Digital Ethics

A Ranking from Most to Least Evil

Opinion: Prediction: General-purpose AI could start getting worse

Joshua Rothman speculates on how advances in A.I. technology may change the future of reading.

The study, from MIT Lab scholars, measured the brain activity of subjects writing SAT essays with and without ChatGPT.

For some people, it seems, AI is an amazing machine which - while fallible - represents an incredible leap forward in productivity. For other people, it seems, AI is wrong more often than right and - although occasionally useful - requires constant supervision. Who is right? I recently pointed out a few common problems with LLMs. I was discussing this with someone relatively senior who works…

The NAACP has filed an intent to sue Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company over air pollution from a supercomputer data center in Memphis

Feature: Academics mull the need for the digital equivalent of low-background steel

There may be no undoing the vast amounts of pollution wreaked by ChatGPT. And that's just tough luck for any AI models that come after it.

Energy and AI Observatory - Data tools. A data tool by the International Energy Agency.

Generative A.I. chatbots are going down conspiratorial rabbit holes and endorsing wild, mystical belief systems. For some people, conversations with the technology can deeply distort reality.

An apparent mix-up with the technology led to Danielle Horan being wrongly accused of shoplifting.

Why Elon Musk and other tech billionaires have a different perspective

We’re so busy absorbed in the hyper-speed cycle of press releases from the technoculture’s AI juggernaut that it's hard to take a moment to look into the past for insight. If we did, we might realise there was a piece of literature, published more than a century ago, paints a dark potential future o

Tamara Kneese, Data & Society Research Institute Download full report here. Introduction In the second half of 2023, generative AI is dominating headlines. Policymakers, technologists, and activists are all grappling with its potential implications for communities and the planet. Integrating LLMs (large language models) into search engines may multiply the carbon emissions associated with each […]

The AI gold rush has given rise to a new breed of prospector, self-anointed ‘AI experts’ who are well aware that expertise can be manufactured, performed and, most importantly, monetised.

The conversation isn’t over, but I don’t think I have much to add to it.

New York and more than two dozen other US states sued 23andMe to challenge the sale of its customers’ private information after the genetic testing company filed for bankruptcy in March.

Despite what tech CEOs might say, large language models are not smart in any recognizably human sense of the word.

Luciano Floridi, Giannis Perperidis, and Alexandros Schismenos discuss the rapid evolution of AI technology and the nature of intelligence.

If our machines use less energy, will we just use them more?

Edward Dunsworth Two approaches dominate discussion about how professors should handle generative “artificial intelligence” in the classroom: give up or give in. Give up. Faced with a powerful new …

The tech world is reeling from a paper that shows the powers of a new generation of AI have been wildly oversold, says cognitive scientist Gary Marcus

As Judge Alsup is deliberating over Anthropic’s motion for summary judgment on fair use, the parties continue to fight over discovery. One of the more fascinating discovery disputes relates t…

Whether we lose some of the skills artificial intelligence performs for us largely depends on how we use this tech

Marriages and families are falling apart as people are sucked into fantasy worlds of spiritual prophecy by AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT

A Polish researcher used ChatGPT-4o to create a fake passport, which was approved by a platform that used standard ID and selfie-based verification. This might sound like the utopia everyone was afraid of, but it’s the reality as of today, and it exposes a serious gap in the way digital onboarding i

OpenAI, the firm that helped spark chatbot cheating, wants to embed A.I. in every facet of college. First up: 460,000 students at Cal State.

OpenAI's large language model GPT-4o told a user who identified themself to it as a former addict named Pedro to indulge in a little meth.

Recent generations of frontier language models have introduced Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) that generate detailed thinking processes…

In a complaint, filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission, the agency alleged that WW Internation