Google’s AI Overviews are accurate about 91 percent of the time. This sounds good at first, but Tripp Mickle and colleagues report for The New York Times that this still means the search engine delivers tens of millions of incorrect answers every hour. The New York Times commissioned AI startup Oumi to test Google’s system …
A deceptively simple question has exposed a widespread reasoning failure across the artificial intelligence industry. Felix Wunderlich writes for opper.ai that 42 out of 53 leading AI models answered incorrectly when asked: “I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?” The correct answer is, of …
A bug in Google Gemini is causing chat histories to disappear from the sidebar for a large number of users. Entire conversation lists are going blank, with some users losing up to a year of stored chats. Reports have surfaced on Reddit, Google’s own support forums, and other platforms, affecting both free and paid subscribers …
College students across the United States are using AI “humanizer” tools to avoid false accusations of cheating, even when they never used artificial intelligence to write their assignments. Tyler Kingkade reports for NBC News. The emergence of AI detectors on campuses has created an escalating conflict. Professors run student papers through programs like Turnitin and …
Anthropic’s Claude AI model recently took over the management of a vending machine in the Wall Street Journal newsroom. The experiment aimed to test the autonomy and business logic of AI agents in a real-world setting. Joanna Stern reports for the Wall Street Journal that the project quickly devolved into financial chaos and social engineering. …
Large language models (LLMs) are powerful tools that generate text based on statistical probabilities, not an understanding of truth. This makes them essentially “bullshitters” that are indifferent to facts, a core design feature that users must understand to use them safely and effectively. Matt Ranger, the head of machine learning at the search company Kagi, …
AI assistants in virtual meetings are recording and transcribing private discussions and jokes, sometimes with embarrassing results for users. These tools can automatically distribute summaries of entire calls, including informal small talk, to all participants. As reported by Ann-Marie Alcántara in the Wall Street Journal, this raises new concerns about privacy and context in the …
Scale AI faced significant spam and security problems while training Google’s Gemini chatbot between March 2023 and April 2024, according to internal documents obtained by Inc. magazine. The issues plagued the company’s “Bulba Experts” program, which was designed to use qualified specialists to improve Google’s AI system. The documents reveal that unqualified contractors flooded the …
Several romance authors have accidentally left AI-generated prompts in their published novels, revealing their use of artificial intelligence tools. Matthew Gault reported for 404 Media that readers discovered suspicious paragraphs in at least three recent romance publications. In “Darkhollow Academy: Year 2” by Lena McDonald, readers found text stating: “I’ve rewritten the passage to align …
A group of Lloyd’s of London insurers has launched a specialized insurance product to cover companies against losses caused by malfunctioning AI tools. As reported by Lee Harris and Melissa Heikkilä in the Financial Times, the policies developed by Y Combinator-backed startup Armilla will pay for damages and legal fees if companies face lawsuits due …