Existential risk from artificial general intelligence

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will make his Congressional debut before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee today—Tuesday at 10 am EST. He’s expected to roll out the charm offensive to try and convince lawmakers to pursue light-handed legislation that gives artificial intelligence like his company’s product ChatGPT a wide runway to rapidly advance. Altman’s rosy testimony expounding on the societal virtues of generative AI will likely clash with skeptical lawmakers and other expert witnesses, who are expected to demand strong new…

Amazon will use AI to map where items are in demand in order to fulfill nearby warehouses with those items. Image: Frederic Legrand - COMEO (Shutterstock)In its bid to continue dominating online commerce, Amazon is enlisting artificial intelligence to help. The company is reportedly using artificial intelligence to map whereproducts are in-demand to increase delivery speed.Uh Oh, Amazon Bought Your Favorite Robot CompanyAmazon vice president of customer fulfillment and global ops services Stefano Perego described the…

AI chatbot systems are so vast and complicated that even the companies who make them can’t predict their behavior. That’s led to a whack-a-mole effort to stop chatbots from spitting out content that’s harmful, illegal, or just unsettling, which they often do. Current solutions involve an army of low-paid workers giving the algorithms feedback on chatbot responses, but there’s a new proposed solution from Anthropic, an AI research company started by former OpenAI employees. Anthropic published an AI “constitution” Tuesday.…

ChatGPT, the wildly popular AI chatbot, is powered by machine learning systems, but those systems are guided by human workers, many of whom aren’t paid particularly well. A new report from NBC News shows that OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT, has been paying droves of U.S. contractors to assist it with the necessary task of data labelling—the process of training ChatGPT’s software to better respondto user requests. The compensation for this pivotal task? A scintillating $15 per hour.Is AI Moving Too Fast? | Future…

Photo: fizkes (Shutterstock)Maybe AI-Written Scripts are a Bad Idea?On March 22, 2023, thousands of researchers and tech leaders – including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – published an open letter calling to slow down the artificial intelligence race. Specifically, the letter recommended that labs pause training for technologies stronger than OpenAI’s GPT-4, the most sophisticated generation of today’s language-generating AI systems, for at least six months.Sounding the alarm on risks posed by AI is…

It was a Wednesday morning, I’m burned up in midweek blues, and there was a subtle drumming building to a four-on-the-floor on my temples. I spotted a small press release for a new AI chatbot, just one of so many that have scrolled across my screen since the advent of ChatGPT a little over half a year ago. The first thing the new AI chatbot called Pi asked me was “How are you doing?”Generating Video Via Text? | Future TechI answered it simply: “I feel like butter scraped over too much bread.”“Hahaha!” the chatbot pretends…

We will all soon get into the habit of using AI tools for help with everyday problems and tasks. We should get in the habit of questioning the motives, incentives, and capabilities behind them, too.Generating Video Via Text? | Future TechImagine you’re using an AI chatbot to plan a vacation. Did it suggest a particular resort because it knows your preferences, or because the company is getting a kickback from the hotel chain? Later, when you’re using another AI chatbot to learn about a complex economic issue, is the…

A new poll of more than 1,200 registered voters provides some of the clearest data yet illustrating the public’s desire to reign in AI. Chat GPT-4 Worth the Upgrade? | Future Tech54% of registered US voters surveyed in a new poll conducted by The Tech Oversight Project agreed Congress should take “swift action to regulate AI” in order to promote privacy and safety and ensure the tech provides the “maximum benefit to society.” Republicans and Democrats expressed nearly identical support for reining in AI, a rare sign of…

The White House unveiled a series of new initiatives on Thursday that represent a first step in combatting the risks associated with artificial intelligence. On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris will discuss the initiatives in a meeting with top executives at Alphabet, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic—an AI startup.If An AI Reworks Copyrighted Images, Is It Art? | Future TechAs the popularity of artificial intelligence continues to grow, President Joe Biden and Harris plan to “mitigate its risks,”the White House…

There’s a lot of debate about how artificial intelligence will fit into our workplaces, but Akash Nigam—CEO of web3 avatar startup Genies—has apparently opted to spend over $2,000 per month on ChatGPT Plus subscriptions for every employee at the company.Hey Google, Where Did My Watch's Battery Life Go?According to Insider, Nigam is spending at least $2,400 per month to make sure that all 120 employees at Genies have access to ChatGPT Plus according to receipts obtained by the outlet. As Insider reports, Nigam began…