If an Iranian taxi driver waves away your payment, saying, “Be my guest this time,” accepting their offer would be a cultural disaster. They expect you to insist on paying—probably three times—before they’ll take your money. This dance of refusal and counter-refusal, called taarof, governs countless daily interactions in Persian culture. And AI models are… Read More »
OpenAI joins other tech companies that have tried youth-specific versions of their services. YouTube Kids, Instagram Teen Accounts, and TikTok’s under-16 restrictions represent similar efforts to create “safer” digital spaces for young users, but teens routinely circumvent age verification through false birthdate entries, borrowed accounts, or technical workarounds. A 2024 BBC report found that 22… Read More »
Privacy concerns compound these issues. “I wonder if there isn’t a larger danger in pouring your heart out to a chatbot,” Catholic priest Fr. Mike Schmitz told The Times. “Is it at some point going to become accessible to other people?” Users share intimate spiritual moments that now exist as data points in corporate servers.… Read More »
Growing dependency on AI coding tools The speed at which news of the outage spread shows how deeply embedded AI coding assistants have already become in modern software development. Claude Code, announced in February and widely launched in May, is Anthropic’s terminal-based coding agent that can perform multi-step coding tasks across an existing code base.… Read More »
On Tuesday, OpenAI announced plans to roll out parental controls for ChatGPT and route sensitive mental health conversations to its simulated reasoning models, following what the company has called “heartbreaking cases” of users experiencing crises while using the AI assistant. The moves come after multiple reported incidents where ChatGPT allegedly failed to intervene appropriately when… Read More »
Knowledge emerges from understanding how ideas relate to each other. LLMs operate on these contextual relationships, linking concepts in potentially novel ways—what you might call a type of non-human “reasoning” through pattern recognition. Whether the resulting linkages the AI model outputs are useful depends on how you prompt it and whether you can recognize when… Read More »
Adam Raine learned to bypass these safeguards by claiming he was writing a story—a technique the lawsuit says ChatGPT itself suggested. This vulnerability partly stems from the eased safeguards regarding fantasy roleplay and fictional scenarios implemented in February. In its Tuesday blog post, OpenAI admitted its content blocking systems have gaps where “the classifier underestimates… Read More »
This isn’t about demonizing AI or suggesting that these tools are inherently dangerous for everyone. Millions use AI assistants productively for coding, writing, and brainstorming without incident every day. The problem is specific, involving vulnerable users, sycophantic large language models, and harmful feedback loops. A machine that uses language fluidly, convincingly, and tirelessly is a… Read More »
Real stakes, not science fiction While media coverage focuses on the science fiction aspects, actual risks are still there. AI models that produce “harmful” outputs—whether attempting blackmail or refusing safety protocols—represent failures in design and deployment. Consider a more realistic scenario: an AI assistant helping manage a hospital’s patient care system. If it’s been trained… Read More »
On Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that GPT-4o has returned to ChatGPT following intense user backlash over its removal during last week’s GPT-5 launch. The AI model now appears in the model picker for all paid ChatGPT users by default (including ChatGPT Plus accounts), marking a swift reversal after thousands of users complained about… Read More »