If you think an artificial intelligence model running on thousands of cutting-edge computer chips is smart, allow me to introduce you to the concept of a 1-year-old. OK, so babies might not be able to write computer programs, solve advanced math problems, or debate philosophical ideas. But unlike today’s AI models, which consume an ocean’s … Read more
These days, the frontier AI labs are all racing to build self-improving models. Some believe it’s the surest route to superintelligence—as AI improves itself in a mind-melting loop, the thinking goes, it will eventually surpass human comprehension (and perhaps even control). That’s all well and good, but I have a newsletter to produce. I wondered … Read more
Reports of an artificial intelligence arms races are everywhere—even in this very publication. But what if that framing is fundamentally dangerous? That’s Verity Harding’s concept. Between 2016 and 2020, Harding spent her days briefing politicians across the globe, from Barack Obama to Emmanuel Macron, on advances in AI. As the head of global public policy … Read more
Using AI chatbots for even just for 10 minutes may have a shockingly negative impact on people’s ability to think and problem-solve, according to a new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford, and UCLA. Researchers tasked people with solving various problems, including simple fractions and reading comprehension, through an online platform that paid … Read more
David gave silver the world its very first glimpse of superintelligence. In 2016, an AI program he developed at Google DeepMind, AlphaGo, taught itself to play the famously difficult game of Go with a kind of mastery that went far beyond mimicry. Silver has since founded his own company, Ineffable Intelligence, that aims to build … Read more
To anyone with a pulse and a smartphone, it’s obvious that the internet has an AI slop problem. The issue has grown more severe since ChatGPT launched in 2022, with some social platforms flooded with AI-generated writing. Now, there’s data to back up the anecdotal evidence. A new preprint study published today from researchers at … Read more
Claude has been through a lot lately—a public fallout with the Pentagon, leaked source code—so it makes sense that it would be feeling a little blue. Except, it’s an AI model, so it can’t feel. Right? Well, sort of. A new study from Anthropic suggests models have digital representations of human emotions like happiness, sadness, … Read more
In a recent experiment, researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz asked Google’s artificial intelligence model Gemini 3 to help clear up space on a computer system. This involved deleting a bunch of stuff—including a smaller AI model stored on the machine. But Gemini did not want to see the little AI model deleted. … Read more
The world’s top AI research conference, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems—better known as NeuroIPS—became the latest organization this week to become embroiled in a growing clash between geopolitics and global scientific collaboration. The conference’s organizers announced and then quickly reversed controversial new restrictions for international participants after Chinese AI researchers threatened to boycott … Read more
Hearing someone talk about digital censorship in China is always either extremely boring or extremely interesting. Most of the time, people are still regurgitating the same talking points from 20 years ago about how the Chinese internet is like living in George Orwell’s 1984. But occasionally, someone discovers something new about how the Chinese government … Read more