AI & Society
U.S. Acts Against Algorithmic Bias
Regulators are forcing Meta (formerly Facebook) to display certain advertisements more evenly across its membership.What’s new: The United States government compelled Meta to revise its ad-
AI & Society
202 Posts
AI & Society
Toward Next-Gen Language Models
A new benchmark aims to raise the bar for large language models.What’s new: Researchers at 132 institutions worldwide introduced the Beyond the Imitation Game benchmark (BIG-bench), which includes tasks that humans
AI & Society
Wind in the Forecast
Machine learning is making wind power more predictable.What’s new: Engie SA, a multinational energy utility based in France, is the first customer for an AI-powered tool from Google that predicts the energy output of
AI & Society
LaMDA Comes Alive?
A chatbot persuaded at least one person that it has feelings.What’s new: A senior engineer at Google announced his belief that the company’s latest conversational language model is sentient. Google put the
AI & Society
Ethics Team Scuttles Taser Drone
A weaponized AI system intended to protect students has been grounded.What’s new: Axon, which makes law-enforcement equipment such as tasers and body cameras, canceled a plan to sell remote-controlled drones capable of firing
AI & Society
Standout Startups
AI startups are creating high value across a wide variety of industries.What’s new: CB Insights, which tracks tech startups, published the latest edition of the AI 100, its annual list of 100 notable AI startups. The list includes
AI & Society
DALL·E 2’s Emergent Vocabulary
OpenAI’s text-to-image generator DALL·E 2 produces pictures with uncanny creativity on demand. Has it invented its own language as well?What’s new: Ask DALL·E 2 to generate an image that includes text, and often its
AI & Society
Child-Welfare Agency Drops AI
Officials in charge of protecting children stopped using a machine learning model designed to help them make decisions in difficult cases.What’s new: The U.S. state of Oregon halted its use of an algorithm intended to
AI & Society
Actors Act Against AI
Performing artists are taking action to protect their earning power against scene-stealing avatars.What’s new: Equity, a union of UK performing artists, launched a campaign to
AI & Society
K-Means Clustering: Group Think
If you’re standing close to others at a party, it’s likely that you have something in common. This is the idea behind using k-means clustering to split data points into groups. Whether the groups formed via human agency or some other force, this
AI & Society
Decision Trees: From Root to Leaves
What kind of beast was Aristotle? The philosopher's follower Porphyry, who lived in Syria during the third century, came up with a logical way to answer the question. He organized Aristotle’s proposed “categories of being” from general to
AI & Society
Neural Networks: Find the Function
Let’s get this out of the way: A brain is not a cluster of graphics processing units, and if it were, it would run software far more complex than the typical artificial neural network. Yet neural networks were inspired by the brain’s architecture:
AI & Society
Gradient Descent: It’s All Downhill
Imagine hiking in the mountains past dusk and finding that you can’t see much beyond your feet. And your phone’s battery died so you can’t use a GPS app to find your way home. You might find the quickest path down via gradient descent. Just
AI & Society
Logistic Regression: Follow the Curve
There was a moment when logistic regression was used to classify just one thing: If you drink a vial of poison, are you likely to be labeled “living” or “deceased”? Times have changed, and today not only does calling emergency services provide a better
AI & Society
One Model, Hundreds of Tasks
Researchers took a step toward achieving a longstanding goal: One model that performs a whole lot of very different tasks.What's new: Scott Reed, Konrad Żołna, Emilio Parisotto and a team at
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