Illustration of Frankenstein painting a billboard with the text "Bunnies are the real monsters"
AI & Society

AI Spreads Disinformation: Understanding the fear of AI-powered disinformation

Will AI promote lies that deepen social divisions? Propagandists will bait online recommendation algorithms with sensationalized falsehoods. People who snap at the clickbait will be reeled into opposing ideological silos.
Illustration of two witches with half a pumpkin each and the moon behind them
AI & Society

The AI Community Splinters: Could geopolitics drive a wedge in the AI community?

Will international rivalries fragment international cooperation in machine learning? Countries competing for AI dominance will lash out at competitors.
Illustration of a neighborhood haunted by an evil pumpkin and a black cat
AI & Society

Giant Models Bankrupt Research: Will training AI become too expensive for most companies?

What if AI requires so much computation that it becomes unaffordable?The fear: Training ever more capable models will become too pricey for all but the richest corporations and government agencies. Rising costs will
Doctor holding candy and kid dressed as a ghost on a wheighing scale
AI & Society

Unfair Outcomes Destroy Trust: What could cause widespread backlash against AI?

Will AI that discriminates based on race, gender, or economic status undermine the public’s confidence in the technology? Seduced by the promise of cost savings and data-driven decision making, organizations will deploy biased systems that end up doing real-world damage.
Illustration of a hand putting candy on a trick or treat bag
AI & Society

The Black Box Has Dark Corners: Will we ever understand what happens inside black box AI?

Will we ever understand what goes on inside the mind of a neural network?The fear: When AI systems go wrong, no one will be able to explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
Data related to a system that purportedly identified breast cancer
AI & Society

Pushing for Reproducible Research: Experts criticize Google Health over AI transparency.

Controversy erupted over the need for transparency in research into AI for medicine. Google Health introduced a system that purportedly identified breast cancer more accurately than human radiologists.
Takes from Agence, an interactive VR project
AI & Society

RL Agents SOS!: Inside Agence, a reinforcement learning video game.

A new multimedia experience lets audience members help artificially intelligent creatures work together to survive. Agence, an interactive virtual reality (VR) project blends audience participation with reinforcement learning to create an experience that’s half film, half video game.
Series of images related to a technology used to draw maps during a fight fire emergency
AI & Society

Mapping the Inferno: Using computer vision to map wildfires

An AI-powered eye in the sky is helping firefighters control woodland blazes. California used maps drawn by neural networks to fight fires that threatened Yosemite National Park earlier this year.
Screen captures of online platform Dynabench
AI & Society

Dynamic Benchmarks: A platform for fooling language models

Benchmarks provide a scientific basis for evaluating model performance, but they don’t necessarily map well to human cognitive abilities. Facebook aims to close the gap through a dynamic benchmarking method that keeps humans in the loop.
Screenshots of some of the online registries storing algorithms for Amsterdam and Helsinki
AI & Society

Transparency for Smart Cities: Amsterdam and Helsinki launch public AI registries.

Two European capitals launched public logs of AI systems used by the government. Amsterdam and Helsinki provide online registries that describe the algorithms that govern municipal activities, such as automated parking control and a public health chatbot.
Excerpts of HBO documentary "Welcome to Chechnya"
AI & Society

Protected By Deepfakes: Documentary uses deepfakes to protect its sources.

Documentary filmmakers often shield the identities of people who might be harmed for speaking out. But typical tactics like blurring faces and distorting voices can make it hard for audiences to connect emotionally. A new
Makeup applied on female faces with the help of augmented reality
AI & Society

A Good Look for AI: How L’Oreal uses AI to power its virtual makeup try-on

Trying on new makeup is a hassle — apply, inspect, wash off, repeat. Not to mention the tribulation of visiting brick-and-mortar stores during the pandemic. Augmented reality is helping people try on all the makeup they want without leaving home.
Forbidden sign over different potentially dangerous falsehood symbols
AI & Society

YouTube vs. Conspiracy Theorists: How YouTube uses AI to spot conspiracies

Facing a tsunami of user-generated disinformation, YouTube is scrambling to stop its recommendation algorithm from promoting videos that spread potentially dangerous falsehoods.
Graphs with data related to Microsoft's library DeepSpeed
AI & Society

Toward 1 Trillion Parameters: Microsoft upgrades its DeepSpeed optimization library.

An open source library could spawn trillion-parameter neural networks and help small-time developers build big-league models. Microsoft upgraded DeepSpeed, a library that accelerates the PyTorch deep learning framework.
Different chess moves
AI & Society

Chess: The Next Move: Chess masters use AI to test variants of the game.

AI has humbled human chess masters. Now it’s helping them take the game to the next level. DeepMind and retired chess champion Vladimir Kramnik trained AlphaZero, a reinforcement learning model that bested human experts in chess, Go, and Shogi, to play-test changes in the rules.

Subscribe to The Batch

Stay updated with weekly AI News and Insights delivered to your inbox