Watching the opening day of the US Senate hearings on AI brought to mind Marx's quip about history repeating itself, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce". Some time ago we had the farce of the boss of Meta (neé Facebook) explaining to a senator that his company made money from advertising. This week we had the tragedy of seeing senators quizzing Sam Altman, the new acceptable face of the tech industry. Well, as one of my kids, looking up from revising O-level classics, once explained to me: "It's when you can see the disaster coming but you can't do anything to stop it." The trigger moment was when Altman declared: "We think that regulatory interventions by government will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models."

Its absence left open a void in Google Play and Apple's App Store, which have been quietly filling with scam apps that sucker users into paying for weekly or monthly subscriptions, according to research from security firm Sophos. The official ChatGPT app, meanwhile, is free, and an Android version is arriving soon. But just because something is free doesn't make it good. Telly TV is offering 55-inch televisions for $0 to the first 500,000 people who join its reservation list. Of course, "free" comes with a catch: The company reserves the right to collect heaps of data about your viewing habits, and the TV includes a built-in camera that can track your movements.

The last few months have been by far the most exciting of my 17 years working on artificial intelligence. Among many other advances, OpenAI's ChatGPT – a type of AI known as a large language model – smashed records in January to become the fastest-growing consumer application of all time, achieving 100 million users in two months. No one knows for certain what's going to happen next with AI. There's too much going on, on too many fronts, behind too many closed doors. However, we do know that AI is now in the hands of the world, and, as a consequence, the world seems likely to be transformed.

Next year's elections in Britain and the US could be marked by a wave of AI-powered disinformation, experts have warned, as generated images, text and deepfake videos go viral at the behest of swarms of AI-powered propaganda bots. Sam Altman, CEO of the ChatGPT creator, OpenAI, told a congressional hearing in Washington this week that the models behind the latest generation of AI technology could manipulate users. "The general ability of these models to manipulate and persuade, to provide one-on-one interactive disinformation is a significant area of concern," he said. "Regulation would be quite wise: people need to know if they're talking to an AI, or if content that they're looking at is generated or not. The ability to really model … to predict humans, I think is going to require a combination of companies doing the right thing, regulation and public education."

In February, 2019, OpenAI, a little-known artificial-intelligence company, announced that its large-language-model text generator, GPT-2, would not be released to the public "due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology." Among the dangers, the company stated, was a potential for misleading news articles, online impersonation, and automating the production of abusive or faked social-media content and of spam and phishing content. As a consequence, Open AI proposed that "governments should consider expanding or commencing initiatives to more systematically monitor the societal impact and diffusion of AI technologies, and to measure the progression in the capabilities of such systems." This week, four years after that warning, members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law met to discuss "Oversight of A.I.: Rules for Artificial Intelligence." As has been the case with other tech hearings on the Hill, this one came after a new technology with the capacity to fundamentally alter our social and political lives was already in circulation. Like many Americans, the lawmakers became concerned about the pitfalls of large-language-model artificial intelligence in March, when OpenAI released GPT-4, the latest and most polished iteration of its text generator.

Hiroshima – The world must urgently assess the impact of generative artificial intelligence, G7 leaders said Saturday, announcing they will launch discussions this year on "responsible" use of the technology. Text generation tools such as ChatGPT, image creators and music composed using AI have sparked delight, alarm and legal battles as creators accuse them of scraping material without permission. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites. If this does not resolve the issue or you are unable to add the domains to your allowlist, please see this FAQ.

Keir Starmer should pledge £11bn towards building "BritGPT" and a national artificial intelligence (AI) cloud in the next Labour manifesto or risk the UK falling ever further into dependence on American tech companies, an affiliated thinktank has said. Labour for the Long Term, which campaigns within the party for it to adopt "long-termist" policies that mitigate dangers such as pandemics, climate breakdown, and AI extinction, argues in a report that the £1bn pledged by the government in the 2023 budget is not enough to protect Britain's future independence. The report calls for the creation of BritGPT, a homemade system with a remit to focus on market failures rather than simply trying to compete with Silicon Valley to build the biggest models. "Private profit-seeking companies aren't going to invest enough in'AI for good' or AI safety, so the UK government should step in to correct this market failure and provide more public goods – such as medical research, clean energy research, and AI safety research," it said. They suggested some of the budget could even come out of Labour's £28bn annual "climate investment pledge" as a result.

Hiroshima – It's been nearly 78 years since Hiroshima was reduced to ashes by an atomic bomb. As each year passes, memories fade, with fewer survivors able to pass on their stories to the next generation. With that in mind, public broadcaster NHK is tapping virtual reality and artificial intelligence to provide vivid, immersive and interactive experiences that will withstand the test of time, with the displays previewed for members of the media during the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima. Below is a firsthand account of experiencing the displays. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software.

Displaying bias, foreign adversaries like China becoming dominant, and outsmarting humans were all top artificial intelligence concerns for members of Congress. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressional lawmakers spouted an array of concerns about artificial intelligence after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a Senate subcommittee that he saw problems the technology could create. "The overall risk is allowing China to win the AI race, because obviously, China would use the technology to further their aims of global ambition and to export their model of total techno-totalitarian control, which is nightmarish and would make Orwell blush," Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher said. "The other risk is that we don't maintain control of the technology, somehow it escapes our control." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday that he had concerns about artificial intelligence's possibilities.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education told the Times the education secretary "has been clear about the government's appetite to pursue the opportunities - and manage the risks - that exists in this space, and we have already published information to help schools do this.