In March 2018, one of Uber’s self-driving cars became the first autonomous vehicle reported to have killed a pedestrian. A new report by U.S. authorities suggests that the accident occurred because the car’s software was programmed to ignore jaywalkers.

Will AI fakery erode public trust in the key social institutions? Generative models will flood media outlets with convincing but false photos, videos, ads, and news stories. The ensuing crisis of authority will lead to widespread distrust in everything from the financial system to democracy itself.

Could humanity be destroyed by its own creation? If binary code running on a computer awakens into sentience, it will be able to think better than humans. It may even be able to improve its own software and hardware.

The French government plans to roll out a national identification service based on face recognition. Critics warn that the new system violates citizens’ privacy.

Amazon is writing what it hopes will become U.S. law governing use of face recognition technology. At a press event, Jeff Bezos told that his company’s lawyers are drafting a statutory framework to guide what he views as an inevitable federal crackdown on face recognition.

OpenAI raised eyebrows in February when it announced — and withheld — the full version of its groundbreaking language model, GPT-2. Six months later, the company has re-examined the decision.

A growing number of companies that sell standardized tests are using natural language processing to assess writing skills. Critics contend that these language models don’t make the grade.