom industry players including Verizon and T-Mobile announced Thursday the formation of the Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure to advocate for select use of the 4.9 GigaHertz (GHz) spectrum band. 

The coalition is in support of prioritizing state and local public safety agencies as main users of the 4.9 GHz band, while ensuring that non-public safety licensees operate on the band to avoid interference. 

“Public Safety agencies have vastly different needs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and they should decide what compatible non-public-safety use means within their jurisdictions,” read the coalition’s letter.  

In January of this year, the FCC adopted a report to manage the use of the 4.9 GHz band, while seeking comment on the role a band manager would play in facilitating license allocation between public safety and non-public safety entities. 

It had proposed two methods of operation for the band manager in which it would either lease access rights from public-safety entities and then sublease that to non-public safety entities, or to facilitate direct subleasing between public safety operators and external parties. 

In its letter to the FCC, the coalition announced support for the second of those methods stressing the fact that it will allow public safety license holders retain authority over who they sublease their spectrum to.