Daily Archives: February 20, 2024

The results for RealRates 2023 ranking for U.S. Pharma are now available and ranked by financial strength!

The Top 10 Pharma companies are as follows:

The top 5 Pharma companies in order are Theravance Biopharma Inc., Chimerix Inc., Ocuphire Pharma Inc., Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals Ltd., and Zomedica Corp.

They had Economic Capital Ratio figures of 587%, 407%, 377%, 331%, and 303%, respectively.

Theravance Biopharma, Chimerix, Ocuphire Pharma, and Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals did well due to the variable Net Income, and Zomedica did well due to its superior Current Liabilities variable.

This increased the companies Economic Capital Ratio scores by 402%, 213%, 168%, 137%, and 60%, respectively.

Theravance Biopharma climbed 191 places since last year to take the top spot. Chimerix climbed 127 places and Kiniksa climbed 98 places. Ocuphire and Zomedica are new to the list this year.

From a total of 446 Pharma companies, 111 received our Top Rated award.

The next 20 Pharma companies are as follows:

The US pharmaceutical industry is a powerhouse, generating billions in revenue annually. With a diverse landscape of companies, including giants like Pfizer, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson, it is a key player in global healthcare.

In 2021, the industrys revenue exceeded $500 billion, illustrating its immense economic significance.

In 2022, an especially profitable year for pharma, the eight biggest US pharmaceutical companies reported profits of $10 billion domestically on revenue of $214 billion.

The impressive thing we do at RealRate is to deliver utterly fair and independent company ratings, bringing together expert knowledge and innovative artificial intelligence in one package.

Our AI model computes the all-important Economic Capital Ratio figure.

Looking at our model in more detail, one can see it is very much unbiased and only uses audited public data. We are not part of any pharmaceutical company.

We are fair, explain ourselves very well and we also avoid any all-important conflicts of interest.

https://realrate.ai The first AI rating agency

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The Healthiest U.S. Pharma Companies: Ranked by RealRate's Impressive Artificial Intelligence - Medium

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently highlighted an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) application. This idea, designed for the formal verification of code and bug detection, aims to tackle Ethereums susceptibility to code bugs.

Buterins support for these solutions reflects the growing synergy between AI and blockchain technologies.

Given the increasing complexity of cyber threats, AIs role in bolstering cybersecurity has become crucial. This is especially true for the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and smart contract ecosystem, which has billions in total value locked (TVL).

Even giants in the tech industry, such as Microsoft and OpenAI, are trying to enhance cybersecurity with AI. They are exploring AIs potential in both identifying and countering cyber threats. Their collaborative efforts are part of a larger initiative to ensure AI is used responsibly and to enhance cybersecurity measures.

Buterins perspective on artificial intelligence extends beyond cybersecurity. Earlier this year, he shared four innovative ideas for integrating AI with cryptocurrency. These concepts suggest a future where AI and blockchain technology work hand in hand.

One application of AI that I am excited about is AI-assisted formal verification of code and bug finding. Right now Ethereums biggest technical risk probably is bugs in code, and anything that could significantly change the game on that would be amazing, Buterin said.

Another notable idea is the inclusion of AI in blockchain systems, particularly in prediction markets. AI could leverage its vast knowledge in these markets for in-depth analysis, enhancing blockchain applications.

Read more: AI for Smart Contract Audits: Quick Solution or Risky Business?

Furthermore, Buterin envisions AI as a user interface that could simplify cryptocurrency transactions for users. This interface could provide guidance, interpret smart contracts, and prevent scams. Despite the potential benefits, Buterin warns against over-reliance on AI. He advocates for a balance with traditional interfaces to ensure user security and clarity.

Vitalik Buterin also proposes using artificial intelligence to set rules for blockchain games or decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In this scenario, AI could act as a judge or a reference for rules. Another innovative idea is the development of AI systems using blockchain technology. This approach aims to create decentralized, impartial, and secure AI systems.

The enthusiasm for AI in the cryptocurrency sector has led to a surge in AI-related tokens, particularly following the announcement of OpenAIs text-to-video AI model, Sora. Tokens associated with AI or claiming to utilize AI technology, such as Worldcoins WLD, have seen significant price increases, with some tokens setting new all-time highs.

Another AI token, The Graph (GRT), saw an almost 60% increase, briefly surpassing $0.27. Despite these gains, GRT remains significantly down from its all-time high.

Render (RNDR) has also made headlines by entering the crypto markets top 50 following a year-on-year gain of 1,100%. Currently trading close to its all-time high, RNDR exemplifies the potential for AI tokens to achieve new milestones.

Read more: 13 Best AI Crypto Trading Bots To Maximize Your Profits

The surge in AI tokens is not limited to the crypto market. It also mirrors the performance of major AI players in traditional finance, such as Nvidia. Nvidias shares have surged by over 45% since the beginning of the year, contributing significantly to the S&P 500s growth and further fueling the AI token rally.

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This Is What Vitalik Buterin Thinks About Artificial Intelligence (AI) - BeInCrypto

A combination of researchers from OpenAI and various universities have banded together to release a 104-page PDF document to encourage AI compute regulation by regulating the hardware itself, including the potential application of kill switches where an AI is being used for malicious purposes. The original PDF file was released online by University of Cambridge with a Valentine's Day post.

The PDF, titled "Computer Power and the Governance of Artificial Intelligence", discusses how PC compute power (i.e., GPU power) is leveraged for AI workloads. It then goes on to observe that since AI PC hardware has a high degree of supply chain concentration from just a few vendors, applying regulations to that hardware should be a lot easier.

In the "Risks of Compute Governance and Possible Mitigations" section, researchers detail some potential risks of AI before recommending potential solutions. We'll summarize some key points from this section below.

As far as potential solutions to these problems go, the paper proposes a fairly wide variety of different approaches and concerns that come with them. One of these solutions is a global registry of AI chips and unique identifiers for each, which could help limit smuggling and illegitimate use.

"Kill switches," which could be used to remotely deactivate AI hardware being used for malicious purposes, are also discussed as a possible solution within the paper. Though, solutions like this also pose their own risk, since a cybercriminal gaining control of that kill switch could use it to disable legitimate users. Also, it assumes the AI hardware will be accessible to outside entities, which may not be true.

As the technology and policy around artificial intelligence continues to evolve, time will tell just how power over this supposed new frontier will end up consolidating. It seems that quite a few AI experts, including OpenAI researchers, are hoping more of that power ends up in the hands of regulators, considering the dangers of the alternative.

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AI researchers discuss risks and potential regulations suggest putting the brakes on the compute hardware as one ... - Tom's Hardware

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Last month, arobocall impersonating U.S. President Joe Biden went out to New Hampshire voters, advising them not to vote in the states presidential primary election.The voice, generated by artificial intelligence, sounded quite real.

Save your vote for the November election, the voice stated, falsely asserting that a vote in the primary would prevent voters from being able to participate in the November general election.

The robocall incident reflects a growing concern that generative AI will make it cheaper and easier to spread misinformation and run disinformation campaigns. The Federal Communications Commission last week issued a ruling to make AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal.

Deepfakes already have affected other elections around the globe. In recent elections in Slovakia, for example, AI-generated audio recordings circulated on Facebook, impersonating a liberal candidate discussing plans to raise alcohol prices and rig the election. During the February 2023 Nigerian elections, an AI-manipulated audio clip falsely implicated a presidential candidate in plans to manipulate ballots. With elections this year in over 50 countries involving half the globes population, there are fears deepfakes could seriously undermine their integrity.

Media outlets including the BBC and the New York Times sounded the alarm on deepfakes as far back as 2018. However, in past elections, including the 2022 U.S. midterms, the technology did not produce believable fakes and was not accessible enough, in terms of both affordability and ease of use, to be weaponized for political disinformation. Instead, those looking to manipulate media narratives relied on simpler and cheaper ways to spread disinformation, including mislabeling or misrepresenting authentic videos, text-based disinformation campaigns, or just plain old lying on air.

As Henry Ajder, a researcher on AI and synthetic media writes in a 2022 Atlantic piece, Its far more effective to use a cruder form of media manipulation, which can be done quickly and by less sophisticated actors, than to release an expensive, hard-to-create deepfake, which actually isnt going to be as good a quality as you had hoped.

As deepfakes continually improve in sophistication and accessibility, they will increasingly contribute to the deluge of informational detritus. Theyre already convincing. Last month, The New York Times published an online test inviting readers to look at 10 images and try to identify which were real and which were generated by AI, demonstrating first-hand the difficulty of differentiating between real and AI-generated images. This was supported by multiple academic studies, which found that faces of white people created by AI systems were perceived as more realistic than genuine photographs, New York Times reporter Stuart A. Thompson explained.

Listening to the audio clip of the fake robocall that targeted New Hampshire voters, it is difficult to distinguish from Bidens real voice.

The jury is still out on how generative AI will impact this years elections. In a December blog post on GatesNotes, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates estimates we are still 18-24 months away from significant levels of AI use by the general population in high-income countries. In a December post on her website Anchor Change, Katie Harbath, former head of elections policy at Facebook, predicts that although AI will be used in elections, it will not be at the scale yet that everyone imagines.

It may, therefore, not be deepfakes themselves, but the narrative around them that undermines election integrity. AI and deepfakes will be firmly in the public consciousness as we go to the polls this year, with their increased prevalence supercharged by outsized media coverage on the topic. In her blog post, Harbath adds that its the narrative of what havoc AI could have that will have the bigger impact.

Those engaging in media manipulation can exploit the public perception that deepfakes are everywhere to undermine trust in information. These people use false claims and discredit true ones by exploiting the liars dividend.

The liars dividend, a term coined by legal scholars Robert Chesney and Danielle Keats Citron in a 2018 California Review article, suggests that as the public becomes more aware about the idea that video and audio can be convincingly faked, some will try to escape accountability for their actions by denouncing authentic audio and video as deepfakes.

Fundamentally, it captures the spirit of political strategist Steve Bannons strategy to flood the zone with shit, as he stated in a 2018 meeting with journalist Michael Lewis.

As journalist Sean Illing comments in a 2020 Vox article, this tactic is part of a broader strategy to create widespread cynicism about the truth and the institutions charged with unearthing it, and, in doing so, erode the very foundation of liberal democracy.

There are already notable examples of the liars dividend in political contexts. In recent elections in Turkey, a video tape surfaced showing compromising images of a candidate. In response, the candidate claimed the video was a deepfake when it was, in fact, real.

In April 2023, an Indian politician claimed that audio recordings of him criticizing members of his party were AI-generated. But a forensic analysis suggested at least one of the recordings was authentic.

Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Daniel Schiff, and Natalia Buen, researchers who study the impacts of AI on politics, carry out experiments to understand the impacts of the liars dividend on audiences. In an article forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, they note that in refuting authentic media as fake, bad actors will either blame their political opposition or an uncertain information environment.

Their findings suggest that the liars dividend becomes more powerful as people become more familiar with deepfakes. In turn, media consumers will be primed to dismiss legitimate campaign messaging. It is therefore imperative for the public to be confident that we can differentiate between real and manipulated media.

Journalists have a crucial role to play in responsible reporting on AI. Widespread news coverage of the Biden robocalls and recent Taylor Swift deepfakes demonstrate that distorted media can be debunked, due to the resources of governments, technology professionals, journalists, and, in the case of Swift, an army of superfans.

This reporting should be balanced with a healthy dose of skepticism on the impact of AI in this years elections. Self-interested technology vendors will be prone to overstate its impact. AI may be a stalking horse for broader dis- and misinformation campaigns exploiting worsening integrity issues on these platforms.

Lawmakers across states have introduced legislation to combat election-related AI-generated dis- and misinformation. These bills would require disclosure of the use of AI for election-related content in Alaska, Florida, Colorado, Hawaii, South Dakota, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Indiana, Idaho and Wyoming. Most of the bills would require that information to be disclosed within specific time frames before elections. A bill in Nebraska would ban all deepfakes within 60 days of an election.

However, the introduction of these bills does not necessarily mean they will become law. Furthermore, their enforceability could be challenged on the grounds of free speech, based on positioning AI-generated content as satire. Moreover, penalties would only occur after the fact or be evaded by foreign entities.

Social media companies hold the most influence in limiting the spread of false content, being able to detect and remove it from their platforms. However, the policies of major platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok state they will only remove manipulated content for cases of egregious harm or if it aims to mislead people about voting processes. This is in line with a general relaxation in moderation standards, including repeals of 17 policies at the former three companies related to hate speech, harassment and misinformation in the last year.

Their primary response to AI-generated content will be to label it as AI-generated. For Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, this will apply to all AI-generated content, whereas for X (formally Twitter), these labels will apply to content identified as misleading media, as noted in recent policy updates.

This puts the onus on users to recognize these labels, which are not yet rolled out and will take time to adjust to. Furthermore, AI-generated content may evade the detection of already overstretched moderation teams and not be removed or labeled, creating false security for users. Moreover, with the exception of X (formerly Twitter)s policy these labels do not specify whether a piece of content is harmful, only that it is AI-generated.

A deepfake made purely for comedic purposes would be labeled, but a manually altered video spreading disinformation might not. Recent recommendations from the oversight board of Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, advise that instead of focusing on how a distorted image, video or audio clip was created, the companys policy should focus on the harm manipulated posts can cause.

The continued emergence of deepfakes is worrying, but they represent a new weapon in the arsenal of disinformation tactics deployed by bad actors rather than a new frontier. The strategies to mitigate the damage they cause are the same as before developing and enforcing responsible platform design and moderation, underpinned by legal mandates where feasible, coupled with journalists and civic society holding the platforms accountable. These strategies are now more important than ever.

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How AI-generated deepfakes threaten the 2024 election - Journalist's Resource