Trust, optimism, pessimism and AI
Enterprises may be racing to adopt AI, but the challenges are coming into sharper focus as risks and real-world consequences surface.There are some weird, wild and very personal questions that businesses have to ask themselves — for instance, should customers be allowed to have deep or romantic relationships with company chatbots? What if you update your model and it erases someone’s digital companion? We’re also grappling today with broader questions about trust, security and AI. The internet has always been a place where people could deceive each other, but it has also historically been humans doing so. Now AI can generate overwhelming amounts of audio, video, images and text — accurate, inaccurate or twisted; real-seeming but entirely fabricated — in the blink of an eye, and it can be spread by armies of bots.
How is a human to tell reality from fiction? Well, a crisis means business opportunities, naturally, and people appear to be willing to engage more and even pay for digital spaces where they can trust their environment. So says PwC in a debut report on trust and safety in the digital landscape. On the depressing side, it seems entirely possible that the digital commons will end up bifurcated (or even more regionalized), with reliable information, content or art produced by actual humans, and highly moderated digital spaces available behind paywalls … and everything else awash in AI slop, brain rot and filth. However, we’re not quite there yet (I think?), and the internet has some staunch defenders still — don’t miss the piece below with the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare (one of the biggest defenders of the internet’s security, which just bolstered its position with the acquisition of enterprise AI cybersecurity start-up Pangea). The interview with Matthew Prince just may leave you slightly … optimistic?
What else have we got for you today? Ongoing evidence that momentum around AI infrastructure and partnerships is a worldwide phenomenon. SK Telecom secured exclusive rights as OpenAI’s B2C partner in Korea and is rolling out a ChatGPT Plus promotion. Meanwhile, the U.K. is betting big on a new AI Growth Zone that is projected to draw £30 billion in investment and anchor Stargate UK’s next-generation AI hub alongside OpenAI and Nvidia. Enjoy your Friday read.
Kelly Hill
Executive Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top 3
AI, trust and paying a premium: Enterprises want to adopt AI, but the unexpected risks and consequences are becoming clearer as incidents and problems occur. It is also becoming clear that people who can, will pay for trusted digital spaces.
SKT partners with OpenAI: SK Telecom has become OpenAI’s exclusive B2C partner in Korea, launching a ChatGPT Plus promotion while expanding AI infrastructure and partnerships to strengthen the country’s global AI role.
Britain’s AI hub: The U.K. has unveiled an AI Growth Zone in North East England, aiming to create 5,000 jobs, attract £30 billion investment, and host Stargate U.K.’s AI infrastructure with OpenAI and Nvidia.
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AI Today: What You Need to Know
Nvidia invests in Intel: Intel stock surged 25% on news that Nvidia is investing $5B in the company, taking a minority stake and partnering on PC and data center chips, while both firms maintain independent product roadmaps.
Chips for China Unicom: Alibaba has secured China Unicom as a major customer for its AI chips, with the operator’s $390 million Qinghai data center now powered by tens of thousands of locally developed processors.
Parents sound the alarm: U.S. Senators heard this week about the dangers of children interacting with chatbots, from parents whose children died by suicide or had mental health crises after extended, disturbing conversations with AIs.
Securing AI everywhere: CrowdStrike’s acquisition of cybersecurity startup Pangea shows that security must evolve with AI itself. CrowdStrike is positioning AI trust and governance as foundations for enterprise innovation and resilience.
Pessimism, optimism: Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince gets into internet history, security, Google as the internet’s biggest patron and three outcomes for the future of the internet: Nihilistic, Black Mirror and and OTT marketplace.
Nokia hires Intel exec: Nokia taps Intel AI/data center head Justin Hotard as incoming CEO—signaling a sharper push into AI, data center infrastructure, and cloud-scale operations as markets demand more than just telecom hardware.
Cognizant on SLMs: Global IT services outfit Cognizant talks small language models (SLMs) as cost-efficient, domain-specific, and secure alternatives to LLMs for faster and better enterprise AI, to drive measurable ROI.
Agentic AI in banks: Most banks are deploying or piloting agentic AI for fraud detection, security, and customer service. The advanced assistants require human oversight and delivers scalable and measurable outcomes.
Mega Google AIDC: Google opened a £5B data center in Waltham Cross to power the U.K.’s AI economy, support 8,250 jobs annually, and boost clean energy resilience. Here’s its own take.
Pinpointing AI impacts: A single text prompt for Gemini AI uses the energy equivalent about 9 seconds of TV time, plus 5 drops of water. Now multiply that by the queries of 400 million monthly active users.