The way you talk can reveal a lot about you--especially if you're talking to a chatbot. New research reveals that chatbots like ChatGPT can infer a lot of sensitive information about the people they chat with, even if the conversation is utterly mundane. The phenomenon appears to stem from the way the models' algorithms are trained with broad swathes of web content, a key part of what makes them work, likely making it hard to prevent. "It's not even clear how you fix this problem," says Martin Vechev, a computer science professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland who led the research. "This is very, very problematic."

The artificial intelligence models underpinning chatbots could help plan an attack with a biological weapon, according to research by a US thinktank. A report by the Rand Corporation released on Monday tested several large language models (LLMs) and found they could supply guidance that "could assist in the planning and execution of a biological attack". However, the preliminary findings also showed that the LLMs did not generate explicit biological instructions for creating weapons. The report said previous attempts to weaponise biological agents, such as an attempt by the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult to use botulinum toxin in the 1990s, had failed because of a lack of understanding of the bacterium. AI could "swiftly bridge such knowledge gaps", the report said.

By rethinking the way that most artificial intelligence (AI) systems protect against attacks, researchers at EPFL's School of Engineering have developed a training approach to ensure that machine learning models, particularly deep neural networks, consistently perform as intended, significantly enhancing their reliability. Effectively replacing a long-standing approach to training based on zero-sum game, the new model employs a continuously adaptive attack strategy to create a more intelligent training scenario. The results are applicable across a wide range of activities that depend on artificial intelligence for classification, such as safeguarding video streaming content, self-driving vehicles, and surveillance. The research was a close collaboration between EPFL's School of Engineering and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). In a digital world where the volume of data surpasses human capacity for full oversight, AI systems wield substantial power in making critical decisions.

The widely used chatbot ChatGPT was designed to generate digital text, everything from poetry to term papers to computer programs. But when a team of artificial intelligence researchers at the computer chip company Nvidia got their hands on the chatbot's underlying technology, they realized it could do a lot more. Within weeks, they taught it to play Minecraft, one of the world's most popular video games. Inside Minecraft's digital universe, it learned to swim, gather plants, hunt pigs, mine gold and build houses. "It can go into the Minecraft world and explore by itself and collect materials by itself and get better and better at all kinds of skills," said a Nvidia senior research scientist, Linxi Fan, who is known as Jim.

You know the smell of warm, buttered popcorn. The pungent, somewhat sweet scent that precedes rain. But could you begin to describe these aromas in detail? Your nose has some 400 olfactory receptors that do the work of translating the world's estimated 40 billion odorous molecules into an even higher number of distinct scents your brain can understand. Yet although children are taught that grass is green and pigmented by chlorophyll, they rarely learn to describe the smell of a freshly cut lawn, let alone the ozone before a storm.

Google announced on Thursday that it will protect its generative AI customers against any intellectual property claims made on the data used or output served by Google-hosted AI models. By extending protection in its cloud and workspace environments, Google joins the list of technology firms that have recently announced IP support for using their own generative AI tools. These include companies like IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and Adobe. Google said the protection would span across all Google environments using the Duet AI collaborator, and the company's homegrown generative AI engine Vertex AI. The indemnity clause by leading technology companies will likely bring in hope as generative AI's challenges over privacy, security, and intellectual property violations peak.

You may not have to fumble with your cellphone in the boarding area very much longer. As the travel industry embraces facial recognition technology, phones are beginning to go the way of paper tickets at airports, cruise terminals and theme parks, making checking in more convenient, but raising privacy and security concerns, too. "Before Covid it felt like a future thing," said Hicham Jaddoud, a professor of hospitality and tourism at the University of Southern California, describing the way contactless transactions have become common since the pandemic. That includes facial recognition, which is "now making its way into daily operations" in the travel industry, Dr. Jaddoud said. Facial recognition systems are already being expanded at some airports.

Next month ChatGPT will celebrate its first birthday – marking a year in which the chatbot, for many, turned AI from a futuristic concept to a daily reality. Its universal accessibility has led to a host of concerns, from job losses to disinformation to plagiarism. Over the same period, tens of millions of users have been investigating what the platform can do to make their lives just a little bit easier. Upon its release, users quickly embraced ChatGPT's potential for silliness, asking it to play 20 questions or write its own songs. As its first anniversary approaches, people are using it for a huge range of tasks.

Next month ChatGPT will celebrate its first birthday – marking a year in which the chatbot, for many, turned AI from a futuristic concept to a daily reality. Its universal accessibility has led to a host of concerns, from job losses to disinformation to plagiarism. Over the same period, tens of millions of users have been investigating what the platform can do to make their lives just a little bit easier. Upon its release, users quickly embraced ChatGPT's potential for silliness, asking it to play 20 questions or write its own songs. As its first anniversary approaches, people are using it for a huge range of tasks.

After months of testing, the Silicon Valley-based driverless car company began offering Waymo One -- its 24/7 robotaxi service -- to the public Wednesday. Those interested can get an activation code that will allow them to ride free for one week at an in-person pop-up event or by signing up online. In November, Waymo One will move on to Century City, then West Hollywood, Mid-City, Koreatown and downtown L.A. Autonomous vehicle enthusiasts, many of whom received emails about the event ahead of time, lined up at the Waymo stand in Santa Monica on Wednesday morning before it opened at 8 a.m., said Waymo product marketing manager Julianne McGoldrick. What happens when autonomous vehicles invade the traffic capital of the country? They collected their "ticket to ride" with an activation code and snagged T-shirts and tote bags.