The cross-border attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and Israel’s counterattack have resulted in a serious humanitarian crisis. The Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo is collaborating with the Middle Eastern news organization Al Jazeera and the American University of Beirut (AUB) to promote international collaborative research to re-present and disseminate the war damage in Gaza using advanced technology. As part of this effort, we will host an international symposium and special exhibition inviting prominent researchers, journalists, and experts from Japan and abroad to discuss the Gaza crisis from multiple perspectives …

Date & time: Monday, March 31, 2025, 1:00 PM – 8:00 PM JST
Location: Fukutake Hall, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies

Searching the internet with AI costs a lot more than normal searches.

What you need to know

• A new report claims ChatGPT costs an estimated $700,000 a day to run.
• Microsoft has recently been rumored to be developing its own AI chips.
• Microsoft’s own chip could reduce costs by a third or more.

AI is all the craze currently, with millions of users utilizing ChatGPT on a daily basis. With such high demand, it’s no surprise to hear that ChatGPT costs quite a bit of money to run. Chief Analyst at research firm SemiAnalysis, Dylan Patel, estimates that ChatGPT currently costs OpenAI $700,000 per day, or 36 cents per query.

That’s a lot of money, and it’s not helped by the fact that AI companies, including Microsoft, need to buy GPUs from the likes of NVIDIA in bulk orders to help maintain their AI services as demand continues to increase. Industry analysts estimate that OpenAI may need to order 30,000 additional NVIDIA GPUs this year to aid its commercial efforts.

Faced with new legislation, Iowa’s Mason City Community School District asked ChatGPT if certain books ‘contain a description or depiction of a sex act.’

Against a nationwide backdrop of book bans and censorship campaigns, Iowa educators are turning to ChatGPT to help decide which titles should be removed from their school library shelves in order to legally comply with recent Republican-backed state legislation, PopSci has learned.

According to an August 11 article in the Iowa state newspaper The Gazette, spotted by PEN America, the Mason City Community School District recently removed 19 books from its collection ahead of its quickly approaching 2023-24 academic year. The ban attempts to comply with a new law requiring Iowa school library catalogs to be both “age appropriate” and devoid of “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” Speaking with The Gazette last week, Mason City’s Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Bridgette Exman argued it was “simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements.”

Chatbots are increasingly being used by companies to interview and screen job applicants, often for blue collar jobs. But like other algorithmic hiring tools before them, experts and job applicants worry these tools could be biased.

In

early June, Amanda Claypool was looking for a job at a fast-food restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. But she faced an unexpected and annoying hurdle: glitchy chatbot recruiters.

A few examples: McDonald’s chatbot recruiter “Olivia” cleared Claypool for an in-person interview, but then failed to schedule it because of technical issues. A Wendy’s bot managed to schedule her for an in-person interview but it was for a job she couldn’t do. Then a Hardees chatbot sent her to interview with a store manager who was on leave — hardly a seamless recruiting strategy.

What could possibly go wrong with this Fujitsu tech?

A Japanese supermarket has started analyzing customers’ in-store behavior and feeding it to a generative AI to drive an avatar that makes real-time suggestions about stuff you might want to buy.

The Aruk Mitajiri supermarket, in the city of Hofu, started a trial of this arrangement yesterday, wielding tech from Fujitsu that uses video cameras to detect shoppers who linger at displays, compare multiple products, bend down towards a shop display, pick up a product, or respond to in-store content.

Observations of such behaviors are used to tune prompts for a generative AI manifested as a customized “Avatar concierge” that pumps out custom sales patter and/or content.

Fujitsu expects this process will result in customers returning to the shelves, confident of what they want to purchase and happy to splash the necessary wad of Yen.

The Japanese tech giant cooked this up in conjunction with a research group led by Naoto Onzo, director of the Institute of Marketing and Communication at Japan’s Waseda University …

After a six hour hearing, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to open the floodgate to autonomous vehicles. Public comment was sharply divided over the expansion of self-driving cars in San Francisco.

Waymo and Cruise were approved to operate their paid robotaxi services 24/7 in San Francisco after a contentious six-hour public hearing in which residents voiced their support and opposition to the vehicles. It’s a big win for autonomous vehicle operators, who have spent tens of billions on the technology with very little return.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 3-to-1 in favor of allowing the two companies to operate their vehicles at any hour of the day throughout the city of San Francisco while charging for rides.

“Today is the first of many steps in bringing AV transportation services to Californians,” CPUC Commissioner John Reynolds said at the end of the hearing. (Reynolds, a former general counsel at GM-backed Cruise, had recused himself from previous votes, but said “the passage of time” allowed him to vote on today’s resolution.)

A US judge has fined two lawyers and a law firm $5,000 (£3,935) after fake citations generated by ChatGPT were submitted in a court filing.

A district judge in Manhattan ordered Steven Schwartz, Peter LoDuca and their law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman to pay the fine after fictitious legal research was used in an aviation injury claim.

パナソニックコネクトの黄瀬輝係長と立命館大学の谷口忠大教授らは、大規模言語モデルと世界モデルを組み合わせてロボットを動かすシステムを開発した。米オープンＡＩの大規模言語モデル「ＧＰＴ―４」でコードを生成し動作させる。コードを経由することで技術者はプロセスを管理しやすくなる。シミュレーションで試験し概念実証（ＰｏＣ）を達成した。

　富士通は6月19日、みずほフィナンシャルグループのシステム開発・保守作業を改善する実証実験を始めたと発表した。生成AIを活用し、システム設計書の記載漏れや書き間違いを自動検出するという。2024年3月31日まで2社共同で実施する。

　設計書の記載漏れを防ぐだけでなく、修正した書類を基に、システムテストの仕様書をAIで自動生成する技術の開発も目指す。システムの開発・保守そのものをAIに任せることが可能かの検証も進めるという。

• OpenAI社が2022年11月に公開したChatGPTは、公開2か月で世界のユーザー数が1億人に達するほど急速に拡大している。Openai.comへのアクセス数を見ると、日本からのアクセス数は4月中旬に746万／日に達し、トラフィックシェアは、米国、インドに次いで3番目に多い。
• 野村総合研究所（NRI）は2023年4月15～16日にかけて、関東に住む15～69歳を対象にネットアンケート調査を行った。それによると、回答者の61.3%がChatGPTを認知し、12.1%が実際に利用したことがある。性別の利用率を見ると、男性17.7％、女性6.2％で男性の利用率が圧倒的に高く、特に男性10代～30代では利用率20%を超えている。
• 職業別では、大学生・大学院生・専門学生（21.6%）、教職員（20.5%）と教育関係者の利用率が最も高く、会社役員（17.2%）、会社員（16.7%）の利用率が次に高い。逆に医師・医療関係者の利用率は5.3%とかなり低かった。
• ChatGPT利用者の9割近くが継続して利用したいと回答している。利用者の一部は懸念を表明しているが、現時点では日本人の利用者の大半がChatGPTに対して肯定的な意見を表明している。

The preliminary legislation is one of the first to tackle the potential risks associated with AI technology.

The European Parliament voted on Wednesday to move forward with a draft law to govern how artificial intelligence is used in the European Union. It’s one of the first pieces of sweeping legislation focused on establishing guardrails to oversee the technology. 

　クボタは新たに開発した無人自動運転コンバインを千葉県柏市で報道陣向けに公開した。人が乗らずに自動で走行し、米や麦の収穫作業を担う。農作業の効率向上や負担軽減が見込めるとしており、2024年1月に発売する。同社は既に無人自動運転機能を搭載したトラクターと田植え機を展開しており、主要な農機3種類が出そろう。

　コンバインの新製品は、農機の前後に人工知能（AI）付きのカメラなどを搭載し、人や障害物を検知すると自動で停止する。人が乗って農地の最外周を一回りすると機械が作物の高さなどを学習し、2周目からは自動で収穫ルートを最適化するという。