Government
DOGE Is Working on Software That Automates the Firing of Government Workers
Engineers for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, are working on new software that could assist mass firings of federal workers across government, sources tell WIRED. The software, called AutoRIF, which stands for Automated Reduction in Force, was first developed by the Department of Defense more than two decades ago. Since then, it's been updated several times and used by a variety of agencies to expedite reductions in workforce. Screenshots of internal databases reviewed by WIRED show that DOGE operatives have accessed AutoRIF and appear to be editing its code. There is a repository in the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) enterprise GitHub system titled "autorif" in a space created specifically for the director's office--where Musk associates have taken charge--soon after Trump took office.
UK creatives protest AI copyright law changes with silent album and campaign
Take Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Ben Howard, who join over 1,000 musicians in releasing a protest album called Is This What We Want?. Tuesday, February 25 is the government's last day seeking views on the change. "The musicians on this album came together to protest this," reads the release statement. "The album consists of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, representing the impact we expect the government's proposals would have on musicians' livelihoods." The album consists of 12 songs with their titles spelling out, "The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies." The record's profits go toward UK-based charity Help Musicians.
Apple iPhone's voice-to-text feature periodically shows 'Trump' when user says 'racist'
Apple's iPhone voice-to-text feature is sparking controversy after a viral TikTok video showed a user speaking the word "racist," which at first showed up as "Trump" before switching back to "racist." Fox News Digital was able to replicate the issue multiple times. The voice-to-text dictation feature was observed briefly flashing "Trump" when a user said "racist" before it quickly changed back to "racist" – just like in the viral TikTok video. However, "Trump" did not appear every time a user said "racist." The voice-to-text feature also wrote words like "reinhold" and "you" when a user said "racist."
Music stars release silent album in protest against UK AI copyright plans
The album, titled Is This What We Want, was launched on Tuesday and features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, as backlash against the plan grows in the United Kingdom. The proposed changes would allow AI developers to train their models on any material to which they have lawful access, and would require creators to proactively opt out to stop their work from being used. The emergence of AI has posed a threat to the creative industry, including music, raising legal and ethical questions on a new technological platform that could produce its own output without paying creators of original content. Bush and other writers and musicians denounced the proposals in UK law as a "wholesale giveaway" to Silicon Valley in a letter to The Times newspaper. Ed Newton-Rex, organiser of the project, said musicians were "united in their thorough condemnation of this ill-thought-through plan".
'OpenAI' Job Scam Targeted International Workers Through Telegram
A Bangladeshi worker was eager to get started at their new OpenAI job--completing basic online tasks in exchange for consistent income, while getting into cryptocurrency investing at the same time. After connecting with the startup on Telegram and creating an account through a ChatGPT-branded app, they invested crypto into the platform and began a months-long job working for "Aiden" from "OpenAI." The work was performed through the website "OpenAi-etc," and internal conversations were held on Telegram. It was simple: Invest some crypto, complete a few tasks, and earn daily profits based on what was invested. Over the course of this worker's time with the company, mentors continuously encouraged them to invest more money into the fund and recruit more Bangladeshi people to the team.
Anti-ICE activists disrupt LA operations, post photos, names and phone numbers of agents
Former Bristol County, Mass. Sheriff Thomas Hodgson joins'Fox & Friends' to discuss Boston city officials refusing to cooperate with ICE deportations. Flyers showing the names, pictures, and phone numbers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have surfaced in a Southern California neighborhood. Multiple federal law enforcement sources confirmed to Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin that anti-ICE activists, who have been interfering with ICE operations in the Los Angeles area in recent days, have now started putting up posters featuring the personal information of ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers working in the Los Angeles and Southern California area. The posters, which were written in Spanish, translate roughly to read "CAREFUL WITH THESE FACES." "These armed agents work in Southern California. ICE and HSI racially terrorize and criminalize entire communities with their policies. They kidnap people from their homes and from the streets, separating families and fracturing communities. Many people have died while locked up in jails, prisons, and detention centers," the posters continued.
Artists release silent album in protest at AI copyright proposals
All profits from the record, entitled This What We Want?, will be donated to the charity Help Musicians. "In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?" Kate Bush said in a statement. The album - also backed by the likes of Billy Ocean, Ed O'Brien of Radiohead and Bastille's Dan Smith, as well as the The Clash, Mystery Jets and Jamiroquai - features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, demonstrating what the artists fear is the potential impact of the proposed law change. The track listing for the record simply spells out the message: "The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies."
Kate Bush and Damon Albarn among 1,000 artists on silent AI protest album
Paul McCartney, Elton John, Abba's Björn Ulvaeus, the actor Julianne Moore and the authors Val McDermid and Richard Osman are among the celebrities who have called for protection of their work from unlicensed use by tech companies in recent months. The music-free album represents the impact on artists' livelihoods if the government pushes ahead with its plans, according to Ed Newton-Rex, the British composer and former AI executive behind the idea. "The government's proposal would hand the life's work of the country's musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians' work to outcompete them," he said. "It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary: the UK can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus." The plan includes "an opt-out" option – where creatives and companies can block their work from being used – that has been dismissed by critics as unfair and unworkable.
Medical Hallucinations in Foundation Models and Their Impact on Healthcare
Kim, Yubin, Jeong, Hyewon, Chen, Shan, Li, Shuyue Stella, Lu, Mingyu, Alhamoud, Kumail, Mun, Jimin, Grau, Cristina, Jung, Minseok, Gameiro, Rodrigo, Fan, Lizhou, Park, Eugene, Lin, Tristan, Yoon, Joonsik, Yoon, Wonjin, Sap, Maarten, Tsvetkov, Yulia, Liang, Paul, Xu, Xuhai, Liu, Xin, McDuff, Daniel, Lee, Hyeonhoon, Park, Hae Won, Tulebaev, Samir, Breazeal, Cynthia
Foundation Models that are capable of processing and generating multi-modal data have transformed AI's role in medicine. However, a key limitation of their reliability is hallucination, where inaccurate or fabricated information can impact clinical decisions and patient safety. We define medical hallucination as any instance in which a model generates misleading medical content. This paper examines the unique characteristics, causes, and implications of medical hallucinations, with a particular focus on how these errors manifest themselves in real-world clinical scenarios. Our contributions include (1) a taxonomy for understanding and addressing medical hallucinations, (2) benchmarking models using medical hallucination dataset and physician-annotated LLM responses to real medical cases, providing direct insight into the clinical impact of hallucinations, and (3) a multi-national clinician survey on their experiences with medical hallucinations. Our results reveal that inference techniques such as Chain-of-Thought (CoT) and Search Augmented Generation can effectively reduce hallucination rates. However, despite these improvements, non-trivial levels of hallucination persist. These findings underscore the ethical and practical imperative for robust detection and mitigation strategies, establishing a foundation for regulatory policies that prioritize patient safety and maintain clinical integrity as AI becomes more integrated into healthcare. The feedback from clinicians highlights the urgent need for not only technical advances but also for clearer ethical and regulatory guidelines to ensure patient safety. A repository organizing the paper resources, summaries, and additional information is available at https://github.com/mitmedialab/medical hallucination.
Which Contributions Deserve Credit? Perceptions of Attribution in Human-AI Co-Creation
He, Jessica, Houde, Stephanie, Weisz, Justin D.
AI systems powered by large language models can act as capable assistants for writing and editing. In these tasks, the AI system acts as a co-creative partner, making novel contributions to an artifact-under-creation alongside its human partner(s). One question that arises in these scenarios is the extent to which AI should be credited for its contributions. We examined knowledge workers' views of attribution through a survey study (N=155) and found that they assigned different levels of credit across different contribution types, amounts, and initiative. Compared to a human partner, we observed a consistent pattern in which AI was assigned less credit for equivalent contributions. Participants felt that disclosing AI involvement was important and used a variety of criteria to make attribution judgments, including the quality of contributions, personal values, and technology considerations. Our results motivate and inform new approaches for crediting AI contributions to co-created work.