“AI – Artificial Intelligence”

A new Texas lawsuit against Character.ai, alleging its chatbots poisoned a son against his family, is part of a push to increase oversight of AI companions.

In just six months, J.F., a sweet 17-year-old kid with autism who liked attending church and going on walks with his mom, had turned into someone his parents didn’t recognize.

He began cutting himself, lost 20 pounds and withdrew from his family. Desperate for answers, his mom searched his phone while he was sleeping. That’s when she found the screenshots.

… I’m imagining a world where everyone has a personal AI assistant. Perhaps you’ve had it for years; perhaps eventually people will have them from childhood. It knows all about you, and it just wants to make you happy and help you enjoy your life. It takes care of chores and schedules and keeping track of things, it orders ahead for you at restaurants, it smooths your way through traffic or airports, maybe it even communicates with other AI assistants to hook you up with suitable romantic partners. (Who knows what you like better?) Perhaps it’s on your phone, or in a wristband, talking to you via airpods or something like that.

With temperatures dropping, nights growing longer and decorations starting to appear in store windows, the holidays are on their way. One of the season’s stalwarts, however, is feeling a little less cozy for some people: Coca-Cola, known for its nostalgia-filled holiday commercials, is facing backlash for creating this year’s ads with generative artificial intelligence.

The three commercials, which pay tribute to the company’s beloved “Holidays Are Coming” campaign from 1995, feature cherry-red Coca-Cola trucks driving through sleepy towns on snowy roads at night. The ads depict squirrels and rabbits peeking out to watch the passing caravans and a man being handed an ice-cold bottle of cola by Santa Claus.

The AI Genie is not going back in the bottle.

We risk losing control of our AI creations

In the summer of 2020, the Afghan military received an unusual report. Transmitted by their US allies, it warned of a possible Taliban attack in Jalalabad, a city in the fertile country’s southeastern plain. Suggesting the assault would come between 1-12 July, it identified particular locations at risk of attack. More than that, the report predicted the Taliban onslaught would come at the cost of 41 lives, with a “confidence interval” of 95%.

During its bitter fight against the militants, the Afghan government must have received thousands of such reports. What made this one so special was its provenance: not the drones and informants of its friends in the world’s greatest superpower, but rather Raven Sentry, an AI-enabled warning model designed to predict insurgent activity.

Are you sure about that, Alexa? Amazon’s voice assistant has been spreading fake news, it has emerged.

Full Fact, a fact checking group, discovered that Alexa was spouting misinformation and even citing the organisation as a source. There are more than 100 million devices worldwide that are Alexa-enabled.

A robot artist is set to make history as the first to have a work put up for sale by a major auction house, with the portrait of Alan Turing expected to fetch up to £150,000 (€180,000, $196,000), organizers announced on Wednesday.

The power of the Silicon Valley oligarchs is set to expand exponentially.

The emergence of artificial intelligence marks the latest acceleration of the digital age. Like any revolution, this one has winners and losers and will likely transform the relationship between people and machines. It could also lend yet more power to Big Tech and their technocratic elites in government.

Just as the Industrial Revolution elevated manufacturers and their financiers over the old aristocratic classes, the current shift erodes the power of the large industrial, often unionised, corporations and hosts of smaller businesses, in favour of a small coterie of elite firms, which are aggressively anti-union and have an unprecedented hold on both the capital markets and increasingly the human consciousness.

A musician in the US has been accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools and thousands of bots to fraudulently stream songs billions of times in order to claim millions of dollars of royalties.

Michael Smith, of North Carolina, has been charged with three counts of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges.

Prosecutors say it is the first criminal case of its kind they have handled.

YouTube streaming fraud…

Many cultures view robots as quasi-humans

In parts of Thailand, thanks to a confluence of modern technology and traditional beliefs, a peculiar transport service has emerged. The anthropologist Scott Stonington calls them “spirit ambulances”. Some Thai Buddhists feel morally obliged to preserve the life of an ailing mother or father by any means possible — even if there is no realistic hope of recovery, and even if it goes against the parent’s own wishes. Yet these same Buddhists believe that death should occur in the home, in the presence of family. So the dying parent is kept at the hospital until the last moment, receiving the best treatment medicine can provide, before being whisked home in a specially designed vehicle, the spirit ambulance.