AI models are mysterious: They spit out answers, but there’s no real way to know the “thinking” behind their responses. This is because their brains operate on a fundamentally different level than ours — they process long lists of neurons linked to numerous different concepts — so we simply can’t comprehend their line of thought.
But now, for the first time, researchers have been able to get a glimpse into the inner workings of the AI mind. The team at Anthropic has revealed how it is using “dictionary learning” on Claude Sonnet to uncover pathways in the model’s brain that are activated by different topics — from people, places and emotions to scientific concepts and things even more abstract. — Read More
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PwC’s 2024 AI Jobs Barometer
AI is the Industrial Revolution of knowledge work, transforming how all workers can apply
information, create content, and deliver results at speed and scale. How is this affecting
jobs? With the AI Jobs Barometer, PwC set out to find empirical evidence to help sort fact
from fiction.
PwC analysed over half a billion job ads from 15 countries to find evidence of AI’s impact at worldwide scale through jobs and productivity data. — Read More
Hollywood at a Crossroads: “Everyone Is Using AI, But They Are Scared to Admit It”
For horror fans, Late Night With the Devil marked one of the year’s most anticipated releases. Embracing an analog film filter, the found-footage flick starring David Dastmalchian reaped praise for its top-notch production design by leaning into a ’70s-era grindhouse aesthetic reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead or Death Race 2000. Following a late-night talk show host airing a Halloween special in 1977, it had all the makings of a cult hit.
But the movie may be remembered more for the controversy surrounding its use of cutaway graphics created by generative artificial intelligence tools. One image of a dancing skeleton in particular incensed some theatergoers. Leading up to its theatrical debut in March, it faced the prospect of a boycott, though that never materialized. — Read More
Mapping the Brain
OpenAI pauses use of “Sky” voice after threat of legal action.
OpenAI has paused a voice mode option for ChatGPT-4o, Sky, after backlash accusing the AI company of intentionally ripping off Scarlett Johansson’s critically acclaimed voice-acting performance in the 2013 sci-fi film Her.
In a blog defending its casting decision for Sky, OpenAI went into great detail explaining its process for choosing the individual voice options for its chatbot. But ultimately, the company seemed pressed to admit that Sky’s voice was just too similar to Johansson’s to keep using it, at least for now. — Read More
The ‘dead internet theory’ makes eerie claims about an AI-run web. The truth is more sinister
If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with a stereotypical image of Jesus Christ.
Some of these hyper-realistic images have garnered more than 20,000 likes and comments. So what exactly is going on here?
The “dead internet theory” has an explanation: AI and bot-generated content has surpassed the human-generated internet. But where did this idea come from, and does it have any basis in reality? — Read More
Filmmakers Launch AI Studio Late Night Labs
A group of filmmakers are launching an AI film and animation studio and has snagged some A-list advisors.
Eric Day, Benjamin Michel, and Nick Confalone have launched LA-based Late Night Labs with Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne and Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto among its advisors.
The trio are using generative AI in the creative process but are hoping that the new technology can also provide artists with “tangible ownership” with what they create. — Read More
How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models
David Bau is very familiar with the idea that computer systems are becoming so complicated it’s hard to keep track of how they operate. “I spent 20 years as a software engineer, working on really complex systems. And there’s always this problem,” says Bau, a computer scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.
But with conventional software, someone with inside knowledge can usually deduce what’s going on, Bau says. If a website’s ranking drops in a Google search, for example, someone at Google — where Bau worked for a dozen years — will have a good idea why. “Here’s what really terrifies me” about the current breed of artificial intelligence (AI), he says: “there is no such understanding”, even among the people building it. — Read More
AI eats the web
Google’s shift toward AI-generated search results, displacing the familiar list of links, is rewiring the internet — and could accelerate the decline of the 30+-year-old World Wide Web.
Why it matters: A world where Google answers most questions in a single machine voice makes online life more convenient — and duller.
— The change also threatens to cut into Google’s revenue from search ads, and starve future AIs of the human data they’ll need. — Read More
Newspaper conglomerate Gannett is adding AI-generated summaries to the top of its articles
Gannett, the media company that owns hundreds of newspapers in the US, is launching a new program that adds AI-generated bullet points at the top of journalists’ stories, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge.
The AI feature, labeled “key points” on stories, uses automated technology to create summaries that appear below a headline. The bottom of articles includes a disclaimer, reading, “The Key Points at the top of this article were created with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reviewed by a journalist before publication. No other parts of the article were generated using AI.” The memo is dated May 14th and notes that participation is optional at this point. — Read More
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