Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, is best known for calling out the hype surrounding artificial intelligence in his Substack, AI Snake Oil, written with PhD candidate Sayash Kapoor. The two authors recently released a book based on their popular newsletter about AI’s shortcomings. But don’t get …
Read More »Content Creators in the Adult Industry Want a Say in AI Rules
A group of sex industry professionals and advocates issued an open letter to EU regulators on Thursday, claiming that their views are being overlooked in vital discussions on policing AI technology despite also being implicated in AI’s momentous rise. In response to European internet regulations, a collective of adult industry …
Read More »An AI Bot Named James Has Taken My Old Job
It always seemed difficult for the newspaper where I used to work, The Garden Island on the rural Hawaiian island of Kauai, to hire reporters. If someone left, it could take months before we hired a replacement, if we ever did. So, last Thursday, I was happy to see that …
Read More »What You Need to Know About Grok AI and Your Privacy
In 2015, Elon Musk and Sam Altman cofounded OpenAI based on a seemingly ethical ethos: to develop AI technology that benefits humanity, rather than systems controlled by big-money corporations. Fast-forward a decade that included a spectacular falling out between Musk and Altman, things look very different. Amid legal battles with …
Read More »The US Government Wants You—Yes, You—to Hunt Down Generative AI Flaws
At the 2023 Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas, prominent AI tech companies partnered with algorithmic integrity and transparency groups to sic thousands of attendees on generative AI platforms and find weaknesses in these critical systems. This “red-teaming” exercise, which also had support from the US government, took a step …
Read More »Generative AI Has a 'Shoplifting' Problem. This Startup CEO Has a Plan to Fix It
Bill Gross made his name in the tech world in the 1990s, when he came up with a novel way for search engines to make money on advertising. Under his pricing scheme, advertisers would pay when people clicked on their ads. Now, the “pay-per-click” guy has founded a startup called …
Read More »OpenAI Warns Users Could Become Emotionally Hooked on Its Voice Mode
In late July, OpenAI began rolling out an eerily humanlike voice interface for ChatGPT. In a safety analysis released today, the company acknowledges that this anthropomorphic voice may lure some users into becoming emotionally attached to their chatbot. The warnings are included in a “system card” for GPT-4o, a technical …
Read More »Google Cracks Down on Explicit Deepfakes
A few weeks ago, a Google search for “deepfake nudes jennifer aniston” brought up at least seven high-up results that purported to have explicit, AI-generated images of the actress. Now they have vanished. Google product manager Emma Higham says that new adjustments to how the company ranks results, which have …
Read More »Instagram Will Let You Make Custom AI Chatbots—Even Ones Based on Yourself
Meta announced today that it will offer people a tool called AI Studio to build virtual characters with custom personalities, traits, and interests—including ones based on their own personalities. If you're a creator, you'll also be able to have your digital doppelgänger interact with fans in the DMs. “Every creator …
Read More »At the Olympics, AI Is Watching You
On the eve of the Olympics opening ceremony, Paris is a city swamped in security. Forty thousand barriers divide the French capital. Packs of police officers wearing stab vests patrol pretty, cobbled streets. The river Seine is out of bounds to anyone who has not already been vetted and issued …
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