AI

Autonomous “Driverless” Auto Racing — Wait What?
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...
AI Could Help Teens On Social Media That Need Both Protection And Privacy
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...
AI Tools — Friend Or Foe
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...
Episode 154: Workflow Wizardry: Outreach’s CEO Manny Medina On Aligning AI Ambitions With Sales Success
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 ...
Exploring The Depths Of Ocean Activities With AI And Satellite Imagery
AI, ENVIRONMENT, VIDEO REELS

Exploring The Depths Of Ocean Activities With AI And Satellite Imagery

We used AI and satellite imagery to map ocean activities that take place out of sight, including fishing, shipping and energy development. Humans are racing to harness the ocean’s vast potential to power global economic growth. Worldwide, ocean-based industries such as fishing, shipping and energy production generate at least US$1.5 trillion in economic activity each year and support 31 million jobs. This value has been increasing exponentially over the past 50 years and is expected to double by 2030. Transparency in monitoring this “blue acceleration” is crucial to prevent environmental degradation, overexploitation of fisheries and marine resources, and lawless behavior such as illegal fishing and human trafficking. Open information also will make countries better able to manage vital ...
From Tetris AI To Epic Speedrunning: The Epic Journey
AI, IN OTHER NEWS, VIDEO REELS

From Tetris AI To Epic Speedrunning: The Epic Journey

From besting Tetris AI to epic speedruns – inside gaming’s most thrilling feats. After 13-year-old Willis Gibson became the first human to beat the original Nintendo version of Tetris, he dedicated his special win to his father, who passed away in December 2023. The Oklahoma teen beat the game by defeating level after level until he reached the “kill screen” – that is, the moment when the Tetris artificial intelligence taps out in exhaustion, stopping play because its designers never wrote the code to advance further. Before Gibson, the only other player to overcome the game’s AI was another AI. For any parent who has despaired over their children sinking countless hours into video games, Gibson’s victory over the cruel geometry of Tetris stands as a bracing corrective. Despite the ster...
How AI Can Help You Reduce Bottlenecks Between Life And Work
AI, IN OTHER NEWS, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

How AI Can Help You Reduce Bottlenecks Between Life And Work

AI could improve your life by removing bottlenecks between what you want and what you get. Artificial intelligence is poised to upend much of society, removing human limitations inherent in many systems. One such limitation is information and logistical bottlenecks in decision-making. Traditionally, people have been forced to reduce complex choices to a small handful of options that don’t do justice to their true desires. Artificial intelligence has the potential to remove that limitation. And it has the potential to drastically change how democracy functions. AI researcher Tantum Collins and I, a public-interest technology scholar, call this AI overcoming “lossy bottlenecks.” Lossy is a term from information theory that refers to imperfect communications channels – that is, channels tha...
The Year Of ChatGPT And Its Cousin AI Chatbot
AI, IN OTHER NEWS, VIDEO REELS

The Year Of ChatGPT And Its Cousin AI Chatbot

ChatGPT and its AI chatbot cousins ruled 2023: 4 essential reads that puncture the hype. Within four months of ChatGPT’s launch on Nov. 30, 2022, most Americans had heard of the AI chatbot. Hype about – and fear of – the technology was at a fever pitch for much of 2023. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot are among the chatbots powered by large language models to provide uncannily humanlike conversations. The experience of interacting with one of these chatbots, combined with Silicon Valley spin, can leave the impression that these technical marvels are conscious entities. But the reality is considerably less magical or glamorous. The Conversation published several articles in 2023 that dispel several key misperceptions about this latest generation...
ChatGPT Turns 1: AI Chatbot Revolution
AI, IN OTHER NEWS, SCIENCE

ChatGPT Turns 1: AI Chatbot Revolution

ChatGPT turns 1: AI chatbot’s success says as much about humans as technology. ChatGPT was launched on Nov. 30, 2022, ushering in what many have called artificial intelligence’s breakout year. Within days of its release, ChatGPT went viral. Screenshots of conversations snowballed across social media, and the use of ChatGPT skyrocketed to an extent that seems to have surprised even its maker, OpenAI. By January, ChatGPT was seeing 13 million unique visitors each day, setting a record for the fastest-growing user base of a consumer application. Throughout this breakout year, ChatGPT has revealed the power of a good interface and the perils of hype, and it has sown the seeds of a new set of human behaviors. As a researcher who studies technology and human information behavior, I find that Ch...
Regulating AI: The US Just Issued The World’s Strongest Action Yet, Here’s What To Expect
AI, POLITICS

Regulating AI: The US Just Issued The World’s Strongest Action Yet, Here’s What To Expect

The US just issued the world’s strongest action yet on regulating AI. Here’s what to expect. On Monday US President Joe Biden released a wide ranging and ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) – catapulting the US to the front of conversations about regulating AI. In doing so, the US is leap frogging over other states in the race to rule over AI. Europe previously led the way with its AI Act, which was passed by the European Parliament in June 2023, but which won’t take full effect until 2025. The presidential executive order is a grab bag of initiatives for regulating AI – some of which are good, and others which seem rather half-baked. It aims to address harms ranging from the immediate, such as AI-generated deepfakes, through to intermediate harms such as job losses, ...