February 5th
Musk’s Neuralink implanted chip in a human
Elon Musk’s Neuralink claims to have successfully implanted a wireless chip into a human brain. Musk reported that “promising” brain activity had been detected after the procedure and the patient was “recovering well“.
The goal of these Neuralink chips is to connect human brains to computers to help tackle complex neurological conditions. This chip marks the first step towards this type of brain-computer interface.
Read more here.
EU’s AI act gets closer to becoming law
The EU AI act is now one step closer to being adopted as law. The final text of the EU’s AI act has been been passed through the EU’s house of Member State representatives with all 27 members giving the text their unanimous support.
The draft law now returns to the European Parliament where lawmakers, in committee and plenary, will also get a final vote on the compromise text, but experts expect that the AI Act will be adopted as law in the coming months.
Read more here.
Worker pays out $25 million after deepfake video call
With the power of AI, social engineering tactics just keep getting harder to stay on top of. A finance worker in Hong Kong working at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters posing as the company’s CFO on a video conference call.
The scam was so elaborate it included not just deepfakes of the CFO, but several deepfaked colleagues. Initially, the worker suspected it was a phishing email, but they quickly squashed those doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like his colleagues.
Read more here.