A Google engineer’s claims that a chatbot can feel things has prompted people to consider what consciousness means. It also begs the questions of the rights of sentient software and machines.
Kelly Bronson, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Big data from social media have been revealed as biased, but we should also pay attention to agriculture firms whose play for big data is likely to have detrimental environmental and social impacts.
Kyle Mahowald, The University of Texas at Austin and Anna A. Ivanova, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Fluent expression is not always evidence of a mind at work, but the human brain is primed to believe so. A pair of cognitive linguistics experts explain why language is not a good test of sentience.
The possibilities of ‘more human than human’ artificial intelligence and the dangers of playing God and are not new – they’re the subjects of one of the world’s first science-fiction novels.
The AI AlphaFold can figure out the three-dimensional protein structure any string of amino acids will become. It has now exceeded its training by figuring out what makes some proteins glow.
The Tim Hortons consumer app was found to have collected detailed user information, including location data. As a privacy violation, this challenges perception of Tim Hortons as a trusted brand.
A Google engineer claims one of the company’s chatbots has become sentient. Experts disagree, but the debate raises old questions about the nature of consciousness.
The text-to-art program DALL-E 2 generates images from brief descriptions. But what does it mean to make art when an algorithm automates so much of the creative process itself?
We’ve seen AI systems writing texts that are indistinguishable from human texts. Some are even rendering impressive 3D artworks from short text inputs. But it doesn’t mean they can ‘think’ like us.
Researchers are developing an AI-powered device to detect asthma and COPD symptoms in real-time for faster treatment. The ‘patch’ listens to airway sounds, but filters out speech to protect privacy.
Our research on a recent Australian court case shows how experts and lawyers can overcome opaque AI technology. But regulators could make it even easier, by making AI companies document their systems.