In-depth articles with more detailed investigations, interesting thought pieces, and more.
In an experiment, journalist Kashmir Hill let AI chatbots and tools make daily decisions for her for one week, as described in The New York Times. The generative AI systems saved time by quickly offering advice on meals, clothing, activities, and more, but their choices seemed to favor blandness and statistical averages over individuality. While …
Robert Zemeckis’ new film “Here”, starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, uses artificial intelligence to depict the main characters at various ages from 18 to 80. AI-powered visual effects company Metaphysic created digital masks of the actors that could be applied to their faces in real-time during filming, enabling the filmmakers to see the de-aging …
AI startup Anthropic, known for their Assistant Claude, is urging governments to take action on AI policy within the next 18 months to mitigate the growing risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems. In a post on their official website, the company argues that narrowly-targeted regulation can help realize the benefits of AI while preventing …
Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are set to spend a combined total exceeding $200 billion in 2024 to develop artificial intelligence, a record amount according to a Bloomberg report by Mark Bergen and Lynn Doan. Despite delivering mixed financial results, the companies plan to invest even more next year to secure high-end chips and build …
AI search tools that summarize information from across the web could replace traditional search engines, potentially disrupting the digital economy. According to an article by Benjamin Brooks, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, AI search poses a threat to content creators by diverting web traffic away from the original sources. Brooks argues …
Many recently announced “AI agents” are actually sophisticated automation systems, according to Brian Evergreen and Pascal Bornet writing for VentureBeat. True AI agents can research, reason, decide and act to achieve a goal with full autonomy, while automation simply follows predefined recipes when conditions are met. Identifying genuine agency requires looking at a system’s behavior …
Amazon has been working to upgrade its Alexa voice assistant with artificial intelligence to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but the project has faced repeated delays. According to Austin Carr and Matt Day reporting for Bloomberg, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy tested a prototype in summer 2023 and was initially optimistic, but the planned launch was pushed …
The rise of AI could lead to a 3-12% increase in global electronic waste by 2030, amounting to an extra 2.5 million metric tons annually, according to a study by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Reichman University in Israel published in the journal Nature Computational Science. The analysis, based on industry investment …
The research paper “Mind Your Step (by Step): Chain-of-Thought can Reduce Performance on Tasks where Thinking Makes Humans Worse” investigates the effectiveness of chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting in large language and multimodal models. While CoT has generally improved model performance on various tasks, the authors explore scenarios where it may actually hinder performance, drawing parallels from …
I often see discussions about the purpose and benefits of AI tools revolve around whether or not they can completely do your job. The answer is often clear: no, they can’t. If you want, you can always find a way to make AI look stupid. In a way, this is even helpful: you should always …