Will you be flagged at the border? Will your mortgage application be approved? During wartime, whose neighbourhood would a weapon system target? These are moral choices — about harm and fairness — and they used to be made by people. Now moral choices like these are made by artificial intelligence (AI) and by the companies […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
Artificial intelligence raises profound moral questions — for all of humanity to answer
How do ChatGpT, Gemini, and Claude, the three most used AIs in the world, answer the same exam question?
Let’s try something simple. Give ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude the same question from a real university exam and ask them to answer in Spanish, using the same tone and length. What would we expect? It would be natural to think they would respond similarly. After all, all three produce fluent, well-organized, and seemingly correct texts. […] … learn more→
AI robots can go rogue – a researcher on how easily it happens
Earlier this year in Beijing, a humanoid robot crossed a half-marathon finish line in a blistering 50 minutes, 26 seconds. The feat immediately lit up global headlines for shattering the human world record by almost seven minutes. This performance came with many asterisks. The robot followed a pre-mapped track, stayed in its own dedicated lane, and had a human […] … learn more→
‘AI influencers’: The data privacy and identity fraud threats behind the new trend
● The presence of ‘AI influencers’ benefits marketing, but triggers copyright infringement. ● Deepfake and voice cloning technologies have the potential to violate personal data protection laws. ● AI-based virtual characters are at risk of spreading disinformation, and legal liability rules are needed for their developers. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) influencers demonstrates that AI development has […] … learn more→
Eroding a virtue: AI trains people to expect instant answers – and that’s bad news for patience
When I was growing up, teachers would assign research papers that required going to the library, or later, searching for relevant material on the internet. If the paper was going to turn out well, we students needed to patiently comb through piles of material, weaving what we found into a coherent argument that was well-supported […] … learn more→
By overusing AI, are journalists at risk of impoverishing the language?
What becomes of public language when a growing proportion of the texts circulating in the press, on the internet, and on social media begin to be written by machines? This question doesn’t just concern journalism as a professional activity. It can also affect the richness of the language we use to understand, describe, and debate reality. Historically, […] … learn more→
‘Like drinking from a firehose’ – what it’s like to be the human in the AI loop
The government’s promised overhaul of New Zealand’s public service has made much of the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline operations and compensate for a radically reduced workforce. This is in keeping with generally utopian visions of generative AI (GenAI) tools unleashing creativity, removing mundane, repetitive work, and “freeing up humans” for more fulfilling tasks. However, this may […] … learn more→
Is AI impoverishing journalistic (and societal) language?
What happens to public language when a growing proportion of the texts circulating in the press, online, and on social media begin to be written by machines? This issue doesn’t just affect journalism as a profession. It can also affect the richness of the language we use to understand, describe, and discuss reality. Historically, the press has […] … learn more→
Who should be checking for AI generated references?
Graham Kendall studies academic publishing. He recently ran the numbers on what peer review costs the UK higher education sector. His calculations are worth quoting: “In the UK, there are about 46,500 higher education academics. The total wage bill is about 11.5 billion. If 50% of those academics are active peer reviewers and they review 5 papers each […] … learn more→
Should we really fear Mythos, the AI capable of detecting and exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities?
Much has been said about Mythos (Anthropic’s LLM, a large language model focused on reasoning, coding, and cybersecurity) and Anthropic’s cult of secrecy. However, the company has published a technical report on Mythos’s capabilities, the analysis of which puts some of the apocalyptic pronouncements circulating online into perspective . The researchers describe the breakthroughs that Mythos makes possible: detecting zero-day vulnerabilities in […] … learn more→
