A trove of internal documents leaked from a little-known Chinese company has pulled back the curtain on how digital censorship tools are being marketed and exported globally. Geedge Networks sells what amounts to a commercialized “Great Firewall” to at least four countries, including Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Myanmar. The groundbreaking leak shows in granular detail […]
Microsoft’s AI Chief Says Machine Consciousness Is an ‘Illusion’
Mustafa Suleyman says that designing AI systems to exceed human intelligence—and to mimic behavior that suggests consciousness—would be “dangerous and misguided.”
Inside the Man vs. Machine Hackathon
Then there’s Eric Chong, a 37-year-old who has a background in dentistry and previously cofounded a startup that simplifies medical billing for dentists. He was placed on the “machine” team. “I’m gonna be honest and say I’m extremely relieved to be on the machine team,” Chong says. At the hackathon, Chong was building software that […]
The Doomers Who Insist AI Will Kill Us All
The subtitle of the doom bible to be published by AI extinction prophets Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares later this month is “Why superhuman AI would kill us all.” But it really should be “Why superhuman AI WILL kill us all,” because even the coauthors don’t believe that the world will take the necessary measures […]
Psychological Tricks Can Get AI to Break the Rules
If you were trying to learn how to get other people to do what you want, you might use some of the techniques found in a book like Influence: The Power of Persuasion. Now, a preprint study out of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that those same psychological persuasion techniques can frequently “convince” some LLMs […]
Where's the Fun in AI Gambling?
On this episode of Uncanny Valley, we break down the role of AI in the online gambling scene.
Anthropic Agrees to Pay Authors at Least $1.5 Billion in AI Copyright Settlement
Anthropic has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by a group of book authors alleging copyright infringement, an estimated $3,000 per work. In a court motion on Friday, the plaintiffs emphasized that the terms of the settlement are “critical victories” and that going to trial would have been an […]
Should AI Get Legal Rights?
In one paper Eleos AI published, the nonprofit argues for evaluating AI consciousness using a “computational functionalism” approach. A similar idea was once championed by none other than Putnam, though he criticized it later in his career. The theory suggests that human minds can be thought of as specific kinds of computational systems. From there, […]
This Robot Only Needs a Single AI Model to Master Humanlike Movements
While there is a lot of work to do, Tedrake says all of the evidence so far suggests that the approaches used to LLMs also work for robots. “I think it’s changing everything,” he says. Gauging progress in robotics has become more challenging of late, of course, with videoclips showing commercial humanoids performing complex chores, […]
Meet the Guys Betting Big on AI Gambling Agents
Some up-and-comers are pushing to make agents that can actually place wagers instead of just supplying tips, but the field is off to a rough start. Tom Fleetham formerly worked as the head of business development for a blockchain platform called Zilliqa that experimented with an AI gambling agent called Ava, focused on picking horse […]