In the quest for a reliable way to detect any stirrings of a sentient “I” in artificial intelligence systems, researchers are turning to one area of experience — pain — that inarguably unites a vast swath of living beings, from hermit crabs to humans. For a new preprint study, posted online but not yet peer-reviewed, … Read more
Scientists say artificial intelligence (AI) has crossed a critical “red line” and has replicated itself. In a new study, researchers from China showed that two popular large language models (LLMs) could clone themselves. “Successful self-replication under no human assistance is the essential step for AI to outsmart [humans], and is an early signal for rogue … Read more
Scientists have just resurrected “ELIZA,” the world’s first chatbot, from long-lost computer code — and it still works extremely well. Using dusty printouts from MIT archives, these “software archaeologists” discovered defunct code that had been lost for 60 years and brought it back to life. ELIZA was developed in the 1960s by MIT professor Joseph … Read more
Virtual reality (VR) experiences could soon get a lot more realistic thanks to a lickable device that lets you “taste” in virtual environments. The small, lollipop-like interface simulates up to nine flavors and can even be combined with smells to make the sensation of taste feel lifelike, scientists said in a new study published Nov. … Read more
In the 2016 science fiction movie Arrival, a linguist is faced with the daunting task of deciphering an alien language consisting of palindromic phrases, which read the same backwards as they do forwards, written with circular symbols. As she discovers various clues, different nations around the world interpret the messages differently — with some assuming … Read more
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) poses questions not just for technology and the expanded plethora of possibilities it brings, but for morality, ethics and philosophy too. Ushering in this new technology carries implications for health, law, the military, the nature of work, politics and even our own identities — what makes us human and … Read more
In summer 2024, several news outlets chronicled the “nightmarish” impacts Texas communities endured due to the din of noise emanating from nearby cryptocurrency mines. Residents of these communities reported that the unrelenting noise caused them to experience a range of ailments, including high blood pressure, chest pain and tinnitus. The noise levels of the cryptocurrency … Read more
Yoshua Bengio is one of the most-cited researchers in artificial intelligence (AI). A pioneer in creating artificial neural networks and deep learning algorithms, Bengio, along with Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun and former Google AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton, received the 2018 Turing Award (known as the “Nobel” of computing) for their key contributions to … Read more
More often than not, conspiracy theories become so far-fetched that they are both ridiculous and hard to fully disprove to die-hard believers. But the dead internet theory is one conspiracy that could hold more water than others thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and agents. This theory first appeared to surface on … Read more
Scientists have discovered that common AI models express a covert form of racism based on dialect — manifesting chiefly against speakers of African American English (AAE) In a new study published Aug. 28 in the journal Nature, scientists found evidence for the first time that common large language models including OpenAI’s GPT3.5 and GPT-4, as … Read more
