Attention to the Unseen

Carnegie Mellon University: Artificial intelligence chatbots are everywhere these days, from smartphone apps and customer service portals to online search engines. But what happens when these handy tools overestimate their own abilities? Researchers asked both human participants and four large language models (LLMs) how confident they felt in their ability to answer trivia questions, predict the outcomes of NFL games or Academy Award ceremonies, or play a Pictionary-like image identification game. Both the people and the LLMs tended to be…

Read More Read More

Gizmodo reports: Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don’t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge. Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at…

Read More Read More

Erica Klarreich writes: Randomness is a source of power. From the coin toss that decides which team gets the ball to the random keys that secure online interactions, randomness lets us make choices that are fair and impossible to predict. But in many computing applications, suitable randomness can be hard to generate. So instead, programmers often rely on things called hash functions, which swirl data around and extract some small portion in a way that looks random. For decades, many…

Read More Read More

Quartz reports: Meta’s chief AI scientist says even “cat-level intelligence” is “very far” away. His CEO just bet $14.3 billion on superintelligence. The contradiction crystallized last week when Mark Zuckerberg announced the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs, a brand new division led by Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang. Zuckerberg promised in a memo that “developing superintelligence is coming into sight” and called it “the beginning of a new era for humanity.” The declaration put Zuckerberg on a collision course with Yann LeCun, Meta’s top AI researcher and…

Read More Read More

The Internet of Things, which includes wearables, appliances and cars, is collecting an increasing amount of information about you. lupengyu/Moment via Getty Images By David Sella-Villa, University of South Carolina Some unusual witnesses helped convict Alex Murdaugh of the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul. The first was Bubba, Maggie’s yellow Labrador retriever. Prosecutors used a recording of Bubba to place Alex at the site of the murders. Given Alex’s presence at the crime scene, other witnesses then…

Read More Read More

Reece Rogers writes: Before Duolingo wiped its videos from TikTok and Instagram in mid-May, social media engagement was one of the language-learning app’s most recognizable qualities. Its green owl mascot had gone viral multiple times and was well known to younger users—a success story other marketers envied. But, when news got out that Duolingo was making the switch to become an “AI-first” company, planning to replace contractors who work on tasks generative AI could automate, public perception of the brand…

Read More Read More

Gizmodo reports: For the second time in two weeks, a study has been published that suggests that people who use AI regularly may display significantly less cognitive ability than those who don’t rely on it. The studies have bolstered critics’ accusations that AI makes you stupid. The most recent study was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and looked at a sample size of over 4,500 participants. The study, which looked at the cognitive differences between people who…

Read More Read More