Your weekly update on how AI is changing our lives. Our experts keep it clear and simple, so you can stay ahead of the game. This week we are focussing on words and weapons. Don't forget to explore our Archive and Share & Subscribe with your friends!
Is the Past Now a Product of the Future? ⌚ 🧓
Surprising news from Kyrgyzstan, where an archeological discovery has been making unusual headlines. Three history-loving brothers have discovered an ancient curved saber in Amanbaev, a village in the Talas region to the north of the country. Now, that’s not exciting in itself; even the most hardcore Genghis Khan nerds will be unmoved by news of another sword being found on the steppe. The real action begins when the story makes the leap from Kyrgyz news websites to the English-speaking Internet, a process that appears to have been aided by the slippery storytelling of AI chatbots.
Eagle-eyed English speakers noticed something was off when the story appeared on the website Arkeonews; the website - whose slogan is “the future is the product of the past” - informed readers that the sword “scales primarily with Strength and Dexterity and is a good Weapon for high-dexterity characters who can excel at slashing attacks while spinning”. While these things are all technically true, they are all considerably more true of the Shamshir, a virtual weapon more commonly found in 2022’s most popular video game, Elden Ring, which was co-written by Game of Thrones author and steppe horseman enthusiast George R.R. Martin. Arkeonews has since fixed its article to clear up any confusion, but AI’s difficulties distinguishing fact from fiction - or past from future - remain.
Another prominent author who’s been crossing swords with chatbots this week is Jane Friedman, a powerful figure in the publishing industry both as an executive (she’s a former president and CEO of HarperCollins) and as an author, with several successful guidebooks on online publishing to her name. More recently, she’s also had several terrible, low-quality online publishing guidebooks added to her name on Amazon and Goodreads, but of course these are AI-generated counterfeits. Incredibly, when she tried to have these obvious fakes removed, she met with resistance, with Amazon demanding to see trademark registration numbers before removing the offending works. Instead, Jane wrote a viral blog post entitled “I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)”, which miraculously led to the offending works being taken down.
All in all, it’s been a rough week for the written word, but do AIs fare any better when controlling weapons instead of merely writing about them? This week, we’re taking a closer look at the rapidly developing uses of AI in the military.
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As if you weren’t paranoid enough, British researchers have shown how AI can be used to decipher what you’re typing through sound alone, achieving frighteningly accurate results even over noisy Zoom calls.
An AI-powered supermarket app in New Zealand has served up challenging recipe ideas including Oreo stir-fry, poison sandwiches, and something called “aromatic water mix” which generates chlorine gas.
Researchers put a selection of 14 of the most popular chatbots through a political compass test, with some surprising results. Can you guess where ChatGPT sits on the Libertarian/Authoritarian axis?
'Learn to code' has become a less common refrain since the chatbot boom, but researchers from Purdue University have found that ChatGPT also needs to learn; it posts bad code more than half the time!
Google and American Airlines have teamed up to find AI-powered routes that prevent contrails forming. The vapor trails adversely affect climate systems, but is it worth burning fuel to avoid them?
OpenAI is expanding access to ChatGPT’s Custom Instructions - global preferences files for your chats - to all users, not just paid subscribers, and hopes to have the services available to users in Europe 'soon'.
