AI & Society

389 Posts

Results from a poll by Pew Research Center
AI & Society

What Americans Want From AI: Pew survey asks 11,000 Americans about AI.

Adults in the United States tend to view AI’s medical applications favorably but are leery of text and image generation. Pew Research Center polled 11,004 U.S. adults for their opinions of AI in science, healthcare, and media.
Runaway LLaMA: How Meta's LLaMA NLP model leaked
AI & Society

Runaway LLaMA: How Meta's LLaMA NLP model leaked

Meta’s effort to make a large language model available to researchers ended with its escape into the wild. Soon after Meta started accepting applications for developer access to LLaMA, a family of trained large language models...
Romania's flags as a neural network
AI & Society

Deep (Learning) State: How Romania is using NLP as a political advisor.

Meet the Romanian government’s automated political adviser. The Prime Minister of Romania launched ION, a system that summarizes and organizes public comments for cabinet ministers, Politico.eu reported.
AI-generated images from the comic book Zarya of the Dawn
AI & Society

No Copyright for Generated Images: U.S. will not recognize copyrights for AI-generated images.

The output of AI-driven image generators is not protected by copyright in the United States. The U.S. Copyright Office concluded that copyright does not apply to images generated by the image generator Midjourney.
Different screen captures of Replika's website
AI & Society

Hot Bot Turns Cold: Why Replika's chatbot stopped flirting with users.

A chatbot that simulated erotic companionship stopped sharing intimacies, leaving some users heartbroken. Replika, a chatbot app, deactivated features that allowed premium users to engage in sexually explicit chat with the 3D avatar of their choice, Vice reported.
Bing logo talking to a therapist during a therapy session
AI & Society

Bing Unbound: A roundup of wacky behavior from the new AI-powered Bing

Microsoft aimed to reinvent web search. Instead, it showed that even the most advanced text generators remain alarmingly unpredictable. In the two weeks since Microsoft integrated an OpenAI chatbot with its Bing search engine, users have reported...
Security cameras somewhere around the Red Square in Moscow, Russia
AI & Society

From Pandemic to Panopticon: How Russia is using face recognition to punish dissidents.

Governments are repurposing Covid-focused face recognition systems as tools of repression. Russia’s internal security forces are using Moscow’s visual surveillance system, initially meant to help enforce pandemic-era restrictions, to crack down on anti-government...
Drone with thermal night vision camera view of soldiers walking on a field
AI & Society

New Rules for Military AI: China, U.S., and other nations want limits on military AI.

Nations tentatively agreed to limit their use of autonomous weapons. Representatives of 60 countries endorsed a nonbinding resolution that calls for responsible development, deployment, and use of military AI. Parties to the agreement include China and the United states but not Russia.
Synthetic avatar created using the Synthesia demo
AI & Society

News You Can Misuse: Disinformation groups used AI to spread propaganda.

Political forces used a commercial AI service to generate deepfaked propaganda. Videos have appeared on social media that show AI-generated characters speaking against the United States or in favor of foreign governments. The clips feature synthetic avatars offered by the startup Synthesia.
Excerpts from NIST AI Risk Management Framework
AI & Society

Guidelines for Managing AI Risk: NIST released its AI Risk Management Framework.

The United States government published guidelines designed to help organizations limit harm from AI. The National Institute for Standards and Technology, which recommends technological standards in a variety of industries, released the initial version of its AI Risk Management Framework.
Cruise self-driving car service shown in two angles
AI & Society

Robotaxis Face Headwinds: San Francisco pushes back on self-driving cars.

San Francisco officials are pushing back on self-driving taxis in the city after a deluge of public complaints.
Onscreen text shown in a Tesla video from 2026
AI & Society

Self-Driving Deception: Tesla allegedly misled the public about its self-driving.

Tesla, whose autonomous-vehicle technology has been implicated in a number of collisions, promoted it in a way that apparently was intended to deceive. Tesla deliberately misled the public about its vehicles’ ability to drive themselves, according to Bloomberg and other news outlets.
World map with all countries covered in words except China
AI & Society

Regulators Target Deepfakes: China's new law limits AI-generated media.

China’s internet watchdog issued new rules that govern synthetic media. Legislation from the Cyberspace Administration of China limits the use of AI to create or edit text, audio, video, images, and 3D digital renderings. The law took effect on January 10.
Open water tap providing sentences instead of water
AI & Society

Generate Articles, Publish Errors: CNET pauses its practice of writing news articles with AI.

A prominent tech-news website generated controversy (and mistakes) by publishing articles written by AI. CNET suspended its practice of publishing articles produced by a text-generation model following news reports that exposed the articles’ authorship.
Screen capture of KokoBot having a conversation with a patient
AI & Society

Bot Therapy and Informed Consent: Discord's Kokobot triggers an ethics controversy.

An experiment in using chatbots to dispense mental-health counseling raised questions about ethics.

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