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 »
Anthropic’s AI models could potentially help spies analyze classified documents, but the company draws the line at domestic surveillance. That restriction is reportedly making the Trump administration angry. On Tuesday, Semafor reported that Anthropic faces growing hostility from the Trump administration over the AI company’s restrictions on law enforcement uses of its Claude models. Two… 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 »
On Thursday, OpenAI and Microsoft announced they have signed a non-binding agreement to revise their partnership, marking the latest development in a relationship that has grown increasingly complex as both companies compete for customers in the AI market and seek new partnerships for growing infrastructure needs. “Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a non-binding memorandum of… 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 »
Trump’s plan was not welcomed by everyone. J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate for Public Citizen, in a statement provided to Ars, criticized Trump as giving “sweetheart deals” to tech companies that would cause “electricity bills to rise to subsidize discounted power for massive AI data centers.” Infrastructure demands and energy requirements Trump’s new AI… Read More »