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☆ How Do the White House’s A.I. Commitments Stack Up?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-22 | by ( Kevin Roose | More About Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

This week, the White House announced that it had secured “voluntary commitments” from seven leading A.I. Getting the companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — to agree to anything is a step forward. They include bitter rivals with subtle but important differences in the ways they’re approaching A.I. Other labs, such as Anthropic, have taken a more cautious approach, releasing their technology in more limited ways. And are they likely to change much about how A.I.

Persons: — Organizations: White House, Google, Microsoft

Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon | Google Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Dario Amodei has been anxious about A.I. since before it was cool to be anxious about A.I. The result was Claude: an A.I.-powered chatbot built by Anthropic, Mr. Amodei’s A.I. Today, Mr. Amodei joins Kevin and Casey to talk about A.I. Plus, we watched Netflix’s “Deep Fake Love.”

Persons: Dario Amodei, Claude, Amodei’s A.I, Amodei, Casey, ” Organizations: Apple, Spotify Locations: OpenAI

☆ Silicon Valley has been subsidizing millennials' lifestyles for most of our adult lives. We'll still end up poorer.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Sirena Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

There's a reason why in the 2010s everything from Ubers to Netflix subscriptions felt oddly cheap. Now alternatives are gone and prices are up — so we'll still end up poorer. There's a reason why the 2010s felt like a great time for young people who wanted their lives phone-orientated and cheap. The progressives, perhaps, were a little too willing to compromise their principles for convenience. There was little public outcry as this all ostensibly benefited consumers, and temporarily created what the New York Times' Kevin Roose described as a "millennial lifestyle subsidy."

Persons: Adam Rogers, Kevin Roose, Netflix weren't, we're Organizations: Netflix, Morning, Silicon, New York Times

Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon | Google Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’This week, we answer more of your questions, like: What is ChatGPT’s carbon footprint? Why are engineers so sure artificial intelligence will keep getting better? And, why are there so many venture capital bros?

Organizations: Apple, Spotify, bros

☆ Inside the White-Hot Center of A.I. Doomerism
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-11 | by ( Kevin Roose | More About Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

labs and safety research organizations contain some trace of effective altruism’s influence, and many count believers among their staff members. Some Anthropic staff members use E.A.-inflected jargon — talking about concepts like “x-risk” and memes like the A.I. (Just one example: Ms. Amodei is married to Holden Karnofsky, the co-chief executive of Open Philanthropy, an E.A. Open Philanthropy, in turn, gets most of its funding from Mr. Moskovitz, who also invested personally in Anthropic.) safety was genuine, in part because its leaders had sounded the alarm about the technology for so long.

Persons: E.A.s, Dustin Moskovitz, Jaan, Anthropic, Sam Bankman, Fried, Bankman, Amodei, Shoggoth, Holden Karnofsky, Luke Muehlhauser, Moskovitz Organizations: Facebook, Skype, Open Locations: E.A, Jaan Tallinn, Anthropic

Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon | Google Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Whether it’s on TikTok or Twitter, A.I.-generated content is already flooding the web. So, what happens when the technology — prone to confidently making things up — starts ingesting itself? Then, the New York Times reporter Joe Bernstein talks about why Mark Zuckerberg wants to fight Elon Musk in a cage match. Plus, we put ChatGPT’s recipe generation to the test with A.I.

Persons: Joe Bernstein, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk Organizations: Apple, Spotify, New York Times

Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon | Google Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’This week, advertisers swarmed the beaches of southern France for the Cannes Lions advertising festival. Kevin says artificial intelligence is all anyone there can talk about, but admits the conference is making him rethink how quickly generative A.I. will take over the industry — despite the buzz. Then, the New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg on when remote work stopped being the future for tech companies. And finally: What does the newest season of “Black Mirror” tell us about what’s next for TV?

Persons: Kevin, Emma Goldberg, what’s Organizations: Apple, Spotify, Cannes Lions, New York Times Locations: France

Then, a deep dive into MrBeast and what his YouTube empire says about the future of the internet. Reddit came along and said, oh, we need to protect Reddit from the rise of these large language models. So I don’t think they’re totally out of the woods. But I don’t think people would say it was a golden age for how safe the platforms fell to use. But I want to challenge you on this, because I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad thing if we have past peak trust and safety.

Persons: kevin roose, you’ve, casey newton, casey newton Yes, I’ve, there’s, kevin roose I’m, Kevin Roose, ” casey newton, Casey Newton, Casey, Reddit, casey newton Right, roose, Steve Huffman, you’re, Kevin, It’s, They’re, casey newton Well, they’ve, we’re, Huffman, “, Redditors, We’ve, Everyone’s, we’ve, I’m, let’s, Sam Walton, Max, kevin roose Hey, kevin roose Oh, kevin roose Max Read, MrBeast, it’s, Jimmy Donaldson, He’s, Willy Wonka, he’s, somethings, haven’t, kevin roose We’ll, We’ll, kevin roose She’s, she’s, kevin roose MrBeast, Jeremiah, jeremiah howard, Jeremiah Howard who’s, Jimmy, Burger, You’re, Stefan Molyneux, PewDiePie, Paul, Let’s, Raman, kevin roose It’s, MrBeast financials, doesn’t, Logan Paul, they’re, Vincent Miller, Jon Hamm’s, Matthew Weiner’s, kevin roose Max, Will, Max Read, ” kevin roose, casey newton Max, Robert F Kennedy, COVID, Kennedy, Instagram, Connor Roy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Elon, Donald Trump, We’re, Jim Jordan, kevin roose Totally, Alex Jones, casey newton Totally, Kate Kalanick, Trump, Tucker Carlson, aren’t, — casey newton, hasn’t, Rachel Cohn, Jen Poyante, Caitlin Love, Alyssa Moxley, Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop, Marion Lozano, Sofia Lanman, Rowan Niemisto, Paula Szuchman, Tam, Nell Gallogly, Kate LoPresi, Jeffrey Miranda Organizations: The New York Times, Twitter, YouTube, Lamborghini, Netflix, Walmart, News, Producers, Meta, Instagram, COVID, Democratic, Washington Post, Apple, Republicans, Facebook, 4chan, Republican Party, Trump, Fox News, Stanford, Davis Locations: Hawaii, Reddit, Greenville , North Carolina, hysterics, New Jersey, New York, Greenville, North Carolina, Central, United States, Bay, San Francisco, Stanford

☆ OpenAI warned Microsoft not to rush the release of its Bing chatbot before it told users it loved them and wanted to be human, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Microsoft's Bing chatbot told users it loved them and wanted to be a human when it was released. OpenAI warned the company that its GPT-4 model could give bizarre responses, per the WSJ. Well, The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft previously warned OpenAI to move slower on Bing's release because it hadn't yet ironed out all these issues. After several users reported worrying interactions with Bing, Microsoft imposed limits to exchanges that contained user questions and Bing replies. "Very long chat sessions can confuse the underlying chat model," Microsoft said.

Persons: Microsoft's Bing chatbot, OpenAI, Bing, Kevin Roose, pilling, Microsoft execs Organizations: Morning, New York Times, Street Journal, Microsoft Locations: OpenAI, Bing

☆ The world's top H.P. Lovecraft expert weighs in on a monstrous viral meme in the A.I. world
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Mike Calia | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Lovecraft's novella "At the Mountains of Madness" — aren't quite perfect, according to the world's leading Lovecraft scholar, S.T. "While I'm sure Lovecraft would be grateful (and amused) by the application of his creation to AI, the parallels are not very exact," Joshi wrote. Read more: How to talk about AI like an insiderFirst of all, it's "shoggoth," not "Shoggoth," Joshi said. "It is a species name, not a proper name," Joshi wrote in an email to CNBC. For instance, a recent fake Toronto Blue Jays ad, created by a TSN producer who used text-to-video AI tech, is packed with horrifying images such as people feasting on each other's hot dog tentacles.

Persons: H.P, S.T, Joshi, Lovecraft, it's Joshi, He's, Kevin Roose, Roose, Harlan Ellison's Organizations: Lovecraft, Providence, The New York Times, CNBC, Times, Workers, Toronto Blue Jays, TSN Locations: A.I, Antarctica

Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon | Google Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple kicked off the week with the announcement of a mixed-reality headset: the Apple Vision Pro. Putting a computer on your face may seem weird, but if there’s one company that knows how to make nerdy stuff into the thing that everyone wants, it’s Apple. Will these fancy goggles be the next Apple revolution? Then, crypto had (another) terrible week after the S.E.C. Plus: Our teenage listeners on how they feel about social media.

Persons: Apple Organizations: Apple, Spotify, Apple Vision

☆ Why I Can’t Bet Against Apple’s Mixed-Reality Prowess
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There are plenty of reasons the Vision Pro could flop. apps — that there just aren’t a ton of people in the world who are interested in reading their emails in V.R. But I can’t dismiss the possibility that despite its limitations — such as the need to tote around a connected battery pack — the Vision Pro could be a hit. Part of my open-mindedness to the Vision Pro, I admit, is due to a kind of tech columnist PTSD. In 2013, before the first Apple Watch was released, I wrote a column confidently declaring that smartwatches were a dumb idea.

Persons: haven’t, smartwatches Organizations: Meta, tote, Apple, Vision, Apple Watch

☆ 6 Podcasts to Make Sense of A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-03 | by ( Emma Dibdin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

That unforgettable, and unsettling, Valentine’s Day encounter fueled ongoing debate over the implications of creating A.I. “Bot Love” delves into that subject, exploring what intimacy can look like between a human and a chatbot. Starter episode: “Bot Love 5 — Maybe I’ve Got A Problem”Produced by the M.I.T. Technology Review and hosted by Jennifer Strong, this deeply researched series provides weekly deep dives into how modern life has been transformed by A.I. Since then, “In Machines We Trust” has explored the use of A.I.

Persons: Kevin Roose, couldn’t, chatbot, Anna Oakes, Diego Senior, Jennifer Strong, A.I Organizations: Hollywood, The New York Times, Diego, Technology, “ Locations: ”

One is about the possibility that we’re going to have this super intelligent AI that’s capable of great destruction. casey newtonI think that’s right. But it’s just like — I don’t think — I don’t think about to do these things in the moment like Dan. I don’t think that there’s an ethical issue with doing what he wants to do. And yeah, I just think it’s going into an area that’s going to be uncomfortable for the friend.

Persons: kevin roose, casey newton, we’re, ” casey newton I’ve, kevin roose It’s, Kevin Roose, ” casey newton, Casey Newton, clowned, New York Times ’, Kate Conger, Casey, Ajeya Cotra, kevin roose Totally, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, They’re, Kevin, Dan Hendricks who’s, “, “ I’m, don’t, you’re, I’m, — casey newton, it’s, ChatGPT, casey newton I’m, I’ve, Martinez, Varghese, kevin roose Tyler, —, Steven A, Schwartz, ”, they’re, it’ll, there’s, Mr, Bean, We’ve, James Vincent, It’s, Jensen Huang, Harry Potter, Harry Potter of, kevin roose —, casey newton Parallelelizable, Parallelizable, — casey newton Let’s, that’s, who’s, NVIDIA —, casey newton Well, doesn’t, katie cogner, Kate Conger who’s, katie cogner Hi, katie cogner I’m, Dan, what’s, Getty, casey newton Kate, let’s, John, Here’s John, john, kevin roose That’s, Kate, he’s, He’s, he’ll, casey newton That’s, There’s, we’ve, “ I’ve, ” Kate, cogner, Prince Harry, katie cogner Doesn’t, Harry, casey newton We’re, We’re, kevin roose Kate, they’ve, Joni Mitchell, Chris Vecchio, Chris, kevin roose I’m, You’d, casey newton “, you’ll, casey newton Oh, ” kevin roose Organizations: The New York Times, NVIDIA, New York Times, Safety, Google, AI, ChatGPT, Avianca Airlines, Delta Airlines, China Southern Airlines, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Royal Dutch Airlines, “, Bar Association, Texas, M University Commerce, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Harry Potter of Kentucky Christian, Facebook, eBay, “ New York Times, Boston, Garden, MetLife, TED, AIs Locations: British, Avianca, Durden, ChatGPT, Taiwan, Kentucky, Hogwarts, Harry Potter of Kentucky, California, Madison, —

☆ Why an Octopus-like Creature Has Come to Symbolize the State of A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

executive in San Francisco, I spotted a strange sticker on his laptop. The sticker depicted a cartoon of a menacing, octopus-like creature with many eyes and a yellow smiley-face attached to one of its tentacles. Forget about chatbots and compute clusters — I needed to know everything about the Shoggoth, what it meant and why people in the A.I. The executive explained that the Shoggoth had become a popular reference among workers in artificial intelligence, as a vivid visual metaphor for how a large language model (the type of A.I. system that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots) actually works.

Persons: ”, “, ChatGPT Locations: San Francisco, A.I

☆ A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A group of industry leaders is planning to warn on Tuesday that the artificial intelligence technology they are building may one day pose an existential threat to humanity and should be considered a societal risk on par with pandemics and nuclear wars. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. The open letter has been signed by more than 350 executives, researchers and engineers working in A.I. companies: Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind; and Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic. movement, signed the statement, as did other prominent researchers in the field (The third Turing Award winner, Yann LeCun, who leads Meta’s A.I.

☆ Get the Best From ChatGPT With These Golden Prompts
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-25 | by ( Brian X. Chen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Welcome back to On Tech: A.I., a pop-up newsletter that teaches you about artificial intelligence, how it works and how to use it. A few months ago, my colleagues Cade Metz and Kevin Roose explained the inner workings of A.I., including chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard. People from all walks of life — students, coders, artists and accountants — are experimenting with how to use A.I. to streamline and improve your work and personal life. As The Times’s personal tech columnist, I’m here to help you figure out how to use these tools safely and responsibly to improve many parts of your life.

In a congressional hearing this week, OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, appeared to be on the same page as lawmakers: It’s time to regulate A.I. But like so many other proposals to regulate tech, will it actually happen? The Times’s technology reporter Cecilia Kang helps us understand whether Congress will actually act, and what that could look like. Then, Casey talks with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, before and after Elon Musk took over the company.

And so whenever I get one of those notifications, I know I’m going to have a good time there. kevin roose[LAUGHS]: I actually don’t think I could’ve told you what IBM stood for. kevin rooseSo I’ve thought a lot and written a lot about how and when AI actually is a threat to jobs. The third category is just the jobs that I think are going to be protected, the jobs that we won’t let AI do. But I don’t actually think the speed of it matters at all.

☆ Watch an A.I. Learn to Write by Reading Nothing but Jane Austen
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Aatish Bhatia | Aatish Bhatia Spent Weeks Reading Dozens Of A.I. Research Articles | Training Tiny Language Models On His Computer. Before Coming To The Times | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +12 min

This is how language models usually start off: They guess randomly and produce gibberish. Over many, many rounds of training, language models can learn to write. As language models grow larger, the patterns that they learn can become increasingly complex. More is differentOther than the additional fine-tuning stages, the primary difference between nanoGPT and the language model underlying chatGPT is size. Large language models can become highly unpredictable, as evidenced by Microsoft Bing A.I.’s early interactions with my colleague Kevin Roose.

☆ Bill Gates says A.I. chatbots will teach kids to read within 18 months: You'll be 'stunned by how it helps'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( Tom Huddleston Jr. | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

That's according to billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who says AI chatbots are on track to help children learn to read and hone their writing skills in 18 months time. AI chatbots, like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, have developed rapidly over the past several months, and can now compete with human-level intelligence on certain standardized tests. But AI chatbots' ability to recognize and recreate human-like language changes that dynamic, proponents say. And AI technology must improve at reading and recreating human language to better motivate students before it can become a viable tutor, Gates said. Gates said he regularly asks Microsoft AI developers why chatbots can't perform relatively simple calculations, or even multiply some numbers.

☆ How Should I Use A.I. Chatbots Like ChatGPT?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Kevin Roose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

In the previous edition of this newsletter, my colleague Cade Metz wrote that A.I. large language models (L.L.M.s) can be erratic and unreliable — giving false information and acting strangely toward users. I’ve been using A.I. tools like ChatGPT almost daily for several months now, and I’ve seen them spit out plenty of wrong answers. But I’ve also seen these A.I.

☆ Our quest to make AI love us back is futile — and dangerous
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But that's futile, experts say, because the AI of today can't feel empathy, let alone love. We've spent years trying to get AI to love us back. Experts told Insider that it's futile to expect the AIs that exist right now to love us back. During a simulation in October 2020, OpenAI's GPT-3 chatbot told a person asking for psychiatric help to kill themselves. Halpern, the UC Berkeley professor, told Insider AI-based relationships are perilous also because the entity can be used as a money-making tool.

☆ The Google engineer who was fired after claiming the company's chatbot is sentient says AI is the 'most powerful' tech invented 'since the atomic bomb'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Blake Lemoine, a former Google engineer, says AI is the most powerful invention since the atomic bomb. Lemoine was fired by Google in June 2022 after he claimed the company's chatbot is sentient. Now he's warning that the AI bots being developed are the "most powerful" pieces of technology invented "since the atomic bomb." Google fired Lemoine on June 22, saying he violated the company's employee confidentiality policy. A Google spokesperson told Insider in June that there is no evidence to support Lemoine's claims that the company's AI is sentient.

☆ The new Bing is acting all weird and creepy — but the human response is way scarier
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

It's a profit-making move designed to leverage our very human tendency to see human traits in nonhuman things. Look, I don't think we don't need to treat chatbots with respect because they ask us to. Making chatbots seem as if they're human isn't just incidental. So the real issue involving the current incarnation of chatbots isn't whether we treat them as people — it's how we decide to treat them as property. The robots don't care."

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