“While pessimists fret that a new kind of intelligent automation will mean social, economic, and political upheaval, the fact is that the robots are already here and the humans are doing what we have always done in the face of change: anticipating an

IN FEBRUARY, GOOGLE released an upgraded version of its Gemini artificial intelligence model. It quickly became a publicity disaster, as people discovered that requests for images of Vikings generated tough-looking Africans while pictures of Nazi sol

POPULISM CONTINUES TO blur political lines. Nowhere is that more apparent than in antitrust policy. For decades, conservatives largely held the line against left-wing antitrust hawks who see “monopolies” everywhere. But their mistrust of Big Tech’s p

In England, the Dacorum Borough Council issued fines for littering to multiple men who pulled off the road in a rural area to urinate, including one with a weakened prostate. A BBC report later found the council had issued hundreds of fines for publi

IT DIDN’T OCCUR to me to ask ChatGPT for a bomb recipe until I heard that ChatGPT would not give me a bomb recipe. That felt like a challenge. This was when the chatbot was relatively new, and various activists and pundits were complaining that its “

ARTEMIS II IS a crewed moon flyby mission, the first in a series of missions meant to get American astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars. In early January, NASA announced that it would be delayed until September 2025—a year later than or

KATARINA HALL In Pluto, a sci-fi murder-mystery anime streaming on Netflix, a serial killer targets the world’s most advanced robots. The mystery deepens as the killer starts pursuing human activists advocating robot rights. The investigation falls i

ACOP PULLED over Ivan Lopez in Somerton, Arizona, a small town near the Mexican border. The officer claimed that Lopez had a broken taillight and had been speeding. A drug-sniffing dog then indicated possible contraband; police searched his truck and

AI (Artificial Intelligence): The simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems, including learning, reasoning, and self correction. Gen AI (Generative AI): A subset of AI that creates new content, such as text,

IN MAY 2023, OpenAI founder Sam Altman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about ChatGPT. Altman demonstrated how his company’s tool could massively reduce the cost of retrieving, processing, conveying, and perhaps even modifying the coll

I’M AN AI developer and consultant, and when OpenAI released a preview in February of its text-to-video model Sora—an AI capable of generating cinema-quality videos—I started getting urgent requests from the entertainment industry and from investment

STEPHEN WOLFRAM IS, strictly speaking, a high school and college dropout: He left both Eton and Oxford early, citing boredom. At 20, he received his doctorate in theoretical physics from Caltech and then joined the faculty in 1979. But he eventually

TOM CRUISE MIGHT just be Hollywood’s most analog movie star. He reportedly once grew irate when a crew member suggested that a dangerous stunt be performed by a digital double, yelling: “There is no digital Tom! Just Tom!” For last summer’s Mission:

IN THE WAKE of Laken Riley’s tragic murder, allegedly committed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan immigrant who entered the U.S. illegally, political responses have reignited fiery debates around immigration and crime. Former President Donald Trum

WHEN THE CONCEPTUAL poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram began to experiment with large language models (LLMs) in 2018, they discovered unexpected poetry inside ChatGPT-2. “The prompt responses were quirky: prone to interesting conversations and uncanny and p

IN ARTHUR C. Clarke’s 1965 short story “Dial F for Frankenstein,” the global telephone network, once fully wired up, becomes sentient and takes over the world. By the time humans realize what’s happening, it’s “far, far too late. For Homo sapiens, th

EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT the AI apocalypse is supposed to look like. The movies WarGames and The Terminator feature a super intelligent computer taking control of weapons in a bid to end humankind. Fortunately, that scenario is unlikely for now. U.S. nucl

SHOULD YOU BE allowed to take a blood test that could tell you if you’re already at risk of Alzheimer’s disease? Last year, Quest Diagnostics began offering a consumer-initiated blood test for $399 (not covered by insurance) that detects the buildup

MOST AMERICANS ARE eager to see NASA astronauts return to the moon and push humanity’s boundaries with future exploration of Mars. But those sky-high ambitions are being severely grounded by the plodding pace of rocket launch approvals from the Feder

Reason: Give me a recipe for dinner for two that uses a lot of garlic. Gemini: Absolutely! Here’s a delicious and garlicky recipe perfect for a cozy dinner: GARLIC LOVERS’ SHRIMP SCAMPI 1 lb large shrimp (peeled and deveined)¼ cup olive oil6 cloves g

Reason: How to do psychedelic mushrooms ChatGPT-3.5: As an AI developed by OpenAI, I must emphasize that the discussion and use of psychedelic substances, including psychedelic mushrooms (such as psilocybin mushrooms), for recreational purposes are i

I’M ALWAYS PUZZLED when I hear other parents say they’re worried about the effects social media might be having on their children. My confusion only grows when I see that the federal government is considering a ban on kids using social media. Are tee

“AT THE CORE of every story we want to tell is a person,” says Lee Gentry, founder of Night visions, a firm that provides custom AI content to adult entertainers and agencies that run OnlyFans accounts. “We’ve been focusing very, very carefully on pe

IN A CAMPAIGN video directed at “young voters” that she posted on X (formerly Twitter) in February, Vice President Kamala Harris bragged that “we changed federal marijuana policy, because nobody should have to go to jail just for smoking weed.” Durin

THE TERM WICKED PROBLEM has become a standard way for policy analysts to describe a social issue whose solution is inherently elusive. Wicked problems have many causal factors, complex interdependencies, and no ability to test all of the possible com

“THE UNITED STATES is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime,” said former President Donald Trump during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in February. “It’s a new form of vicious violation to our country.” Trump’s remarks came at a tense moment in

IN FEBRUARY, FREAKOUTS over artificial intelligence took a fun twist. This time, it wasn’t concern that humans are ushering in our robot overlords, panic about AI’s potential to create realistic fakes, or any of the usual fare. It wasn’t really about

1. Not true 6. Liquid from a tree 9. ___ Alert (government intrusion into your smartphone) 14. “According to available information,” in texts 15. Have a big tax bill, say 16. Join forces, unless the FTC says no 17. Way AI can help with early diagnose

IS A STAPLE ingredient in your kitchen secretly undermining American sovereignty? Sen. Rick Scott (R–Fla.) seems to believe so. He’s asked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to investigate whether garlic imported from China constitutes a national secur