Text-to-image AI models can be tricked into generating disturbing images
Popular text-to-image AI models can be prompted to ignore their safety filters and generate disturbing images. A group of researchers managed to get both Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s DALL-E 2’s text-to-image models to disregard their policies and create images of naked people, dismembered bodies, and other violent and sexual scenarios. Their work, which…
Read More
Google DeepMind wants to define what counts as artificial general intelligence
AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is one of the hottest topics in tech today. It’s also one of the most controversial. A big part of the problem is that few people agree on what the term even means. Now a team of Google DeepMind researchers has put out a paper that cuts through the cross…
Read More
Behind Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s push to get AI tools in developers’ hands
In San Francisco last week, everyone’s favorite surprise visitor was Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. At OpenAI’s DevDay—the company’s first-ever event for developers building on its platform—Nadella bounded on stage to join OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, blowing the hair back on an already electrified audience. “You guys have built something magic,” he gushed. Two days later…
Read More
Google DeepMind’s weather AI can forecast extreme weather faster and more accurately
This year the Earth has been hit by a record number of unpredictable extreme weather events made worse by climate change. Predicting them faster and with greater accuracy could enable us to prepare better for natural disasters and help save lives. A new AI model from Google DeepMind could make that easier. In research published…
Read More
AI is at an inflection point, Fei-Fei Li says
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. “This moment in AI is an inflection moment,” Fei-Fei Li told me recently. Li is co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute and one of the most prominent computer science researchers of…
Read More
How Facebook went all in on AI
The following is excerpted from BROKEN CODE: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets by Jeff Horwitz. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Jeff Horwitz. In 2006, the U.S. patent office received a filing…
Read More
Noise-canceling headphones could let you pick and choose the sounds you want to hear
Future noise-canceling headphones could let users opt back in to certain sounds they’d like to hear, such as babies crying, birds tweeting, or alarms ringing. The technology that makes it possible, called semantic hearing, could pave the way for smarter hearing aids and earphones, allowing the wearer to filter out some sounds while boosting others. …
Read More
Bridging the expectation-reality gap in machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is now mission critical in every industry. Business leaders are urging their technical teams to accelerate ML adoption across the enterprise to fuel innovation and long-term growth. But there is a disconnect between business leaders’ expectations for wide-scale ML deployment and the reality of what engineers and data scientists can actually build…
Read More
AI gains momentum in core manufacturing services functions
When considering the potential for AI systems to change manufacturing, Ritu Jyoti, global AI research lead at market-intelligence firm IDC, points to windmill manufacturers. To improve windmills before AI, she says, the company analyzed data from observing a functioning prototype, a process that took weeks. Now, the manufacturer has dramatically shortened the process using a…
Read More
People shouldn’t pay such a high price for calling out AI harms
This week everyone is talking about AI. The White House just unveiled a new executive order that aims to promote safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems. It’s the most far-reaching bit of AI regulation the US has produced yet, and my colleague Tate Ryan-Mosley and I have highlighted three things you need to know about…
Read More