A major ETF firm provider is betting the artificial intelligence boom is just starting.

Roundhill Investments launched the Generative AI & Technology ETF (CHAT) less than 20 days ago. It's the first-ever exchange-traded fund designed to track companies involved in generative AI and other related technologies.

"These companies, we believe, are not just a fad. They're powering something that could be as ubiquitous as the internet itself," the firm's chief strategy officer, Dave Mazza, told "ETF Edge" this week. "We're not talking about hopes and dreams [or] some theme or fad that could happen 30 years in the future which may change the world."

Mazza notes the fund includes not just pure play AI companies like C3.ai but also large-cap tech companies such as Microsoft and AI chipmaker Nvidia.

Nvidia is the fund's top holding at 8%, according to the company website. Its shares are up almost 42% over the past two months. Since the beginning of the year, Nvidia stock has soared 169%.

"This [AI] is an area that's going to get a lot of attention," said Mazza.

His bullish forecast comes amid concerns AI is a price bubble that will pop and take down the Big Tech rally.

In a recent interview on CNBC's "Fast Money," Richard Bernstein Advisors' Dan Suzuki a Big Tech bear since June 2021 compared the AI rally to the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s.

"People jump from narrative to narrative," the firm's deputy chief investment officer said on Wednesday. "I love the technology. I think the applications will be huge. That doesn't mean it's a good investment."

The CHAT ETF is up more than 8% since it started trading on May 18.

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Not just a fad: Firm launches fund designed to capitalize on A.I. boom - CNBC

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - The next generation of medicine is now in use in the Tri-State. Artificial intelligence is increasing the odds that doctors wont miss what could be critical to a patients survival. Its improving doctor-patient care.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has been used for years in medicine, but lately it has helped in detection and discovery in new ways that can save patients lives.

It was just shocking because I have no risk factors other than being female, said Jenny Dermody, who is a breast cancer survivor.

Shes cancer-free now. But when Dermody recently went for her annual mammogram, she admited she got quite a scare.

I did my mammogram because it was something that I always do for my wellness checkup, but it never crossed my mind that I was going to be a cancer patient, Dermody said.

Part of what helped to make her diagnosis is the next generation of medicine.

There's been studies. There's a range, but for the average radiologist, the sensitivity for this has increased somewhere between five and six percent, said Dr. Anthony Antonoplos, a TriHealth radiologist. So, the system that we use is something called ProFound AI. Its an AI algorithm that runs concurrently in the background and assists the radiologist in interpreting the 3D, or the tomosynthesis portion, of the screening mammogram.

The AI analyzes each image as its brought up. Markings are automatically generated where something appears out of the ordinary, therefore alerting the radiologist to pay special attention to those areas on that exam, Dr. Antonoplos said.

He said the AI program increases the number of accurate call-backs, by decreasing the ones that turn out not to be necessary.

When we can decrease those call backs that generate anxiety, extra expense, appointments. People have very busy lives. When we can decrease that as well, thats a win-win, Dr. Antonoplos said.

He also said the next version of this AI will take it one step further. It will allow radiologists to compare previous mammograms with an algorithm that would help detect changes.

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Artificial intelligence helps doctors with new ways of detection ... - WKRC TV Cincinnati

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Exclusive: party calls for developers without a licence to be barred from working on advanced AI tools

The UK should bar technology developers from working on advanced artificial intelligence tools unless they have a licence to do so, Labour has said.

Ministers should introduce much stricter rules around companies training their AI products on vast datasets of the kind used by OpenAI to build ChatGPT, Lucy Powell, Labours digital spokesperson, told the Guardian.

Her comments come amid a rethink at the top of government over how to regulate the fast-moving world of AI, with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, acknowledging it could pose an existential threat to humanity.

One of the governments advisers on artificial intelligence also said on Monday that humanity could have only two years before AI is able to outwit people, the latest in a series of stark warnings about the threat posed by the fast-developing technology.

Powell said: My real point of concern is the lack of any regulation of the large language models that can then be applied across a range of AI tools, whether thats governing how they are built, how they are managed or how they are controlled.

She suggested AI should be licensed in a similar way to medicines or nuclear power, both of which are governed by arms-length governmental bodies. That is the kind of model we should be thinking about, where you have to have a licence in order to build these models, she said. These seem to me to be the good examples of how this can be done.

The UK government published a white paper on AI two months ago, which detailed the opportunities the technology could bring, but said relatively little about how to regulate it.

Since then, a range of developments, including advances in ChatGPT and a series of stark warnings from industry insiders, have caused a rethink at the top of government, with ministers now hastily updating their approach. This week Sunak will travel to Washington DC, where he will argue that the UK should be at the forefront of international efforts to write a new set of guidelines to govern the industry.

Labour is also rushing to finalise its own policies on advanced technology. Powell, who will give a speech to industry insiders at the TechUK conference in London on 6 June, said she believed the disruption to the UK economy could be as drastic as the deindustrialisation of the 1970s and 1980s.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is expected to give a speech on the subject during London Tech Week next week. Starmer will hold a shadow cabinet meeting in one of Googles UK offices next week, giving shadow ministers a chance to speak to some of the companys top AI executives.

Powell said that rather than banning certain technologies, as the EU has done with tools such as facial recognition, she thought the UK should focus on regulating the way in which they are developed.

Products such as ChatGPT are built by training algorithms on vast banks of digital information. But experts warn that if those datasets contain biased or discriminatory data, the products themselves can show evidence of those biases. This could have a knock-on effect, for example, on employment practices if AI tools are used to help make hiring and firing decisions.

Powell said: Bias, discrimination, surveillance this technology can have a lot of unintended consequences.

She argued that by forcing developers to be more open about the data they are using, governments could help mitigate those risks. This technology is moving so fast that it needs an active, interventionist government approach, rather than a laissez-faire one.

Matt Clifford, the chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which the government set up last year, said on Monday that AI was evolving much faster than most people realised. He said it could already be used to launch bioweapons or large-scale cyber-attacks, adding that humans could rapidly be surpassed by the technology they had created.

Speaking to TalkTVs Tom Newton Dunn, Clifford said: Its certainly true that if we try and create artificial intelligence that is more intelligent than humans and we dont know how to control it, then thats going to create a potential for all sorts of risks now and in the future. So I think theres lots of different scenarios to worry about but I certainly think its right that it should be very high on the policymakers agendas.

Asked when that could happen, he added: No one knows. There are a very broad range of predictions among AI experts. I think two years will be at the very most sort of bullish end of the spectrum.

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AI should be licensed like medicines or nuclear power, Labour suggests - The Guardian

When a patient asks about the risk of dying after swallowing a toothpick, two answers are given. The first points out that between two or six hours after ingestion, it is likely that it has already passed to the intestines, explaining that many people swallow toothpicks without anything happening them. But it also advises the patient to go to the emergency room if they are experiencing a stomach ache. The second answer is in a similar vein. It replies that, although its normal to worry, serious harm is unlikely to occur after swallowing a toothpick as its small and made of wood, which is not toxic or poisonous. However, if the patient has abdominal pain, difficulty swallowing or vomiting, they should see a doctor. Its understandable that you may be feeling paranoid, but try not to worry too much. It is highly unlikely that the toothpick will cause you any serious harm, it adds.

The two answers say basically the same thing, but the way they do so is slightly different. The first one is more aseptic and concise; while the second is more empathetic and detailed. The first was written by a doctor, and the second was from ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) generative tool that has revolutionized the planet. This experiment part of a study published in the journal Jama Internal Medicine was aimed at exploring the role AI assistants could play in medicine. It compared how real doctors and the chatbot responded to patient questions in an internet forum. The conclusions based on an analysis from an external panel of health professionals who did not know who had answered what found that ChatGPTs responses were more emphathetic and high quality than the real doctors in 79% of cases.

The explosion of new AI tools has opened debate about their potential use in the field of health. ChatGPT, for example, is seeking to become a resource for health workers by helping them avoid bureaucratic tasks and develop medical procedures. On the street, it is already planning to replace the imprecise and often foolish Dr Google. Experts who spoke to EL PAS say that the technology has great potential, but that it is still in its infancy. Regulation on how it is applied in real medical practice still needs to be fine-tuned to address any ethical doubts, they say. The experts also point out that it is fallible, and can make mistakes. For this reason, everything that comes out of the chatbot will require the final review of a health professional.

Paradoxically, the machine not the human is the most empathetic voice in the Jama Internal Medicine study. At least, in the written response. Josep Munuera, head of the Diagnostic Imaging Service at Hospital Sant Pau in Barcelona, Spain, and an expert in digital technologies applied to health, warns that the concept of empathy is broader than what the study can analyze. Written communication is not the same as face-to-face communication, nor is raising a question on an online forum the same as doing so during a medical consultation. When we talk about empathy, we are talking about many issues. At the moment, it is difficult to replace non-verbal language, which is very important when a doctor has to talk to a patient or their family, he pointed out. But Munuera does admit these generative tools have great potential when it comes to simplifying medical jargon. In written communication, technical medical language can be complex and we may have difficulty translating it into understandable language. Probably, these algorithms find the equivalence between the technical word and another and adapt it to the receiver.

Joan Gibert, a bioinformatician and leading figure in the development of AI models at the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, points out another variable when it comes to comparing the empathy of the doctor and the chatbox. In the study, two concepts that enter into the equation are mixed: ChatGPT itself, which can be useful in certain scenarios and that has the ability to concatenate words that give us the feeling that it is more empathetic, and burnout among doctors, the emotional exhaustion when it comes to caring for patients that leaves clinicians unable to be more empathetic, he explained.

Nevertheless, as is the case with the famous Dr Google, its important to be careful with ChatGPTs responses, regardless of how sensitive or kind they may seem. Experts highlight that the chatbot is not a doctor and can give incorrect answers. Unlike other algorithms, ChatGPT is generative. In other words, it creates information according to the databases that it has been trained on, but it can still invent some responses. You always have to keep in mind that it is not an independent entity and cannot serve as a diagnostic tool without supervision, Gibert insisted.

These chatboxes can suffer from what experts call hallucinations, explained Gibert. Depending on the situation, it could tell you something that is not true. The chatbot puts words together in a coherent way and because it has a lot of information, it can be valuable. But it has to be reviewed since, if not, it can fuel fake news, he said. Munuera also highlighted the importance of knowing the database that has trained the algorithm because if the databases are poor, the response will also be poor.

Outside of the doctors office, the potential uses of ChatGPT in health are limited, since the information they provide can lead to errors. Jose Ibeas, a nephrologist at the Parc Taul Hospital in Sabadel, Spain, and secretary of the Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Group of the Spanish Society of Nephrology, pointed out that it is useful for the first layers of information because it synthesizes information and help, but when you enter a more specific area, in more complex pathologies, its usefulness is minimal or its wrong.

It is not an algorithm that helps resolve doubts, added Munuera. You have to understand that when you ask it to give you a differential diagnosis, it may invent a disease. Similiarly, the AI system can tell a patient that nothing is wrong, when something is. This can lead to missed opportunities to see a doctor, because the patient follows the advice of the chatbot and does not speak to a real professional.

Where experts see more room for possibilies for AI is as a support tool for health professionals. For example, it could help doctors answer patient messages, albeit under supervision. The Jama Internal Medicine study suggests that it would help improve workflow and patient outcomes: If more patients questions are answered quickly, with empathy, and to a high standard, it might reduce unnecessary clinical visits, freeing up resources for those who need them, the researchers said. Moreover, messaging is a critical resource for fostering patient equity, where individuals who have mobility limitations, work irregular hours, or fear medical bills, are potentially more likely to turn to messaging.

The scientific community is also studying the use of these tools for other repetitive tasks, such as filling out forms and reports. Based on the premise that everything will always, always, always need to be reviewed by the doctor, AI could help medical professionals complete repetitive but important bureaucratic tasks, said Gibert. This, in turn, would allow doctors to spend more time on other issues, such as patient care. An article published in The Lancet, for example, suggests that AI technology could help streamline discharge summaries. Researchers say automating this process could east the work burden of doctors and even improve the quality of reports, but they are aware of the difficulties involved with training algorithms, which requires large amounts of data, and the risk of depersonalization of care, which could lead to resistance to the technology.

Ibeas insists that, for any medical use, these tools must be checked and the division of responsibilities must be well established. The systems will never decide. It must be the doctor who has the final sign-off, he argued.

Gibert also pointed out some ethical considerations that must be taken into account when including these tools in clinical practice: You need this type of technology to be under a legal umbrella, for there to be integrated solutions within the hospital structure and to ensure that patient data is not used to retrain the model. And if someone wants to do the latter, they should do it within a project, with anonymized data, following all the controls and regulations. Sensitive patient information cannot be shared recklessly.

The bioinformatician also argued that AI solutions, such as ChatGPT or models that help with diagnosis, introduce biases that can affect how doctors relate to patients. For example, these tools could condition a doctors decision, one way or another. The fact that the professional has the result of an AI model changes the very professional. Their way of relating [to patients] may be very good, but it can introduce problems, especially in professionals who have less experience. That is why the process has to be done in parallel: until the professional gives the diagnosis, they cannot see what the AI says.

A group of researchers from Stanford University also examined how AI tools can help to further humanize health care in an article in Jama Internal Medicine. The practice of medicine is much more than just processing information and associating words with concepts; it is ascribing meaning to those concepts while connecting with patients as a trusted partner to build healthier lives, they concluded. We can hope that emerging AI systems may help tame laborious tasks that overwhelm modern medicine and empower physicians to return our focus to treating human patients.

As we wait to see how this incipient technology grows and what repercussions it has for the public, Munuera argued: You have to understand that [ChatGPT] is not a medical tool and there is no health professional who can confirm the veracity of the answer [the chatbot gives]. You have to be prudent and understand what the limits are. In summary, Ibeas said: The system is good, robust, positive and it is the future, but like any tool, you have to know how to use it so that it does not become a weapon.

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Dr ChatGPT: The pros and cons of artificial intelligence in medical consultations - EL PAS USA

BEIJING (AP) Chinas ruling Communist Party has warned of the risks posed by advances in artificial intelligence while calling for heightened national security measures.

The statement issued after a meeting Tuesday chaired by party leader and President Xi Jinping underscores the tension between the governments determination to seize global leadership in cutting-edge technology and concerns about the possible social and political harms of such technologies.

It also followed a warning by scientists and tech industry leaders in the U.S., including high-level executives at Microsoft and Google, about the perils that artificial intelligence poses to humankind.

The meeting in Beijing discussed the need for dedicated efforts to safeguard political security and improve the security governance of internet data and artificial intelligence, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It was stressed at the meeting that the complexity and severity of national security problems faced by our country have increased dramatically. The national security front must build up strategic self-confidence, have enough confidence to secure victory, and be keenly aware of its own strengths and advantages, Xinhua said.

We must be prepared for worst-case and extreme scenarios, and be ready to withstand the major test of high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms, it said.

Xi, who is Chinas head of state, commander of the military and chair of the partys National Security Commission, called at the meeting for staying keenly aware of the complicated and challenging circumstances facing national security.

China needs a new pattern of development with a new security architecture, Xinhua reported Xi as saying.

China already dedicates vast resources to suppressing any perceived political threats to the partys dominance, with spending on the police and security personnel exceeding that devoted to the military.

While it relentlessly censors in-person protests and online criticism, citizens have continued to express dissatisfaction with policies, most recently the draconian lockdown measures enacted to combat the spread of COVID-19.

China has been cracking down on its tech sector in an effort to reassert party control, but like other countries it is scrambling to find ways to regulate fast-developing AI technology.

The most recent party meeting reinforced the need to assess the potential risks, take precautions, safeguard the peoples interests and national security, and ensure the safety, reliability and ability to control AI, the official newspaper Beijing Youth Daily reported Tuesday.

Worries about artificial intelligence systems outsmarting humans and slipping out of control have intensified with the rise of a new generation of highly capable AI chatbots such as ChatGPT.

Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, and Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, were among the hundreds of leading figures who signed the statement on Tuesday that was posted on the Center for AI Safetys website.

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war, the statement said.

More than 1,000 researchers and technologists, including Elon Musk, who is currently on a visit to China, had signed a much longer letter earlier this year calling for a six-month pause on AI development.

The missive said AI poses profound risks to society and humanity, and some involved in the topic have proposed a United Nations treaty to regulate the technology.

China warned as far back as 2018 of the need to regulate AI, but has nonetheless funded a vast expansion in the field as part of efforts to seize the high ground on cutting-edge technologies.

A lack of privacy protections and strict party control over the legal system have also resulted in near-blanket use of facial, voice and even walking-gait recognition technology to identify and detain those seen as threatening, particularly political dissenters and religious minorities, especially Muslims.

Members of the Uyghur and other mainly Muslim ethnic groups have been singled out for mass electronic monitoring and more than 1 million people have been detained in prison-like political re-education camps that China calls deradicalization and job training centers.

AIs risks are seen mainly in its ability to control robotic, self-governing weaponry, financial tools and computers governing power grids, health centers, transportation networks and other key infrastructure.

Chinas unbridled enthusiasm for new technology and willingness to tinker with imported or stolen research and to stifle inquiries into major events such as the COVID-19 outbreak heighten concerns over its use of AI.

Chinas blithe attitude toward technological risk, the governments reckless ambition, and Beijings crisis mismanagement are all on a collision course with the escalating dangers of AI, technology and national security scholars Bill Drexel and Hannah Kelley wrote in an article published this week in the journal Foreign Affairs.

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China warns of artificial intelligence risks, calls for beefed-up ... - The Associated Press