Last week, actor and director Ben Affleck shared his views on AI’s role in filmmaking during the 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit, arguing that AI models will transform visual effects but won’t replace creative filmmaking anytime soon. A video clip of Affleck’s opinion began circulating widely on social media not long after. “Didn’t expect… Read More »
Epoch AI allowed Fields Medal winners Terence Tao and Timothy Gowers to review portions of the benchmark. “These are extremely challenging,” Tao said in feedback provided to Epoch. “I think that in the near term basically the only way to solve them, short of having a real domain expert in the area, is by a… Read More »
While Bing Chat’s unhinged nature was caused in part by how Microsoft defined the “personality” of Sydney in the system prompt (and unintended side-effects of its architecture with regard to conversation length), Ars Technica’s saga with the chatbot began when someone discovered how to reveal Sydney’s instructions via prompt injection, which Ars Technica then published.… Read More »
The researchers propose that companies could adapt the “marker method” that some researchers use to assess consciousness in animals—looking for specific indicators that may correlate with consciousness, although these markers are still speculative. The authors emphasize that no single feature would definitively prove consciousness, but they claim that examining multiple indicators may help companies make… Read More »
An ethical minefield Since its founders started Anthropic in 2021, the company has marketed itself as one that takes an ethics- and safety-focused approach to AI development. The company differentiates itself from competitors like OpenAI by adopting what it calls responsible development practices and self-imposed ethical constraints on its models, such as its “Constitutional AI”… Read More »
On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman merely tweeted “chat.com,” announcing that the company had acquired the short domain name, which now points to the company’s ChatGPT AI assistant when visited in a web browser. As of Thursday morning, “chatgpt.com” still hosts the chatbot, with the new domain serving as a redirect. The new domain name… Read More »
That’s not the only uncertainty at play. Just last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson—a staunch Trump supporter—said that Republicans “probably will” repeal the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which is a Biden initiative to spur domestic semiconductor chip production, among other aims. Trump has previously spoken out against the bill. After getting some pushback on… Read More »
Speaking of Opus, Claude 3.5 Opus is nowhere to be seen, as AI researcher Simon Willison noted to Ars Technica in an interview. “All references to 3.5 Opus have vanished without a trace, and the price of 3.5 Haiku was increased the day it was released,” he said. “Claude 3.5 Haiku is significantly more expensive… Read More »
On Friday, TriStar Pictures released Here, a $50 million Robert Zemeckis-directed film that used real time generative AI face transformation techniques to portray actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright across a 60-year span, marking one of Hollywood’s first full-length features built around AI-powered visual effects. The film adapts a 2014 graphic novel set primarily in… Read More »
Changing winds in the tech industry The Dow Jones Industrial Average serves as a benchmark of the US stock market by tracking 30 large, publicly owned companies that represent major sectors of the US economy, and being a member of the Index has long been considered a sign of prestige among American companies. However, S&P… Read More »