This week, US senators heard alarming testimony suggesting that unchecked AI could steal jobs, spread misinformation, and generally “go quite wrong,” in the words of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (whatever that means). He and several lawmakers agreed that the US may now need a new federal agency to oversee the development of the technology. But the hearing also
Month: May 2023
In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had rejected an email app’s generative-AI-infused update until the developer gave the app a 17+ restriction, expressing concerns that AI tools could generate inappropriate content for children. In the App Store, OpenAI’s ChatGPT app is rated for “12+ years old.” OpenAI did not respond to questions about any
The curious mind of Pete Buttigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve. Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointillist data that is his current stock-in-trade, the US secretary of transportation comes off like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-second Rubik’s Cube
Another change urged by lawmakers and industry witnesses alike was requiring disclosure to inform people when they’re conversing with a language model and not a human, or when AI technology makes important decisions with life-changing consequences. One example could be a disclosure requirement to reveal when a facial recognition match is the basis of an arrest
Gideon Lichfield: Like writing simple marketing copy, for example. Daron Acemoglu: Like marketing, marketing and advertising, or news summaries like BuzzFeed used to do. I don’t, I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’m not against automation. I think it’s good if we automate certain things, but at the same time we have to create
Just 87 zero-emission drayage trucks existed in California in the first half of 2022, according to data collected by the state, and they are expensive. Gurrola currently owns one diesel-powered truck, a 2012 FreightLiner Cascadia. An electric truck is nice to think about, and Gurrola says he recently enjoyed test driving one at a trucking event.
In November, venerable tech outlet CNET began publishing articles generated by artificial intelligence, on topics such as personal finance, that proved to be riddled with errors. Today the human members of its editorial staff have unionized, calling on their bosses to provide better conditions for workers and more transparency and accountability around the use of AI.
OPCraft was built to demonstrate blockchain-related features like that, and also to demonstrate a toolkit developed by 0xPARC’s Lattice for building on-chain games. Conventional videogames are often built using game engines such as Unreal Engine that speed up the work by handling lower-level details of the programming of 3D environments and other components. OPCraft was
This wasn’t Supposed to happen. In 2020, in a house surrounded by fields in the Irish countryside, Liam, 19, sat at his laptop, an energy drink fizzing at his elbow. He leaned in for a better look at the profile photo and, sure enough, saw the face of an old rugby friend looking back at
Elmore says the goal is to force reform. “We can’t bring the victims of this lawsuit back, but we can make sure that no other families have to file this kind of lawsuit,” he says. No families deserve to be members of this unenviable club, Elmore says. The lawsuit essentially takes aim at the full
The bloc’s omission hints at the larger power struggle between regulators and Big Tech in Europe. At a minimum, the search giant needs more time to compare Bard with the EU’s draft AI Act, says Henk van Ess, a visiting professor at the Freetech Axel Springer Academy of Journalism and Technology in Berlin. “The proposed
Google executives hosted the company’s I/O developer conference this week, an annual ritual that has in recent years centered on artificial intelligence. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot seen as challenging Google’s search domination, Google CEO Sundar Pichai seemed intent on projecting the message that his company is still the leader in AI—and is speeding up deployment of the
Some airlines have stopped offering customer service through Twitter because of the changes. Transit authorities and public health agencies paused auto-posting safety alerts until Twitter backed down on plans to make them pay the higher API fees. More confusion could be coming. Musk has said he will purge inactive accounts, potentially allowing the takeover of user
In the spring of 2007, I was one of four journalists anointed by Steve Jobs to review the iPhone. This was probably the most anticipated product in the history of tech. What would it be like? Was it a turning point for devices? Looking back at my review today, I am relieved to say it’s not an
This week, at its annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, Google showcased a head-spinning number of projects and products powered by or enhanced by AI. They included a new-and-improved version of its chatbot Bard, tools to help you write emails and documents or manipulate images, devices with AI baked in, and a chatbot-like experimental version of Google search.
Self-driving-car developers initially held a similar philosophy of data maximization. They generate video from arrays of cameras inside and outside the vehicles, audio recordings from microphones, point clouds mapping objects in space from lidar and radar, diagnostic readings from vehicle parts, GPS readings, and much more. Some assumed that the more data collected, the smarter
“If we, as the EU, can mandate service providers to scan for some content through a backdoor, other states will also be able to say that you have to scan for [something else] through the same backdoor,” says Karl Emil Nikka, an IT security specialist who has debated Johansson on a podcast run by Swedish
Elon Musk’s long-promised launch of encrypted direct messages on Twitter has arrived. Like most attempts to add end-to-end encryption to a massive existing platform—never an easy proposition—there’s good, bad, and ugly. The good: Twitter has added an optional layer of security for a small subset of its users that has never existed in Twitter’s 16-plus
Six months ago, Google didn’t appear remotely worried about its search business. Then OpenAI’s ChatGPT was unleashed, and Microsoft’s Bing spawned a chatbot. At Google’s annual I/O conference today, the search giant announced that it will infuse results with generative artificial intelligence technology similar to that behind ChatGPT. The company is launching an experimental version of its prized
Mariann Hardey’s father died unexpectedly a little over a decade ago. But he lives on through his Twitter account. It only has 42 followers, and it was locked by Hardey’s father so no one but those 42 people can see it. And with a common first name and surname-based username, it’s likely a sought-after bit
Eva Berneke describes her first year at the helm of the world’s third-largest satellite company as a “whirlwind.” That’s an understatement. Since she took over the top job at Eutelsat in January 2022, the Danish CEO has become a direct competitor to Elon Musk, been accused by the Ukrainian government of aiding Russian propaganda, and
On April 28, Felipe Neto, a Brazilian YouTuber with more than 45 million followers, was angry. He had just received a message from YouTube warning him about PL2630, a bill in Brazil’s National Congress dubbed the “Fake News Law” that would regulate online platforms. Influencers like Neto, the company said, could be forced to take
It’s easy to freak out about more advanced artificial intelligence—and much more difficult to know what to do about it. Anthropic, a startup founded in 2021 by a group of researchers who left OpenAI, says it has a plan. Anthropic is working on AI models similar to the one used to power OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But the startup announced today
OpenAI has now introduced a Personal Data Removal Request form that allows people—primarily in Europe, although also in Japan—to ask that information about them be removed from OpenAI’s systems. It is described in an OpenAI blog post about how the company develops its language models. The form primarily appears to be for requesting that information be removed
“A lot of the headlines have been saying that I think it should be stopped now—and I’ve never said that,” he says. “First of all, I don’t think that’s possible, and I think we should continue to develop it because it could do wonderful things. But we should put equal effort into mitigating or preventing
By the end of April, the European Parliament had zeroed in on a list of practices to be prohibited: social scoring, predictive policing, algorithms that indiscriminately scrape the internet for photographs, and real-time biometric recognition in public spaces. However, on Thursday, parliament members from the conservative European People’s Party were still questioning whether the biometric
In a declaration in federal court in 2021, Quentin Van Meter, the president of the American College of Pediatricians, described the organization as a “secular, scientific medical association,” whose “views are not religious as such.” ACPeds has also targeted donors, physicians, and other clinicians based solely on their political leanings, documents show. The group maintains
Back then–only months ago—Marcus’ quibbling was technical. But now that large language models have become a global phenomenon, his focus has shifted. The crux of Marcus’ new message is that the chatbots from OpenAI, Google, and others are dangerous entities whose powers will lead to a tsunami of misinformation, security bugs, and defamatory “hallucinations” that
In 2019, a partnership between BP and German energy provider ENBW agreed to pay £231 million ($290 million) in annual option fees alone. While the offshore wind industry booms, the Crown Estate is already eyeing the next opportunity to cash in on its seabed empire: carbon storage. The seabed around the UK has room to store 78
ChatGPT and its brethren are both surprisingly clever and disappointingly dumb. Sure, they can generate pretty poems, solve scientific puzzles, and debug spaghetti code. But we know that they often fabricate, forget, and act like weirdos. Inflection AI, a company founded by researchers who previously worked on major artificial intelligence projects at Google, OpenAI, and Nvidia, built a bot