When Google CEO Sundar Pichai emailed his workers the company priorities for 2024 this month, developing AI responsibly was top of the list. Some employees now wonder whether Google can live up to that goal. The small team that has served as its primary internal AI ethics watchdog has lost its leader and is being
Month: January 2024
Hulu ran an anti-Hamas ad that appears to be made using artificial intelligence to show an idealized version of Gaza—claiming this paradise destination could exist if not for Hamas. The 30-second spot, opening like a tourism ad, shows palm trees and coastlines. There are five-star hotels and children playing. People dance, eat, and laugh, while
The United States Department of Justice has failed to convince a group of US lawmakers that state and local police agencies aren’t awarded federal grants to buy AI-based “policing” tools known to be inaccurate, if not prone to exacerbating biases long observed in US police forces. Seven members of Congress wrote in a letter to
When OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the world by storm last year, it caught many power brokers in both Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, by surprise. The US government should now get advance warning of future AI breakthroughs involving large language models, the technology behind ChatGPT. The Biden administration is preparing to use the Defense Production Act
“Especially for the big app developers with loads of downloads, who are the ones that really Apple make all their money from, that will rack up to a very high cost very quickly,” says Max von Thun, Europe director at Open Markets, a group dedicated to campaigning against monopolies. “This new cost structure, including the
What a heinous month for the media. Almost every day, a publication announces layoffs or shuts down. Sports Illustrated just let go almost all of its staff after weathering an embarrassing scandal about AI-generated articles. It’s unclear what the desiccated magazine’s future holds, but the sad fate of another formerly great outlet offers a preview
The book traces the following thesis: At first, the internet was open, but limited. Private companies brought interactivity to the web and grew fat on the proceeds, but that made it difficult for users to leave their networks and for competitors to enter the market. The concentration of power in the hands of Big Tech
This is not the first time that researchers have suspected ElevenLabs tools were used for political propaganda. Last September, NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, claimed that TikTok accounts sharing conspiracy theories using AI-generated voices, including a clone of Barack Obama’s voice, used ElevenLabs’ technology. “Over 99 percent of users on our platform are
A law firm hired by the General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary Cruise to investigate the company’s response to a gruesome San Francisco crash last year found that the company failed to fully disclose disturbing details to regulators, the tech company said today in a blog post. The incident in October led California regulators to suspend Cruise’s
Even the cleverest, most cunning artificial intelligence algorithm will presumably have to obey the laws of silicon. Its capabilities will be constrained by the hardware that it’s running on. Some researchers are exploring ways to exploit that connection to limit the potential of AI systems to cause harm. The idea is to encode rules governing
More than a decade of dating apps has shown the process can be excruciating. A new app is trying to make dating less exhausting by using artificial intelligence to help people skip the earliest, often cringey stages of chatting with a new match. On Volar, people create dating profiles by messaging with a chatbot instead
A cheaper model of Tesla electric vehicle is coming late next year, CEO Elon Musk told investors today. If it launches on Musk’s ambitious timeline, it might arrive in time to help Tesla parry the growing might of Chinese EV makers. The “next generation” compact vehicle Musk mentioned could represent the $25,000 entry-level EV teased
WIRED’s request for the documents promised in OpenAI’s IRS filings fell to the counsel for its nonprofit to decide on. Their denial and new policy of withholding those documents extends an existing trend of dwindling openness at a project founded on transparency. OpenAI once published extensive detail about its AI inventions but has more recently
“A process called reinforcement learning from human feedback is used right now in every state-of-the-art model,” to fine-tune its responses, Baum says. Most AI companies aim to create systems that appear neutral. If the humans steering the AI see an uptick of right-wing content but judge it to be unsafe or wrong, they could undo
Delange said that open source language models are improving rapidly and can be better than OpenAI’s market-leading GPT-4 for some specialized tasks. But he noted that many of the best open source models have come from outside the US, saying that 01.AI could be positioned to benefit from innovations that spring up around its model.
On January 24, Apple’s Macintosh computer turns 40. Normally that number is an inexorable milestone of middle age. Indeed, in the last reported sales year, Macintosh sales dipped below $30 billion, more than a 25 percent drop from the previous year’s $40 billion. But unlike an aging person, Macs now are slimmer, faster, and last
Your internet service provider could have a good idea of who you’re planning to vote for in the 2024 election as well as the gender of the last person you slept with—and it’s saving that information for later. Major internet providers, like Comcast’s Xfinity, stockpile more revealing data than users might initially realize. For example,
Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal. Courtesy of Joanna Stern If Vision Pro is mostly meant to be used from a couch cushion or desk chair, the external battery pack may not factor in as much. As I pointed out last spring, it’s an unusual choice for a consumer tech company that has, over
Lobbyists for cable companies and advertisers yesterday expressed their displeasure with a proposed “click-to-cancel” regulation that aims to make it easier for consumers to cancel services. Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan has said that changes are needed because “some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn’t
The cost of making further progress in artificial intelligence is becoming as startling as a hallucination by ChatGPT. Demand for the graphics chips known as GPUs needed for large-scale AI training has driven prices of the crucial components through the roof. OpenAI has said that training the algorithm that now powers ChatGPT cost the firm
The revisions provide developers “a meaningful opportunity” to do business outside of Apple’s billing system “while also enabling users to make an informed choice” about where to transact, attorneys for the company say in a court filing. The arrangement is similar to how Apple began allowing alternative purchase options—with a fee—in the Netherlands and South
Ed Newton-Rex says generative AI has an ethics problem. He ought to know, because he used to be part of the fast-growing industry. Newton-Rex was TikTok’s head AI designer and then an executive at Stability AI until he quit in disgust in November over the company’s stance on collecting training data. After his high-profile departure,
In recent years Google has used the word “helpful” to describe new features added to its search product, its voice assistant, its generative AI tool Bard, even its Pixel earbuds. A keyword-search for the word “helpful” in Google’s own corporate news blog brings up more than 1,200 results. Depending on what you’re searching for, though,
The past year has brought a reckoning in the tech job industry across the US, upending career trajectories for recent grads. When they chose majors like computer science four years ago, they expected to follow those before them into a lucrative market with perks at Big Tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and others. But instead
Get ready to share your custom chatbot with the whole world. Well, at least with other ChatGPT Plus subscribers. OpenAI recently launched its GPT Store, after it delayed the project following the chaos of CEO Sam Altman’s firing and reinstatement late in 2023. While OpenAI’s GPT Store shares some similarities to smartphone app marketplaces, it
As terrible as that tradeoff is, it’s worth noting that the risk of death on a commercial airliner to anyone, lap-held infants included, remains vanishingly low—so let the pangs of guilt subside if you’ve flown holding your baby on your lap. “Commercial aircraft accidents are still extremely rare, and the logistics of having infants in
Until last November, I had never heard of Perry Johnson and Associates. But they had heard of me. In fact, without my knowledge, they had information about me that even my closest friends and relatives might not know. Because the company provides “transcription and dictation” services to Northwell Health, a medical provider that has treated
So far, 2024 is off to a start that looks a lot like 2023—with a week full of job cuts from tech companies. Duolingo cut 10 percent of its contractors earlier this week, citing artificial intelligence as part of the reason. Twitch announced a cut of 500 people, and its parent company, Amazon, also made
Spirit AeroSystems, the Wichita-based aerospace manufacturer that manufactured the door plug that blew out on the Alaska Airlines flight, declined to comment on the incident. However, in a statement published on its website, Spirit says its “primary focus is the quality and product integrity of the aircraft structures we deliver.” The company’s parts have caused
Bitcoin devotees are declaring a historic victory after US regulators approved a new, more accessible way for people to invest in the crypto asset after a decade of resistance. Yet they won’t go anywhere near it themselves. On January 10, after a farcical false start, the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the launch of