Monday, April 29

AI

The Impact Of AI-Enabled Bots On Election Disinformation
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AI, TECHNOLOGY

The Impact Of AI-Enabled Bots On Election Disinformation

Election disinformation: how AI-powered bots work and how you can protect yourself from their influence. Social media platforms have become more than mere tools for communication. They’ve evolved into bustling arenas where truth and falsehood collide. Among these platforms, X stands out as a prominent battleground. It’s a place where disinformation campaigns thrive, perpetuated by armies of AI-powered bots programmed to sway public opinion and manipulate narratives. AI-powered bots are automated accounts that are designed to mimic human behaviour. Bots on social media, chat platforms and conversational AI are integral to modern life. They are needed to make AI applications run effectively, for example. But some bots are crafted with malicious intent. Shockingly, bots constitute a si...
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Chatbots Refuse To Produce Controversial Content: What You Need To Know
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AI, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Chatbots Refuse To Produce Controversial Content: What You Need To Know

AI chatbots refuse to produce ‘controversial’ output − why that’s a free speech problem. Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone “woke.” Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience. The discussions over AI’s political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards? We are policy researchers who study fre...
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Tomorrow’s Engineers And The Ethical Challenges Posed By AI
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AI, TECHNOLOGY

Tomorrow’s Engineers And The Ethical Challenges Posed By AI

Are tomorrow’s engineers ready to face AI’s ethical challenges? A chatbot turns hostile. A test version of a Roomba vacuum collects images of users in private situations. A Black woman is falsely identified as a suspect on the basis of facial recognition software, which tends to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color. These incidents are not just glitches, but examples of more fundamental problems. As artificial intelligence and machine learning tools become more integrated into daily life, ethical considerations are growing, from privacy issues and race and gender biases in coding to the spread of misinformation. The general public depends on software engineers and computer scientists to ensure these technologies are created in a safe and ethical manner. As a soc...
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AI Can Now Track Your Emotions — But Should It?
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AI, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

AI Can Now Track Your Emotions — But Should It?

Emotion-tracking AI on the job: Workers fear being watched – and misunderstood. Emotion artificial intelligence uses biological signals such as vocal tone, facial expressions and data from wearable devices as well as text and how people use their computers, promising to detect and predict how someone is feeling. It is used in contexts both mundane, like entertainment, and high stakes, like the workplace, hiring and health care. A wide range of industries already use emotion AI, including call centers, finance, banking, nursing and caregiving. Over 50% of large employers in the U.S. use emotion AI aiming to infer employees’ internal states, a practice that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, call centers monitor what their operators say and their tone of voice. Scholars hav...
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AI Promised Humanlike Machines – In 1958
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AI, IN OTHER NEWS, SCIENCE

AI Promised Humanlike Machines – In 1958

We’ve been here before: AI promised humanlike machines – in 1958. A roomsize computer equipped with a new type of circuitry, the Perceptron, was introduced to the world in 1958 in a brief news story buried deep in The New York Times. The story cited the U.S. Navy as saying that the Perceptron would lead to machines that “will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence.” More than six decades later, similar claims are being made about current artificial intelligence. So, what’s changed in the intervening years? In some ways, not much. Frank Rosenblatt with the Mark I Perceptron, the first artificial neural network computer, unveiled in 1958. National Museum of the U.S. Navy/Flickr The field of artificial intelligence has been running through a boo...
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AI Voice Generated Robocalls Outlawed By FCC
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AI, IN OTHER NEWS, VIDEO REELS

AI Voice Generated Robocalls Outlawed By FCC

FCC bans robocalls using deepfake voice clones − but AI-generated disinformation still looms over elections. The Federal Communications Commission on Feb. 8, 2024, outlawed robocalls that use voices generated by artificial intelligence. The 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act bans artificial voices in robocalls. The FCC’s Feb. 8 ruling declares that AI-generated voices, including clones of real people’s voices, are artificial and therefore banned by law. The move follows on the heels of a robocall on Jan. 21, 2024, from what sounded like President Joe Biden. The call had Biden’s voice urging voters inclined to support Biden and the Democratic Party not to participate in New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 GOP primary election. The call falsely implied that a registered Democrat could vote in the...
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Autonomous “Driverless” Auto Racing — Wait What?
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AI, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Autonomous “Driverless” Auto Racing — Wait What?

Bringing AI up to speed – autonomous auto racing promises safer driverless cars on the road. The excitement of auto racing comes from split-second decisions and daring passes by fearless drivers. Imagine that scene, but without the driver – the car alone, guided by the invisible hand of artificial intelligence. Can the rush of racing unfold without a driver steering the course? It turns out that it can. An autonomous race car built by the Technical University of Munich prepares to pass the University of Virginia’s entrant. Cavalier Autonomous Racing, University of Virginia, CC BY-ND Enter autonomous racing, a field that’s not just about high-speed competition but also pushing the boundaries of what autonomous vehicles can achieve and improving their safety. Over a century ago, at the dawn...
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AI Could Help Teens On Social Media That Need Both Protection And Privacy
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AI, POLITICS, VIDEO REELS

AI Could Help Teens On Social Media That Need Both Protection And Privacy

Teens on social media need both protection and privacy – AI could help get the balance right. Meta announced on Jan. 9, 2024, that it will protect teen users by blocking them from viewing content on Instagram and Facebook that the company deems to be harmful, including content related to suicide and eating disorders. The move comes as federal and state governments have increased pressure on social media companies to provide safety measures for teens. At the same time, teens turn to their peers on social media for support that they can’t get elsewhere. Efforts to protect teens could inadvertently make it harder for them to also get help. Congress has held numerous hearings in recent years about social media and the risks to young people. The CEOs of Meta, X – formerly known as Twitter – T...
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AI Tools — Friend Or Foe
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AI, TECHNOLOGY

AI Tools — Friend Or Foe

AI can help − and hurt − student creativity. Teachers across the country are grappling with whether to view AI tools like ChatGPT as friend or foe in the classroom. My research shows that the answer isn’t always simple. It can be both. Teaching students to be creative thinkers rather than rely on AI for answers is the key to answering this question. That’s what my team and I found in our study on whether AI affects student creativity, published in the Journal of Creativity and representing scholars from the University of South Carolina, the University of California, Berkeley and Emerson College. In the study, we asked college students to brainstorm – without technology – all the ways a paper clip can be used. A month later, we asked them to do the same, but using ChatGPT. We found that A...
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Episode 154: Workflow Wizardry: Outreach’s CEO Manny Medina On Aligning AI Ambitions With Sales Success
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AI, WEBINAR EDUCATION

Episode 154: Workflow Wizardry: Outreach’s CEO Manny Medina On Aligning AI Ambitions With Sales Success

Serving as Outreach's CEO since 2014, Manny Medina co-founded the company and played pivotal roles at Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's mobile division, contributing significantly to revenue growth. With an MBA from Harvard and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, his leadership style is defined by transparency and innovation. On The Menu: Consolidating sales tools: Simplifying tasks for sales reps Efficiency enhancement: Aligning workflows for optimal client interactions Leadership synthesis: Medina's blend of Amazon and Microsoft strategies Pioneering sales execution platforms: Outreach's AI-powered edge Customer-driven innovation: Refining AI for enhanced sales performance ...
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