Katherine Charles’ workdays are relentless. She’s one of thousands of call center workers who help Americans find suitable health insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA. Charles spends all day on the phone, with only a six-minute daily allowance to use the bathroom. She also gets two …
Read More »Humane’s Ai Pin is a $700 Smartphone Alternative You Wear All Day
For months, an odd sight has intrigued a San Francisco cop regularly stationed outside the downtown offices of the startup Humane. Out of its door have streamed employees with a small, square device pinned to their chests, not unlike the officer’s bulkier, department-issued body-worn camera. “Been wondering what those are,” …
Read More »How Humane’s Ai Pin Works
Phones are convenient, powerful devices, but they sure do gobble up a lot of our attention. How much of your day do you spend just holding your phone, staring at the screen? Humane, a company founded by a pair of ex-Apple employees, wants to squash the tyranny of the touchscreen. …
Read More »Hollywood Actors Strike Ends With a Deal That Will Impact AI and Streaming for Decades
After 118 days on the picket lines, the longest such strike in Hollywood’s history, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has reached a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Both sides were mum about the terms of the deal Wednesday night, but …
Read More »This New Breed of AI Assistant Wants to Do Your Boring Office Chores
This week, OpenAI announced a service that makes it possible for just about anyone to build a custom version of ChatGPT, no coding skills required. The company suggests that users may want to build a bot that knows the rules of all board games, teaches kids about math, or can …
Read More »The US and 30 Other Nations Agree to Set Guardrails for Military AI
When politicians, tech executives, and researchers gathered in the UK last week to discuss the risks of artificial intelligence, one prominent worry was that algorithms might someday turn against their human masters. More quietly, the group made progress on controlling the use of AI for military ends. On November 1, …
Read More »5 Key Updates in GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI’s Newest Model
OpenAI recently announced multiple new features for ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools during its recent developer conference. The upcoming launch of a creator tool for chatbots, called GPTs (short for generative pretrained transformers), and a new model for ChatGPT, called GPT-4 Turbo, are two of the most important announcements …
Read More »This AI Bot Fills Out Job Applications for You While You Sleep
In July, software engineer Julian Joseph became the latest victim of the tech industry’s sweeping job cuts. Facing his second layoff in two years, he dreaded spending another couple months hunched over his laptop filling out repetitive job applications and blasting them into the void. Joseph specializes in user interface …
Read More »Johnny Cash's Taylor Swift Cover Predicts the Boring Future of AI Music
When Texas-based copywriter Dustin Ballard released a cover of Aqua’s 1997 Europop hit “Barbie Girl” this summer using an AI-generated version of Johnny Cash’s voice, he was surprised by its reception. “I actually expected more of a backlash,” he says. Earlier this fall, when he followed up with AI Johnny …
Read More »Elon Musk Announces Grok, a ‘Rebellious’ AI With Few Guardrails
Last week, Elon Musk flew to the UK to hype up the existential risk posed by artificial intelligence. A couple of days later, he announced that his latest company, xAI, had developed a powerful AI—one with fewer guardrails than the competition. The AI model, called Grok (a name that means …
Read More »