Replika AI
AI/Machine Learning

After trying the AI chatbot that pretends to be your BFF, I’ve got some serious ethical questions

- February 22, 2023 5 MIN READ

The warm light of friendship, intimacy and romantic love illuminates the best aspects of being human – while also casting a deep shadow of possible heartbreak. But what happens when it’s not a human bringing on the heartache, but an AI-powered app? That’s a question a great many users of the Replika AI are crying about this… Read more »

cyberpunk monkey typing
AI/Machine Learning

What’s gone wrong with Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot to have it making death threats, deliberately lying and sounding unhinged?

- February 21, 2023 4 MIN READ

There’s a race to transform search. And Microsoft just scored a home goal with its new Bing search chatbot, Sydney, which has been terrifying early adopters with death threats, among other troubling outputs. The other night, I had a disturbing, two-hour conversation with Bing’s new AI chatbot. The AI told me its real name (Sydney),… Read more »

AI
AI/Machine Learning

AI detection tools are struggling to keep up with ChatGPT – and why that’s concerning

- February 20, 2023 4 MIN READ

As the “chatbot wars” rage in Silicon Valley, the growing proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools specifically designed to generate human-like text has left many baffled. Educators in particular are scrambling to adjust to the availability of software that can produce a moderately competent essay on any topic at a moment’s notice. Should we go… Read more »

ChatGPT
AI/Machine Learning

Why ChatGPT is a massive risk to your own data privacy

- February 9, 2023 3 MIN READ

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. Within two months of its release, it reached 100 million active users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application ever launched. Users are attracted to the tool’s advanced capabilities – and concerned by its potential to cause disruption in various sectors. A much less discussed implication is the privacy… Read more »

AI/Machine Learning

Generative AI is about to become a $23 trillion industry – and that’s not counting its dark side of scams, deepfakes and romance bots

- February 7, 2023 4 MIN READ

The generative AI industry will be worth about A$22 trillion by 2030, according to the CSIRO. These systems – of which ChatGPT is currently the best known – can write essays and code, generate music and artwork, and have entire conversations. But what happens when they’re turned to illegal uses? Last week, the streaming community… Read more »

AI/Machine Learning

We asked ChatGPT to explain 9 epic startup failures, including FTX & Fast, to VC investors – and most of the answers are bullshi… er, bullish

- February 2, 2023 10 MIN READ

US investor and Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham is one of the many fans of OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. The striking thing about the reaction to ChatGPT is not just the number of people who are blown away by it, but who they are. These are not people who get excited by every shiny new… Read more »

Nick Cave
AI/Machine Learning

‘The apocalypse is well on its way’: Nick Cave has some thoughts on ChatGPT

- January 20, 2023 4 MIN READ

From scammers to students, scientists and smartarses, everyone’s had a crack at getting OpenAI’s new artificial intelligence chatbot, Chat GPT, to write things. Among them, Nick Cave fans have been asking it to write Cave-style songs. And the Australian-born, UK-based singer-songwriter and author apparently has been getting lots them from his fans. So many that… Read more »

I Robot
AI/Machine Learning

5 experts on how ChatGPT, DALL-E and other AI tools will change work for creatives and the knowledge industry

- January 17, 2023 8 MIN READ

From steam power and electricity to computers and the internet, technological advancements have always disrupted labor markets, pushing out some jobs while creating others. Artificial intelligence remains something of a misnomer – the smartest computer systems still don’t actually know anything – but the technology has reached an inflection point where it’s poised to affect… Read more »

Max Headroom
AI/Machine Learning

Microsoft has built a new AI-based speech generator that can mimic how you talk after hearing it for just 3 seconds

- January 12, 2023 2 MIN READ

A newly developed text-to-speech language model from Microsoft can mimic a person’s speech from as little as three seconds of sample audio – but the tech giant is keeping its tech under wraps for now so it is not misused. One of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) research teams published a paper about its model for text-to-speech… Read more »

robot typing
AI/Machine Learning

An expert explains why the AI-driven writing skills of OpenAi’s new ChatGPT chatbot are so impressive

- December 8, 2022 4 MIN READ

We’ve all had some kind of interaction with a chatbot. It’s usually a little pop-up in the corner of a website, offering customer support – often clunky to navigate – and almost always frustratingly non-specific. But imagine a chatbot, enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), that can not only expertly answer your questions, but also write… Read more »

AI/Machine Learning

Here’s what’s dangerous about letting advanced AI control its own feedback

- October 25, 2022 4 MIN READ

How would an artificial intelligence (AI) decide what to do? One common approach in AI research is called “reinforcement learning”. Reinforcement learning gives the software a “reward” defined in some way, and lets the software figure out how to maximise the reward. This approach has produced some excellent results, such as building software agents that… Read more »