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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: In the future, studios that use synthetic actors in place of humans might have to pay a royalty into a union fund. That's one of the ideas kicking around as SAG-AFTRA prepares to sit down with the studios on Feb. 9. Artificial intelligence was central to the 2023 actors strike, and it's only gotten more urgent since. Social media is awash in slop, while user-made videos of Leia and Elsa are soon to debut on Disney+. And then there's Tilly Norwood -- the digital creation that crystallized AI fears last fall. Though SAG-AFTRA won some AI protections in the strike, it can't stop Tilly and her ilk from taking actors' jobs. As negotiations with studios begin early ahead of the June contract deadline, AI remains the most existential concern. Actors are also pushing to revisit streaming residuals, arguing that current "success bonuses" fall far short of the rerun-based income that once sustained middle-class careers. They also note the strain caused from long streaming hiatuses, exclusivity clauses, and self-taped auditions.

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Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: A former Google engineer has been found guilty on multiple federal charges for stealing the tech giant's trade secrets on artificial intelligence to benefit Chinese companies he secretly worked for, federal prosecutors said. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, a jury on Thursday convicted Linwei Ding on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets, following an 11-day trial. The 38-year-old, also known as Leon Ding, was hired by Google in 2019 and was a resident of Newark. According to evidence presented at trial, Ding stole more than 2,000 pages of confidential information containing Google AI trade secrets between May 2022 and April 2023. He uploaded the information to his personal Google Cloud account. Around the same time, Ding secretly affiliated himself with two Chinese-based technology companies. Around June 2022, prosecutors said Ding was in discussions to be the chief technology officer for an early-stage tech company. Several months later, he was in the process of founding his own AI and machine learning company in China, acting as the company's CEO. Prosecutors said Ding told investors that he could build an AI supercomputer by copying and modifying Google's technology. In late 2023, prosecutors said Ding downloaded the trade secrets to his own personal computer before resigning from Google. According to the superseding indictment, Google uncovered the uploads after finding out that Ding presented himself as CEO of one of the companies during an Beijing investor conference. Around the same time, Ding told his manager he was leaving the company and booked a one-way flight to Beijing. "Silicon Valley is at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation, pioneering transformative work that drives economic growth and strengthens our national security. The jury delivered a clear message today that the theft of this valuable technology will not go unpunished," U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian said in a statement.

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A large Swedish study of 100,000 women found that using AI to assist radiologists reading mammograms reduced the rate of aggressive "interval" breast cancers by 12%. CBC News reports: For the study -- published in Thursday's issue of the medical journal The Lancet -- more than 100,000 women had mammography screenings. Half were supported by AI and the rest had their mammograms reviewed by two different radiologists, a standard practice in much of Europe known as double reading. It is not typically used in Canada, where usually one radiologist checks mammograms. The study looked at the rates of interval cancer, the term doctors use for invasive tumors that appear between routine mammograms. They can be harder to detect and studies have shown that they are more likely to be aggressive with a poorer prognosis. The rate of interval cancers decreased by 12 percent in the groups where the AI screening was implemented, the study showed. [...] Throughout the two-year study, the mammograms that were supported by AI were triaged into two different groups. Those that were determined to be low risk needed only one radiologist to examine them, while those that were considered high risk required two. The researchers reported that numerically, the AI-supported screening resulted in 11 fewer interval cancers than standard screening (82 versus 93, or 12 per cent). "This is really a way to improve an overall screening test," [said lead author, Dr. Kristina Lang]. She acknowledged that while the study found a decrease in interval cancer, longer-term studies are needed to find out how AI-supported screening might impact mortality rates. The screenings for the study all took place at one centre in Sweden, which the researchers acknowledged is a limitation. Another is that the race and ethnicity of the participants were not recorded. The next step, Lang said, will be for Swedish researchers to determine cost-effectiveness.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The UK could introduce a universal basic income (UBI) to protect workers in industries that are being disrupted by AI, the investment minister Jason Stockwood has said. "Bumpy" changes to society caused by the introduction of the technology would mean there would have to be "some sort of concessionary arrangement with jobs that go immediately", Lord Stockwood said. The Labour peer told the Financial Times: "Undoubtedly we're going to have to think really carefully about how we soft-land those industries that go away, so some sort of [universal basic income], some sort of lifelong mechanism as well so people can retrain." A universal basic income is not part of official government policy, but when asked whether people in government were considering the need for UBI, Stockwood told the FT: "People are definitely talking about it." [...] While he has previously been a vocal proponent of a wealth tax in the UK, Stockwood told the FT he had not repeated his calls for the government to go further on taxing the rich. However, he added: "If you make your money and the first thing you do is you speak to a tax adviser to ask: 'Where can we pay the lowest tax?' we don't want those people in this country, I'd suggest, because you're not committed to your communities and the long-term success in this country."

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