As members of the UK’s largest opposition party gathered in Liverpool for their party conference—probably their last before the UK holds a general election—a potentially explosive audio file started circulating on X, formerly known as Twitter. The 25-second recording was posted by an X account with the handle “@Leo_Hutz” that was set up in January…
Software engineers have joined the ranks of copy editors, translators, and others who fear that they’re about to be replaced by generative AI. But it might be surprising to learn that coders have been under threat before. New technologies have long promised to “disrupt” engineering, and these innovations have always failed to get rid of…
In addition to making everyone an epidemiologist, the Covid-19 pandemic schooled the public on the world-spanning network of manufacturers, assemblers, and shippers behind just about every consumer good that arrives on your doorstep. Or driveway. Car prices soared as automakers struggled with a supply chain jammed up by worker shortages, chip shortages, and shipping delays….
I meet with Walter Isaacson in a small conference room in the offices of book publisher Simon & Schuster. The walls are festooned with framed covers, including of course Isaacson’s mega-bestseller Steve Jobs. I’m sure somewhere else in the office are covers representing his other subjects—Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Jennifer Doudna—which together have earned…
Past research shows that large language models are capable of generating text harmful to some groups of people, including those who identify as Black, women, people with disabilities, and Muslims. Since 90 percent of students who attend schools that work with Charter School Growth Fund identify as people of color, Connell says, “having a human…
You’d have to be pretty brave to bet against the idea that applying more computing power and data to machine learning—a recipe that birthed ChatGPT—won’t lead to further advances of some kind in artificial intelligence. Even so, you’d be braver still to bet that combo will produce specific advances or breakthroughs on a specific timeline,…
“In most of these areas, you already have existing statutes that prohibit the behaviors that we want to continue to be prohibited,” Young says. “So the policy challenge then becomes to ensure that within government, our existing regulatory and enforcement mechanisms are attuned to an AI-enabled world.” While many Democrats are calling for a new…
That’s a particular challenge for health care and criminal justice agencies. Loter says Seattle employees have considered using generative AI to summarize lengthy investigative reports from the city’s Office of Police Accountability. Those reports can contain information that’s public but still sensitive. Staff at the Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona use generative AI tools…
A family member’s hurried Google search for a last-second visa to visit New Zealand recently caused a headache—and provided a timely reminder of why Google faces a landmark US antitrust trial next week. Tapping on the first link took us off to a website that after a few swipes charged $118 for the necessary paperwork….
The US government should create a new body to regulate artificial intelligence—and restrict work on language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 to companies granted licenses to do so. That’s the recommendation of a bipartisan duo of senators, Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Republican Josh Hawley, who launched a legislative framework yesterday to serve as a blueprint for…