On Friday, a lone Microsoft developer rocked the world when he revealed a backdoor had been intentionally planted in XZ Utils, an open source data compression utility available on almost all installations of Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. The person or people behind this project likely spent years on …
Read More »Inside the Creation of the World’s Most Powerful Open Source AI Model
This past Monday, about a dozen engineers and executives at data science and AI company Databricks gathered in conference rooms connected via Zoom to learn if they had succeeded in building a top artificial intelligence language model. The team had spent months, and about $10 million, training DBRX, a large …
Read More »The Dark Side of Open Source AI Image Generators
Whether through the frowning high-definition face of a chimpanzee or a psychedelic, pink-and-red-hued doppelganger of himself, Reuven Cohen uses AI-generated images to catch people’s attention. "I've always been interested in art and design and video and enjoy pushing boundaries,” he says—but the Toronto-based consultant, who helps companies develop AI tools, …
Read More »AI Is Becoming More Powerful—but Also More Secretive
When OpenAI published details of the stunningly capable AI language model GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT, in March, its researchers filled 100 pages. They also left out a few important details—like anything substantial about how it was actually built or how it works. That was no accidental oversight, of course. OpenAI …
Read More »Get Ready for AI Chatbots That Do Your Boring Chores
A couple of weeks ago, startup CEO Flo Crivello typed a message asking his personal assistant Lindy to change the length of an upcoming meeting from 30 to 45 minutes. Lindy, a software agent that happens to be powered by artificial intelligence, found a dozen or so 30-minute meetings on …
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