ChatGPT may well revolutionize web search, streamline office chores, and remake education, but the smooth-talking chatbot has also found work as a social media crypto huckster. Researchers at Indiana University Bloomington discovered a botnet powered by ChatGPT operating on X--the social network formerly known as Twitter--in May of this year. The botnet, which the researchers dub Fox8 because of its connection to cryptocurrency websites bearing some variation of the same name, consisted of 1,140 accounts. Many of them seemed to use ChatGPT to craft social media posts and to reply to each other's posts. The auto-generated content was apparently designed to lure unsuspecting humans into clicking links through to the crypto-hyping sites.

The World Robot Conference 2023 has opened in China, aimed at promoting scientific and technological progress. The event is a forum for participants to network and seek resources for further innovation. There's also the opportunity for ice-cream served by a robot

The California Public Utilities Commission--a state agency that regulates power, water, and telecommunications companies, as well as movers, taxicabs, rideshare services, and self-driving cars--is headquartered in a large, curved building on Van Ness Avenue, in San Francisco, that looks a bit like a sun visor. Last Thursday morning, a small group of protesters gathered on the steps in advance of the commission's vote on whether to allow the autonomous-vehicle companies Cruise and Waymo to expand their fleets, and charge for rides, like a taxi service, in the city. A man holding a megaphone denounced corporate greed, while other people unfurled hand-painted banners. One depicted a dead dog lying in the street--possibly a reference to the small dog killed earlier this summer by a Waymo car. Another showed an autonomous vehicle in flames bearing down on a crowd of firemen, police officers, and taxi-drivers.

Artificial intelligence chatbots tend to agree with the opinions of the person using them, even to the point that they nod along to objectively false statements. Research shows that this problem gets worse as language models increase in size, adding weight to concerns that AI outputs cannot be trusted.

Driverless cars may be worse at detecting children and people with darker skin, tests on artificial intelligence systems suggest. The researchers who carried out the work say that tighter government regulation is needed and that car-makers must be transparent about the development and testing of these vehicles. Jie Zhang at King's College London and her colleagues assessed eight AI-based pedestrian detectors used in driverless car research.

In recent years, intelligent autonomous weapons--weapons that can select and fire upon targets without any human input--have become a matter of serious concern. Giving an AI system the power to decide matters of life and death would radically change warfare forever. But intelligent autonomous weapons that fully displace human decision-making have (likely) yet to see real-world use. Even the "autonomous" drones and ships fielded by the US and other powers are used under close human supervision. However, these systems have become sophisticated enough to raise novel questions--ones that are trickier to answer than the well-covered wrangles over killer robots.

Detection tools being developed to combat the growing threat of deepfakes – realistic-looking false content – must use training datasets that are inclusive of darker skin tones to avoid bias, experts have warned. Most deepfake detectors are based on a learning strategy that depends largely on the dataset that is used for its training. It then uses AI to detect signs that may not be clear to the human eye. This can include monitoring blood flow and heart rate. However, these detection methods do not always work on people with darker skin tones, and if training sets do not contain all ethnicities, accents, genders, ages and skin-tone, they are open to bias, experts warned.

Multilingual large language models (LLMs) seem to work better in English. These AIs are designed to respond to queries in multiple languages but they respond better if asked to translate the request into English first. LLMs have become a key part of the artificial intelligence revolution since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022.

A robotic gripper made from flexible ribbons can pick up objects as delicate as a dandelion to something 16,000 times heavier than itself. Most robotic grippers are specialised to perform a narrow set of tasks, but performing well in one domain often entails a trade-off. A tool well suited to picking up heavy objects, for example, normally struggles to manipulate much lighter, intricate objects.

TikTok recently announced that its users in the European Union will soon be able to switch off its infamously engaging content-selection algorithm. The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) is driving this change as part of the region's broader effort to regulate AI and digital services in accordance with human rights and values. TikTok's algorithm learns from users' interactions--how long they watch, what they like, when they share a video--to create a highly tailored and immersive experience that can shape their mental states, preferences, and behaviors without their full awareness or consent. An opt-out feature is a great step toward protecting cognitive liberty, the fundamental right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. Rather than being confined to algorithmically curated For You pages and live feeds, users will be able to see trending videos in their region and language, or a "Following and Friends" feed that lists the creators they follow in chronological order.