Of the many events that stand out as noteworthy in online discussions across Chinese social media in 2023, it's perhaps the rise of ChatGPT that will prove to be the most significant. Although the chatbot made by the US-based OpenAI was officially launched in late 2022, it took until 2023 for its unprecedented growth to raise eyebrows in China, where the government has set the goal of becoming the global AI leader by 2030. Over the past decade, the focus on AI in Chinese society and digital culture has grown. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, AI implementations in schools, office buildings and factories have rolled out in fast forward. AI facial recognition is employed in everything from public security to payment technology; smart glasses and helmets make it easier for many workers to perform their tasks; and intelligent robots have become a common sight in China's service industry, in malls, restaurants, and banks. There seemed little doubt over who would win the tech race between the eagle and the dragon; but then came ChatGPT.

Being stuck in traffic is a familiar problem for many Californians, but state officials want to harness the power of artificial intelligence to discover new solutions. The California Department of Transportation, teaming up with other state agencies, is asking technology companies by Jan. 25 to propose generative AI tools that could help California reduce traffic and make roads safer, especially for pedestrians, cyclists and scooter riders. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can quickly produce text, images and other content, but the technology can also help workers brainstorm ideas. The request shows how California is trying to tap into AI to improve government services at a time when lawmakers seek to safeguard against the technology's potential risks. California politicians set the stage for more AI regulation in 2024, but they'll also face challenges as they try to place more guardrails around AI's impact on jobs, safety and discrimination.

If you've been creeping around underground tech forums lately, you might have seen advertisements for a new program called WormGPT. The program is an AI-powered tool for cybercriminals to automate the creation of personalized phishing emails; although it sounds a bit like ChatGPT, WormGPT is not your friendly neighborhood AI. ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and, since then, generative AI has taken the world by storm. But few consider how its sudden rise will shape the future of cybersecurity. In 2024, generative AI is poised to facilitate new kinds of transnational--and translingual--cybercrime.

ChatGPT's release a year ago triggered a wave of panic among educators. Now, universities are in the midst of college application season, concerned that students might use the artificial intelligence tool to forge admissions essays. But is a chatbot-created essay good enough to fool college admissions counselors? To find out, The Washington Post asked a prompt engineer -- an expert at directing AI chatbots -- to create college essays using ChatGPT. The chatbot produced two essays: one responding to a question from the Common Application, which thousands of colleges use for admissions, and one answering a prompt used solely for applicants to Harvard University.

This one went smoothly -- no claims of rampant rigging, no significant taint of skulduggery -- due in large part to the defeat of deepfakes, democracy's newest enemy. Is such a future possible? So far, neither government nor the tech industry has agreed on effective guardrails against deepfakes. But this FAQ (from five years in the future) shows that the events of 2024 may well force the issue -- and that a solution is possible. Why did it take so long to find an effective way to fight deepfakes?

An artificial skin is helping a robot to recognise the difference between picking up inanimate objects and living sea creatures such as starfish and shellfish. That sense of touch could prove useful in cleaning up the ocean, doing underwater exploration or even carrying out deep-sea mining on the seafloor. The artificial skin's sense of touch harnesses what is known as the magnetoelastic effect – changes that occur in the magnetic field of materials as they are pushed and pulled.

The second category of AI gadgets are smartphones, smart speakers, laptops and other devices whose innards are re-engineered to let you talk to AI chatbots, make your photos look better with AI or translate a video from Japanese faster and more easily.

Autonomous vehicles in San Francisco are exempt from traffic tickets if there is nobody in the driver's seat, according to the San Francisco police department (SFPD), underscoring ongoing legal and safety concerns surrounding the expanding technology. California law has not caught up to the cars, even though they are already on the road, say public safety agencies and experts. SFPD policy states that officers can make a traffic stop of autonomous vehicles (AVs) for violations, but can only issue a citation if there is a safety driver in the vehicle overseeing its operations. Since June 2022, autonomous vehicles have been permitted to operate without safety drivers as long as they are inside the city limits. Officers can issue citations to the registered owner of an unoccupied vehicle in absentia for non-moving violations such as parking or registration offenses but not violations like speeding, running a red light, driving in the wrong lane or making an illegal turn.

Anyone currently worrying about artificial intelligence taking over the world may want to swing by the Boston Dynamics AI Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While walking around, they'd see that the robots that might lead a future uprising are still trying to tie their shoelaces, metaphorically speaking. The Institute's founder and executive director, Marc Raibert, has built some of the world's most famous robots at his previous venture, Boston Dynamics. The company, acquired by Hyundai in 2020, has developed legged machines capable of running, leaping, and of course dancing with spryness that can veer into the uncanny. Raibert's creations include the four-legged, pony-sized Big Dog; its smaller dog-like buddy, Spot; and an acrobatic humanoid called Atlas.

Data covering the entire population of Denmark was used to train an AI to predict people's life outcomes An artificial intelligence trained on personal data covering the entire population of Denmark can predict people's chances of dying more accurately than any existing model, even those used in the insurance industry. The researchers behind the technology say it could also have a positive impact in early prediction of social and health problems – but must be kept out of the hands of big business. Sune Lehmann Jørgensen at the Technical University of Denmark and his colleagues used a rich dataset from Denmark that covers education, visits to doctors and hospitals, any resulting diagnoses, income and occupation for 6 million people from 2008 to 2020. They converted this dataset into words that could be used to train a large language model, the same technology that powers AI apps such as ChatGPT. These models work by looking at a series of words and determining which word is statistically most likely to come next, based on vast amounts of examples. In a similar way, the researchers' Life2vec model can look at a series of life events that form a person's history and determine what is most likely to happen next.