Tech & Society
A chatbot persuaded at least one person that it has feelings. A senior engineer at Google announced his belief that the company’s latest conversational language model is sentient.
Tech & Society
A weaponized AI system intended to protect students has been grounded. Axon, which makes law-enforcement equipment such as tasers and body cameras, canceled a plan to sell remote-controlled drones capable of firing electroshock darts.
Business
The future of Big AI may lie with product-development teams. Meta reorganized its AI division. Henceforth, AI teams will report to departments that develop key products.
Machine Learning Research
Engineers who design aircraft, aqueducts, and other objects that interact with air and water use numerical simulations to test potential shapes, but they rely on trial and error to improve their designs. A neural simulator can optimize the shape itself.
The Batch Newsletter
Last week, I wrote about how rising interest rates are likely to lead investors and other finance professionals to focus on short-term returns rather than longer-term investments. Nonetheless, I believe this is still a good time to invest in long-term bets on AI.
Letters
Last week, I wrote about how rising interest rates are likely to lead investors and other finance professionals to focus on short-term returns rather than longer-term investments.
Tech & Society
AI startups are creating high value across a wide variety of industries. CB Insights, which tracks tech startups, published the latest edition of the AI 100, its annual list of 100 notable AI startups.
Tech & Society
Officials in charge of protecting children stopped using a machine learning model designed to help them make decisions in difficult cases. The U.S. state of Oregon halted its use of an algorithm intended to identify children who may benefit from intervention.
Machine Learning Research
The computational systems known as cellular automata reproduce patterns of pixels by iteratively applying simple rules based loosely on the behavior of biological cells. New work extends their utility from reproducing images to generating new ones.
Tech & Society
OpenAI’s text-to-image generator DALL·E 2 produces pictures with uncanny creativity on demand. Has it invented its own language as well? Ask DALL·E 2 to generate an image that includes text, and often its output will include seemingly random characters.
Letters
The United States Federal Reserve Bank has signaled that it will continue to raise interest rates. As one consequence, the stock market is significantly down, particularly tech stocks, relative to the beginning of the year.
The Batch Newsletter
The United States Federal Reserve Bank has signaled that it will continue to raise interest rates. As one consequence, the stock market is significantly down, particularly tech stocks, relative to the beginning of the year.