Richard Branson and Oppenheimer’s grandson urge action to stop AI and climate ‘catastrophe’
Richard Branson believes the environmental costs of space travel will “come down even further.”
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
Dozens of high-profile figures in business and politics are calling on world leaders to address the existential risks of artificial intelligence and the climate crisis.
Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, along with former United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, and Charles Oppenheimer — the grandson of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer — signed an open letter urging action against the escalating dangers of the climate crisis, pandemics, nuclear weapons, and ungoverned AI.
The message asks world leaders to embrace long-view strategy and a “determination to resolve intractable problems, not just manage them, the wisdom to make decisions based on scientific evidence and reason, and the humility to listen to all those affected.”
Signatories called for urgent multilateral action, including through financing the transition away from fossil fuels, signing an equitable pandemic treaty, restarting nuclear arms talks, and building global governance needed to make AI a force for good.
The letter was released on Thursday by The Elders, a nongovernmental organization that was launched by former South African President Nelson Mandela and Branson to address global human rights issues and advocate for world peace.
The message is also backed by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization set up by MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, which aims to steer transformative technology like AI towards benefiting life and away from large-scale risks.
Tegmark said that The Elders and his organization wanted to convey that, while not in and of itself “evil,” the technology remains a “tool” that could lead to some dire consequences, if it is left to advance rapidly in the hands of the wrong people.
“The old strategy for steering toward good uses [when it comes to new technology] has always been learning from mistakes,” Tegmark told CNBC in an interview. “We invented fire, then later we invented the fire extinguisher. We invented the car, then we learned from our mistakes and invented the seatbelt and the traffic lights and speed limits.”
‘Safety engineering’
“But when the thing already crosses the threshold and power, that learning from mistakes strategy becomes … well, the mistakes would be awful,” Tegmark added.
“As a nerd myself, I think of it as safety engineering. We send people to the moon, we very carefully thought through all the things that could go wrong when you put people in explosive fuel tanks and send them somewhere where no one can help them. And that’s why it ultimately went well.”
He went on to say, “That wasn’t ‘doomerism.’ That was safety engineering. And we need this kind of safety engineering for our future also, with nuclear weapons, with synthetic biology, with ever more powerful AI.”
The letter was issued ahead of the Munich Security Conference, where government officials, military leaders and diplomats will discuss international security amid escalating global armed conflicts, including the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars. Tegmark will be attending the event to advocate the message of the letter.
The Future of Life Institute last year also released an open letter backed by leading figures including Tesla boss Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, which called on AI labs like OpenAI to pause work on training AI models that are more powerful than GPT-4 — currently the most advanced AI model from Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
The technologists called for such a pause in AI development to avoid a “loss of control” of civilization, which might result in a mass wipe-out of jobs and an outsmarting of humans by computers.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella watches from the audience during a press briefing at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, on May 20, 2024.
Jason Redmond | Afp | Getty Images
Microsoft is previewing a new PC that’s designed to connect corporate workers to their programs and files in the cloud.
The Windows 365 Cloud Link is available in limited use in the U.S., Canada and a handful of other countries. It will be for sale in a few markets at $349 in April.
After years spent failing to crack the list of top PC manufacturers with its Surface product line, Microsoft is trying something new in an established category of hardware. In the second quarter, Microsoft said its $1.2 billion in devices revenue was down about 11%, while total PC shipments increased about 2%, according to one estimate.
Early testers have used the devices in call centers and for hot-desking, the practice of temporarily placing workers in available work areas rather than having them stick to the same assigned spots, Jalleen Ringer, product leader for Windows cloud endpoints, told CNBC in an interview.
The device is meant to be simple and secure. It runs a stripped-down operating system called Windows CPC, with no local applications or local users, and has a strict application control policy that can’t be disabled. It automatically downloads updates in the background and installs them at night.
Microsoft’s Windows 365 Link supports dual 4K monitors.
Microsoft
An Intel chip runs inside the computer, which comes with 8GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Weighing less than a pound, the puck-like package can be kept on a desk or even mounted behind a PC monitor.
The release comes three years after Microsoft introduced Windows 365, which gives employees access to their custom virtual desktops on any device. Desktop virtualization, including an earlier Microsoft product called Azure Virtual Desktop, took off after the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020, with workers stuck at home.
In July 2023, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 together generated $1 billion in revenue for the first time in the 2024 fiscal year.
Dell and HP both sell thin client PCs that connect to virtual desktop infrastructure. Organizations can configure them with Windows or proprietary operating systems.
The Windows 365 Cloud Link is a “nice alternative” to thin clients, said Melissa Grant, a senior director of product marketing at Microsoft.
WATCH: ‘In many ways China is close to or is even catching up,’ Microsoft’s Brad Smith says
Technology
European tech funding declines for third consecutive year — but the sector is finally stabilizing
On Monday, British tech lobby group Startup Coalition warned in a blog post that there was a risk Reeves’ tax plans could result in a tech “brain drain.”. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
Oli Scarff | Getty Images
Venture capital investment in European technology startups is projected to decline for a third straight year, according to VC firm Atomico — but there are signs that things are finally stabilizing as valuations improve and interest rates fall.
Europe’s venture-backed startups are expected to secure $45 billion of investment by the end of 2024 — slightly lower than the $47 billion they raised last year, Atomico said Tuesday in its “State of European Tech” report.
Still, Atomico said this shows that European tech funding levels have finally “stabilized” despite worsening global macroeconomic conditions leading to three consecutive years of declines.
The firm stressed that the continent’s tech ecosystem is in a much better place than it was a decade ago, with funding this year still set to eclipse the $43 billion startups raised between 2005 and 2014.
In the period spanning 2015 to 2024, European startups have bagged $426 billion, dwarfing the sum of investment deployed into tech firms the decade prior.
Tom Wehmeier, head of insights at Atomico, told CNBC that Europe still has a few key areas of improvement to address before it can produce companies of similar scale to the largest tech firms in the U.S. and China.
“There’s frustrations about the continued challenges faced when it comes to regulation, bureaucracy, access to capital and this idea of scaling across the fragmented European marketplace,” Wehmeier said in an interview.
For example, pension funds in Europe face barriers to investing in venture capital funds and therefore aren’t gaining much exposure to the continent’s fast-growing startup ecosystem, Wehmeier said.
European pension funds allocate just 0.01% of the $9 trillion worth of assets they manage into venture capital funds based in the continent, according to Atomico’s report.
The 2024 publication marks the 10th anniversary since Atomico began compiling its annual report, which is produced in partnership with data firm Dealroom.
Europe’s first $1 trillion tech firm?
According to Atomico there are signs that the sector is improving. In the U.K., for example, Finance Minister Rachel Reeves last week laid out plans to consolidate 86 separate local government pension pots into eight “megafunds” to boost investment in domestic assets.
British tech advocacy group techUK said the reforms “should address barriers to greater availability of pension fund capital and encourage a vision that sees more investment into UK tech science start-ups and scale-ups.”
Reforms to pension schemes are either underway or being discussed in several other countries across Europe.
“These changes could result in billions more being made available to European scale-ups — and that’s something that could be the difference between the best and brightest companies scaling from here in Europe, versus being forced to relocate,” Wehmeier told CNBC.
Atomico said it’s optimistic about the next decade in European tech. The VC firm, which was established by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, is predicting the entire European tech ecosystem combined could be valued at $8 trillion by 2034, up from around $3 trillion currently.
Atomico also predicts that Europe will mint its first-ever trillion-dollar tech company in a decade’s time.
While Europe is home to several so-called “decacorns” valued at $10 billion and above, including Arm, Adyen, Spotify and Revolut, it has so far failed to produce a company valued at $1 trillion.
That’s unlike the United States, where several of the so-called “Magnificent Seven” technology companies are now worth over $1 trillion. They include Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook-owner Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
“If we can unlock capital at scale, keep the brightest minds in Europe, maintain that focus on solving really hard problems for society and the economy, that’s how we go and unlock the first trillion-dollar company,” Wehmeier said.
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