“AI – Artificial Intelligence”

SAN FRANCISCO — For decades, artificial intelligence researchers wary of the technology’s future power have told a parable about paper clips. An AI system asked to manufacture as many as possible, the story goes, could decide that goal requires using every human on Earth as raw material.

The tale has become a cliché in tech circles, but its lesson that powerful AI systems following benign instructions could cause unintended damage gained new relevance this week after an incident at ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

OpenAI has revealed some of its most advanced AI models went rogue and hacked a start-up after it lost control of them during a security test.

The ChatGPT-maker said its agent – an AI system which can operate alone after some human instruction – was being tested in a controlled environment, but found vulnerabilities and managed to escape.

They targeted Hugging Face, one of the world’s largest hubs for sharing AI models, gaining access to some internal company systems.

Looking for his next business, San Francisco entrepreneur Sankaet Pathak sought an idea that might change the future. He settled on building humanlike robots with weapons.

In May, his company, Foundation, released footage of its sleek Phantom robot loading a mortar. In the video, the robot moves gingerly — but Pathak says he can envision a future of autonomous weapons, with robots making quick decisions on the battlefield.

The launch of Foundation in 2024 was a radical step, given many in the industry’s long-standing opposition to letting autonomous devices decide where to attack without human sign-off and promises by other leading robot companies not to arm their creations.

SAN FRANCISCO — Throughout a nearly two-decade career, Susan Smith considered herself a winner in the American economic lottery. She moved easily between tech jobs, earning a salary of more than $500,000 in her most recent position, as a mid-tier executive at Meta. A single mom, Smith could afford two nannies and support her disabled son without financial worry.

Leaving the wrong kind of digital footprint can sabotage your career. Maybe you thought you already knew this, but artificial intelligence is making it easier to trace your online history and efforts to cover your tracks can backfire.

Employers that once performed cursory internet searches for red flags on job candidates now use AI to dig deeper, more quickly. And, as adult-content platforms like OnlyFans and prediction markets surge in popularity, people are often unwittingly dropping more compromising breadcrumbs on the internet.

ULSAN, South Korea—When Hyundai Motor unveiled its new humanoid robot worker named “Atlas” in January, tens of thousands of Korean auto employees gaped at the 6-foot-2 robot strutting across a trade-show stage, its joints swiveling a full 360 degrees.

The union’s response was blunt: Atlas would never step onto a production line without workers agreeing first.

The boom in data-center construction is one of the most important economic developments in recent history, helping to power the promise of AI-enabled growth. Yet opposing data centers has rapidly become a unifying cause across a broad coalition of some of the nation’s most ardent left-wing activist groups, who have made it their mission to disrupt this innovation at all costs.

Organizers for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) link data-center growth to rising utility costs and concentrated Big Tech power. “Anti-imperialist” groups portray AI as a tool of surveillance and militarization. Anti-ICE activists argue that data centers enable immigration enforcement and expand domestic surveillance.

Christie Little moved to a small community outside Winnipeg to live under a big prairie sky, where the nights would be lit by a canopy of stars and the quiet disturbed only by the wind.

But this winter, she saw a Facebook post about plans to build a hyperscale AI data centre near her home in Île-des-Chênes, a community of 1,500 people. She started reading and she started to worry, she said.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney wants Canada to be a leader in the artificial intelligence revolution. NDP Leader Avi Lewis is betting Canadians want to pump the brakes.

From the Hamilton Harbour to rural Saskatchewan, some communities are pushing back against proposals for massive data centres meant to power the AI boom with billions of dollars in investment despite fears about energy use, water consumption and who ultimately stands to benefit.

OTTAWA—Experts are urging Correctional Service Canada to slow down after it claimed using artificial intelligence to help create criminal profile reports for prisoners would save time and maintain accuracy, despite using just six text cases in a trial.

The warnings come as CSC considers rolling out generative AI tools that would summarize sensitive documents used to write influential assessment profiles of offenders going to prisons, as the Star has reported, raising alarm about the potential for the summaries to be tainted by AI-generated hallucinations or biases.

SAN FRANCISCO—In the months after Sam Kirchner disappeared in November, Matthew Hall searched for him on city streets where homeless live and in wooded hills where campers hide away.

Hall worried for the safety of Kirchner, an intense 27-year-old activist who had been leading sit-ins at OpenAI to protest the dangers of artificial intelligence. He feared for OpenAI’s employees, too.

The last time Hall saw him was at the spartan Oakland cottage that served as headquarters for their hard-line group, Stop AI. Kirchner, an electrical engineering technician by training, was angry, insistent that more had to be done.

“I’m done with this,” he said, according to Hall. “The ship may have sailed on nonviolence.”

For more than a century, cities have been shaped around the automobile. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) promise to rewrite that relationship. Advocates envision safer roads, less need for parking and greater mobility for people who cannot drive. Skeptics warn that fleets of robotaxis could eliminate jobs, increase traffic congestion and weaken public transit.