Author: zppiot
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Knock, knock. Who’s there? An AI with generic jokes. Researchers from Google DeepMind asked 20 professional comedians to use popular AI language models to write jokes and comedy performances. Their results were mixed. The comedians said that the tools were useful in helping them produce an initial “vomit draft” that they could iterate on, and helped them structure their routines. But the AI was not able to produce anything that was original, stimulating, or, crucially, funny.…
To guess a word, the model simply runs its numbers. It calculates a score for each word in its vocabulary that reflects how likely that word is to come next in the sequence in play. The word with the best score wins. In short, large language models are statistical slot machines. Crank the handle and out pops a word. It’s all hallucination The takeaway here? It’s all hallucination, but we only call it that when we notice it’s wrong. The problem is, large language models are so good at what they do that what they make up looks right most…
McDonald’s is pulling the plug on a test that deployed artificial intelligence to take drive-thru customer orders, with the technology showing mixed results.McDonald’s told CBS MoneyWatch that it is ending its Automated Order Taker pilot, which used AI in drive-thrus to expedite orders. The fast-food giant, which launched the tech through a partnership with IBM in 2021, isn’t ready for now to deploy voice ordering across its restaurants. Some customers reported that McDonald’s chatbot sometimes got even simple orders wrong.”The goal of the test was to determine if an automated voice ordering solution could simplify operations for crew and create…
6/17: CBS Morning News 20:14 The U.S. government is suing Adobe, accusing the software maker of steering customers toward its most expensive subscription plans while concealing how much it costs to cancel.The Federal Trade Commission said Monday that Adobe deceives customers by “hiding” the early termination fee for the company’s services, which includes popular tools such as Acrobat, Photoshop and Illustrator. Specifically, Adobe encouraged consumers to enroll in “annual paid month” plans without disclosing that canceling could cost hundreds of dollars, according to the agency. Users who do try to cancel are met unfair roadblocks, the suit also alleges. The lawsuit,…
Social media platforms should post warning labels, similar to those now used on cigarette packs, for teenagers who are increasingly suffering from mental health issues that are partly tied to the apps, U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy said Monday in an opinion piece in the New York Times. “It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents,” Murthy wrote. The push would be similar to the warnings printed on cigarette packages, which Murthy noted have shown to “increase awareness and change behavior.” However, adding warning…
For nearly as long as surfing has existed, surfers have been obsessed with the search for the perfect wave. While this hunt has taken surfers from tropical coastlines to icebergs, these days that search may take place closer to home. That is, at least, the vision presented by developers and boosters in the growing industry of surf pools, spurred by advances in wave-generating technology that have finally created artificial waves surfers actually want to ride. But there’s a problem: some of these pools are in drought-ridden areas, and face fierce local opposition. At the core of these fights is a…
“If you make something that has a broad appeal to everyone, it ends up being nobody’s favorite thing,” says Mirowski. The experiment also exposed the LLMs’ bias. Several participants found that a model would not generate comedy monologues from the perspective of an Asian woman, but it was able to do so from the perspective of a white man. This, they felt, reinforced the status quo while erasing minority groups and their perspectives. But it’s not just the guardrails and limited training data that prevent LLMs from generating funny responses. So much of humor relies on being surprising and incongruous,…
Surf pools’ proponents frequently point to the far larger amount of water golf courses consume to argue that opposing the pools on grounds of their water use is misguided. PSSC, the first of the area’s three planned surf clubs to open, requires an estimated 3 million gallons per year to fill its pool; the proposed DSRT Surf holds 7 million gallons and estimates that it will use 24 million gallons per year, which includes maintenance and filtration, and accounts for evaporation. TBC’s planned 20-acre recreational lake, 3.8 acres of which will contain the surf pool, will use 51 million gallons…
A group of tech-driven artists from Oakland kicked off their inaugural Juneteenth hackathon this week, a tech event aimed at changing the way art is discovered and seen in their communities through a 21st century lens.One local muralist is finding a new path to present his work.It’s dusk after a long day at work. Timothy B is in a space where a spray of paint is adding another stroke of creativity to his mural. “When you’re on the wall, nothing behind me, nothing around me matters as much as what I’m doing in front of me,” the artist explained. The Oakland…
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Research shows young workers are feeling stressed and lonely at work Research shows young workers are feeling stressed and lonely at work 01:02 Wells Fargo fired more than a dozen workers last month after allegations that the employees were faking work activity on their computers. The bank terminated the workers after investigating claims of “simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work,” according to a filing cited by Bloomberg News, which earlier reported the firings. The terminations were reported in disclosures filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an organization that oversees broker-dealers in the U.S.”Wells Fargo holds employees to the…
Internet data scraping is one of the biggest fights in AI right now. Tech companies argue that anything on the public internet is fair game, but they are facing a barrage of lawsuits over their data practices and copyright. It will likely take years until clear rules are in place. In the meantime, they are running out of training data to build even bigger, more powerful models, and to Meta, your posts are a gold mine. If you’re uncomfortable with having Meta use your personal information and intellectual property to train its AI models in perpetuity, consider opting out. Although…
The outbreak of avian influenza on US dairy farms has started to make milk seem a lot less wholesome. Milk that’s raw, or unpasteurized, can actually infect mice that drink it, and a few dairy workers have already caught the bug. The FDA says that commercial milk is safe because it is pasteurized, killing the germs. Even so, it’s enough to make a person ponder a life beyond milk—say, taking your coffee black or maybe drinking oat milk. But for those of us who can’t do without the real thing, it turns out some genetic engineers are working on ways…
In late 2023, Catan Studios announced that it would be releasing a version of its game called New Energies, focused on climate change. The new edition, out this summer, preserves the same central premise as the original. But this time, players will also construct power plants, generating energy with either fossil fuels or renewables. Fossil fuels are cheaper and allow for quicker expansion, but they lead to pollution, which can harm players’ societies and even end the game early. Before I got my hands on the game, I spoke with one of its creators, Benjamin Teuber, who developed the game…
At Alpine Bio, a biotech company in San Francisco (also known as Nobell Foods), researchers have engineered soybeans to produce casein. While not yet cleared for sale, the beans are already being grown on USDA-sanctioned test plots in the Midwest, says Alpine’s CEO, Magi Richani. Richani chose soybeans because they’re already a major commodity and the cheapest source of protein around. “We are working with farmers who are already growing soybeans for animal feed,” she says. “And we are saying, ‘Hey, you can grow this to feed humans.’ If you want to compete with a commodity system, you have to…
“A lot of people are recognizing the obvious,” says Douglas MacMartin, a senior research associate in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell, who focuses on geoengineering. “We’re not in a good position with regard to mitigation—and we haven’t spent enough money on research to be able to support good, wise decisions on solar geoengineering.” Scientists are exploring a variety of potential methods of reflecting away more sunlight, including injecting certain particles into the stratosphere to mimic the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, spraying salt toward marine clouds to make them brighter, or sprinkling fine dust-like material into the sky to…