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After a closely watched vote, driverless cars, once a Silicon Valley fantasy, have become a 24-hour-a-day reality in San Francisco. Are autonomous vehicles an interesting and safe transportation alternative? Or are they a nuisance and a traffic-blocking disaster waiting to happen? Cade Metz, who covers technology for The Times, describes the unique challenges of coexisting with cars that drive themselves.

Persons: Cade Metz Organizations: The Times Locations: San Francisco

Elon Musk’s Unmatched Power in the Stars The tech billionaire has become the dominant power in satellite internet technology. Today, more than 4,500 Starlink satellites are in the skies, accounting for more than 50 percent of all active satellites. 53% of active satellites are Starlink.” The Starlink satellites are highlighted and are all operating in low-Earth orbit. How Starlink customers connect to the internet Starlink satellites orbit at much lower altitudes than traditional satellite internet services. “Everywhere on earth will have high bandwidth, low latency internet,” Mr. Musk predicted on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2020.

Persons: Elon Musk’s, Mark, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Elon Musk, Zaluzhnyi, General Zaluzhnyi, Musk, Musk’s, ”, Starlink’s, ” Mykhailo Fedorov, Mr, Biden, ” Dmitri Alperovitch, Sir Martin Sweeting, Sweeting, Mike Blake, Patrick Seitzer, Rafael Schmall, Joe Rogan, Jeff Bezos, Starlink, Russia —, Fedorov, —, Clodagh Kilcoyne, Nancy Pelosi, Colin H, Kahl, Lynsey Addario, messaged Mr, Lloyd Austin, Gregory C, Allen, we’ve, Mykhailo Podolyak, Volodymyr Zelensky, Jason Hsu, Hsu, “ Elon, Michael McCaul of, Tsai Ing, Tsai, Audrey Tang, Mariana Suarez, Thierry Breton, SpaceX, Chérif El, Amazon Organizations: Joint Chiefs of Staff, Ukraine’s Armed Forces, SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, Mr, U.S . Defense Department, NASA, Senior Pentagon, The Defense Department, Starlink, European Union, Silverado, Accelerator, Surrey Satellite Technology, Reuters, Airbus, Earth, Getty, Satellite, University of Michigan, National Science Foundation, Rivals, Amazon, Origin, Viasat, Pentagon, CNN, The New York Times, U.S, Defense Department, Center for Strategic, International Studies, Elon, Harvard Kennedy School, Republican, House Foreign Affairs, OneWeb, Agence France, European, United Nations Locations: Ukraine, United States, Iran, Turkey, Japan, Starlink, Crimea, Russian, Starlinks, Europe, Taiwan, China, Beijing, British, Colorado, Cape Canaveral, Fla, —, California, Florida, Latin America, Africa, Nigeria, Mozambique, Rwanda, Ukrainian, Russia, Kreminna, Aspen, Colo, Kherson's, Kherson, Dnipro, Shanghai, Taipei, Michael McCaul of Texas, del, Uruguay, European Union

☆ Researchers Poke Holes in Safety Controls of ChatGPT and Other Chatbots
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-27 | by ( Cade Metz | More About Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But the company said it offered its technology as open source software in an effort to accelerate the progress of A.I. Proponents of open-source software also say the tight controls that a few companies have over the technology stifles competition. And it is likely to become even more contentious because of what the researchers revealed in their report on Thursday. The researchers found that they could break through the guardrails of open source systems by appending a long suffix of characters onto each English-language prompt fed into the system. In similar ways, they could coax the chatbots into generating biased, false and otherwise toxic information.

Organizations: Meta

The largest companies in the tech industry have spent the year warning that development of artificial intelligence technology is outpacing their wildest expectations and that they need to limit who has access to it. Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said on Tuesday that he planned to provide the code behind the company’s latest and most advanced A.I. technology to developers and software enthusiasts around the world free of charge. The decision, similar to one that Meta made in February, could help the company reel in competitors like Google and Microsoft. Those companies have moved more quickly to incorporate generative artificial intelligence — the technology behind OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot — into their products.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Meta, Mr Organizations: Meta, Google, Microsoft

The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI, the artificial intelligence start-up that makes ChatGPT, over whether the chatbot has harmed consumers through its collection of data and its publication of false information on individuals. In a 20-page letter sent to the San Francisco company this week, the agency said it was also looking into OpenAI’s security practices. asked the company dozens of questions in its letter, including how the start-up trains its A.I. The investigation was earlier reported by The Washington Post and confirmed by a person familiar with the investigation. legislation to oversee the fast-growing industry, which is under scrutiny because of how the technology can potentially kill jobs and spread disinformation.

Persons: Sam Altman, A.I Organizations: Federal Trade Commission, San, The Washington Post Locations: OpenAI, San Francisco

☆ In the Age of A.I., Tech’s Little Guys Need Big Friends
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-05 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

From Hewlett-Packard to Google, the tales of bootstrapped companies that have turned into giants has inspired generations of entrepreneurs. In 2019, Aiden Gomez and Nick Frosst left Google to create an A.I. Several months later, they went back to Google and asked if it would sell them the enormous computing power they would need to build their own A.I. The big companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, he added, are controlling the chips. “They’re controlling the computing power,” he said.

Persons: Google Bard, Aiden Gomez, Nick Frosst, Sundar Pichai, ”, David Katz, Cohere’s, They’re, “ Organizations: Hewlett, Packard, Google, today’s, Radical Ventures, Microsoft Locations: Toronto

☆ How Could A.I. Destroy Humanity?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-10 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Hypothetical is such a polite way of phrasing what I think of the existential risk talk,” said Oren Etzioni, the founding chief executive of the Allen Institute for AI, a research lab in Seattle. Are there signs A.I. But researchers are transforming chatbots like ChatGPT into systems that can take actions based on the text they generate. In theory, this is a way for AutoGPT to do almost anything online — retrieve information, use applications, create new applications, even improve itself. “People are actively trying to build systems that self-improve,” said Connor Leahy, the founder of Conjecture, a company that says it wants to align A.I.

Persons: ”, Oren Etzioni, Connor Leahy Organizations: Allen Institute, AI Locations: Seattle, AutoGPT

☆ 10-year-old girl survives more than 24 hours alone in the rugged Cascade mountains after getting lost while out with family
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Paradise Afshar | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Rescuers in Washington state are praising the resourcefulness of a 10-year-old girl who survived on her own for more than 24 hours in the rugged terrain of the Cascade mountains after getting lost while out with her family. Kittitas County is about 85 miles east of Seattle. The sheriff’s office had the girl’s father record a message of reassurance in their native language that was broadcast over the search area, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office told CNN. The message told Shunghla that there were people looking for her and trying to help. She proved an extraordinarily resourceful and resilient 10-year-old,” the sheriff’s office said.

Persons: Shunghla Mashwani, Shunghla, couldn't, Office “ Shunghla, hadn’t, ” Shunghla Organizations: CNN, Rescuers, Sheriff’s, Office, KING Locations: Washington, Valley, Kittitas, Seattle, Afghanistan, Kittitas County

As the world begins to experiment with the power of artificial intelligence, a debate has begun about how to contain its risks. One of the sharpest and most urgent warnings has come from a man who helped invent the technology. Cade Metz, a technology correspondent for The New York Times, speaks to Geoffrey Hinton, whom many consider to be the godfather of 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.

☆ I felt strung out in the San Francisco Bay area so I moved to a small mountain resort in Washington state with my husband — here's why it was the right choice.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Robin Madell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Leslie Cousins was born and raised in the Bay Area, but started to feel strung out living in California. Cousins and her husband moved to a small mountain resort community in Cle Elum, Washington. I was born and raised in the Bay Area, while my husband Joe grew up in Boston and Chicago. Suncadia is located in a city that has a population of 2,299 compared to the 7.5 million population of the Bay Area. We belonged to a golf club in the Bay Area, and my husband was hoping to find a similar club community.

☆ Meta Gave Away Its A.I. Crown Jewels
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Matthew Cullen | Justin Porter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The tech industry’s race to develop artificial intelligence has been upended by a decision to give away a powerful system for free. In February Meta released LLaMA, an A.I. “It is out in the wild.”Meta, formerly known as Facebook, believes that sharing its underlying A.I. “Open source tends to win,” Cade said. “The difference now: The tech is potentially dangerous.”Separately: In Hiroshima, Japan, leaders of the G7 countries added A.I.

Twitter on Thursday sent a letter to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, accusing the tech giant of improperly using the social media company’s data. In the letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times, Twitter said Microsoft had violated an agreement over its data and had declined to pay for that usage. In some cases, the letter said, Microsoft had used more Twitter data than it was supposed to. Microsoft also shared the Twitter data with government agencies without permission, the letter said. The letter may be a prelude to Twitter trying to charge Microsoft for its data.

☆ OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT App for the iPhone
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In offering its flagship technology to billions of iPhone users, OpenAI is solidifying its position among the giants of the tech industry. ChatGPT is the most prominent example of what is called generative A.I., technology that can generate text, images and other media based on short prompts. Google, Microsoft and various start-ups have released similar bots and have begun to roll such technology into a wide range of online services. The result of more than a decade of research at companies like Google and OpenAI, these chatbots are poised to remake everything from internet search engines like Google Search and Bing to email programs like Gmail and Outlook. OpenAI is not the first to introduce technology that lets people use ChatGPT with voice; some small companies and independent developers have already done so.

☆ In Battle Over A.I., Meta Decides to Give Away Its Crown Jewels
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Cade Metz | Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As a race to lead A.I. heats up across Silicon Valley, Meta is standing out from its rivals by taking a different approach to the technology. Driven by its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta believes that the smartest thing to do is share its underlying A.I. Google, OpenAI and others have been critical of Meta, saying an unfettered open-source approach is dangerous. “We want to think more carefully about giving away details or open sourcing code” of A.I.

☆ Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When computer scientists at Microsoft started to experiment with a new artificial intelligence system last year, they asked it to solve a puzzle that should have required an intuitive understanding of the physical world. “Here we have a book, nine eggs, a laptop, a bottle and a nail,” they asked. “Please tell me how to stack them onto each other in a stable manner.”The researchers were startled by the ingenuity of the A.I. “Place the laptop on top of the eggs, with the screen facing down and the keyboard facing up,” it wrote. “The laptop will fit snugly within the boundaries of the book and the eggs, and its flat and rigid surface will provide a stable platform for the next layer.”

☆ The White House Pushes A.I. Leaders on Risks
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Matthew Cullen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

A push to limit A.I.’s risksThe White House hosted the biggest names in artificial intelligence — including executives from Microsoft, Google and OpenAI — in a high-profile push to grapple with regulation of a rapidly advancing technology. Vice President Kamala Harris, who hosted the meeting, told the executives they had a “ethical, moral and legal responsibility” to keep products safe. Experts have warned that A.I. “Many people who are at the heart of this movement have long believed that A.I. “I think that on many levels, they would welcome the regulation.”

☆ Opinion | We Are Opening the Lids on Two Giant Pandora’s Boxes
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Thomas L. Friedman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Well, if you are most worried about China beating America in A.I., you want to turbocharge our A.I. If you want to truly democratize A.I., you might want to open-source its code. systems will compound discrimination, privacy violations and other divisive societal harms, the way social networks do, you want regulations now. That last danger is real enough that on Monday Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneering designers of A.I. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton told The Times’s Cade Metz.

☆ What Exactly Are the Dangers Posed by A.I.?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In late March, more than 1,000 technology leaders, researchers and other pundits working in and around artificial intelligence signed an open letter warning that A.I. technologies present “profound risks to society and humanity.”The group, which included Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and the owner of Twitter, urged A.I. labs to halt development of their most powerful systems for six months so that they could better understand the dangers behind the technology. And some of the names behind the letter seemed to have a conflicting relationship with A.I. start-up, and he is one of the primary donors to the organization that wrote the letter.

☆ ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Geoffrey Hinton was an artificial intelligence pioneer. In 2012, Dr. Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto created technology that became the intellectual foundation for the A.I. systems that the tech industry’s biggest companies believe is a key to their future. On Monday, however, he officially joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers popular chatbots like ChatGPT. Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I.

☆ When A.I. Chatbots Hallucinate
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Karen Weise | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Chatbots like ChatGPT are used by hundreds of millions of people for an increasingly wide array of tasks, including email services, online tutors and search engines. But there is no way of ensuring that these systems produce information that is accurate. The technology, called generative A.I., relies on a complex algorithm that analyzes the way humans put words together on the internet. The tech industry often refers to the inaccuracies as “hallucinations.” But to some researchers, “hallucinations” is too much of a euphemism. Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing chatbots both repeatedly provided inaccurate answers to the same question.

In December, Elon Musk became angry about the development of artificial intelligence and put his foot down. He had learned of a relationship between OpenAI, the start-up behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT, and Twitter, which he had bought in October for $44 billion. Mr. Musk believed the A.I. So Mr. Musk cut OpenAI off from Twitter’s data, they said. Since then, Mr. Musk has ramped up his own A.I.

☆ Sam Altman compared the scale of OpenAI with the Manhattan Project and quoted Oppenheimer in 2019, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Sam Altman compared OpenAI's ambitions with the scale of the Manhattan Project in 2019, per the NYT. According to Metz, Altman also paraphrased the Manhattan Project's leader, Robert Oppenheimer, in a 1945 speech in which he justified creating the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a necessary expansion of human knowledge. "Technology happens because it is possible," Altman reportedly said, adding that he and Oppenheimer shared the same April 22 birthday, per The Times. Altman cautioned that AGI would come with a "serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and societal disruption" in the February blog post. Last Friday, Italy's national data protection agency announced that it was blocking access to ChatGPT and investigating OpenAI.

☆ The ChatGPT King Isn’t Worried, but He Knows You Might Be
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Cade Metz | More About Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Many in the field have criticized the decision, arguing that this set off a race to release technology that gets things wrong, makes things up and could soon be used to rapidly spread disinformation. On Friday, the Italian government temporarily banned ChatGPT in the country, citing privacy concerns and worries over minors being exposed to explicit material. This allowed him to pursue billions of dollars in financing by promising a profit to investors like Microsoft. His grand idea is that OpenAI will capture much of the world’s wealth through the creation of A.G.I. In Napa, as we sat chatting beside the lake at the heart of his ranch, he tossed out several figures — $100 billion, $1 trillion, $100 trillion.

Persons: Altman, Mr Organizations: Microsoft Locations: Italian, Napa

☆ 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.

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