The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. String theory captured the hearts and minds of many physicists decades ago because of a beautiful simplicity. Zoom in far enough on a patch of space, the theory says, and you won’t see a menagerie of particles or jittery quantum …
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There is a distinct moment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when Black Widow became a hero for the everyfan. It happens early in 2012’s The Avengers: She’s tied to a chair. Agent Coulson calls. A nondescript military leader who has been interrogating her hands her the phone. Coulson explains that …
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When ChatGPT was released in November 2023, it could only be accessed through the cloud because the model behind it was downright enormous. Today I am running a similarly capable AI program on a Macbook Air, and it isn’t even warm. The shrinkage shows how rapidly researchers are refining AI …
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Two things happened this week that got me really worried about AI’s role in the US election: First, WIRED published a massive story on how voters in India have received over 50 million deepfaked voice calls imitating candidates and political figures. That’s a lot of deepfakes, and voters are confusing …
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AI projects like OpenAI’s ChatGPT get part of their savvy from some of the lowest-paid workers in the tech industry—contractors often in poor countries paid small sums to correct chatbots and label images. On Wednesday, 97 African workers who do AI training work or online content moderation for companies like …
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In a product demo last week, OpenAI showcased a synthetic but expressive voice for ChatGPT called “Sky” that reminded many viewers of the flirty AI girlfriend Samantha played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 film Her. One of those viewers was Johansson herself, who promptly hired legal counsel and sent …
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One of the worst parts of online shopping is trying to figure out whether an item of clothing will actually fit. While some brands have begun hiring models with more diverse body types, the process still often requires a leap of faith—or making a lot of returns. Google announced Tuesday …
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For the past decade, AI researcher Chris Olah has been obsessed with artificial neural networks. One question in particular engaged him, and has been the center of his work, first at Google Brain, then OpenAI, and today at AI startup Anthropic, where he is a cofounder. “What's going on inside …
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Photo bombing is dead. Adobe is adding an artificial-intelligence-powered Generative Remove feature to its Lightroom photo editor that makes it dead simple to zap out unwanted elements, like that annoying guy in the background. The new feature is in a public beta-testing phase, but it will work across the Lightroom …
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Last week Google introduced a radical shake-up of search that presents users with AI-generated answers to their queries. Now the company says it will soon start including ads inside those AI Overviews, as the automatic answers are called. Google on Tuesday announced plans to test search and shopping ads in …
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