The Assured and Trustworthy Human-centered AI (ATHAI) symposium was held as part of the AAAI Fall Symposium Series in Arlington, VA from October 25-27, 2023. The symposium brought together three groups of stakeholders from industry, academia, and government to discuss issues related to AI assurance in different domains ranging from healthcare to defense. The symposium drew over 50 participants and consisted of a combination of invited keynote speakers, spotlight talks, and interactive panel discussions. On Day 1, the symposium kicked off with a keynote by Professor Missy Cummings (George Mason University) titled "Developing Trustworthy AI: Lessons Learned from Self-driving Cars". Missy shared important lessons learned from her time at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and interacting with the autonomous vehicle industry.

Will the end of the world as we know it include a "Night of the Living Cars"? Netflix's Leave the World Behind makes the case for it, taking a giant swipe at Elon Musk's Tesla along the way. In this slow-burn apocalyptic thriller from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, based on Rumaan Alam's 2020 novel, one of the film's two core families reaches a moment of decisive panic halfway through the film. What it leads to is a timely commentary on fears around self-driving cars and automation, and what happens when transportation gets hijacked. The Tesla Model 3s are transformed from technological advancements into villains in one thrilling scene that taps into very real fears.

Ever get bogged down by confusing AI terms? In the past year, countless AI-infused products and services have become available, offering a dizzying variety of features frequently wrapped in hard-to-discern jargon. With this handy glossary, you'll now know the difference between AI and AGI, what really happens when ChatGPT "hallucinates," and know what it means when you hear GPT-4 described as an LLM with a transformer model built using deep neural networks. An agent, in the context of AI, is a model or software program that can autonomously perform some kind of task. Examples of agents range from smart home devices that control temperature and lighting, to sensors in robot vacuums and driverless cars, to chatbots like ChatGPT that learn and respond to user prompts. Autonomous agents that carry out complex tasks are often cited as examples of what the next leap forward in AI might look like.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Michael Treiman is something of a professional electric-vehicle evangelist. As the vice president of sales for ChargeSmart EV--a company that sells electric charging stations, mostly to businesses and municipal offices--his job is to convince people that EVs are the future, and that it's time to start planning for them. But on his personal time, you won't find him in an electric car. Or, rather, a fully electric car: He owns a 2022 Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid.

Developing driverless cars has been AI's greatest test. Today we can say it has failed miserably, despite the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars in attempts to produce a viable commercial vehicle. Moreover, the recent withdrawal from the market of a leading provider of robotaxis in the US, coupled with the introduction of strict legislation in the UK, suggests that the developers' hopes of monetising the concept are even more remote than before. The very future of the idea hangs in the balance. The attempt to produce a driverless car started in the mid-00s with a challenge by a US defence research agency, offering a $1m prize for whoever could create one capable of making a very limited journey in the desert. This quickly turned into a race between various tech and car companies (OEMs, as they are now known – original equipment manufacturers) to produce what they thought would be the ultimate cash cow: a car that could operate in all conditions without a driver.

I've been exploring the use of DALL-E 3 inside of ChatGPT Plus. I'm doing this because it's my job, not because I have some kind of unhealthy little addiction to describing something in my mind and see it manifest in mere minutes on the screen. I can stop at any time. Sure, that's the ticket, I can stop at any time. Today, I found a new toy.

Artificial intelligence is widely expected to transform our lives. Leaders from across the sector gathered for a TIME dinner conversation on Nov. 30, where they emphasized the need to center humans in decisions around incorporating the technology into workflows and advocated for governments and industry leaders to take a responsible approach to managing the risks the technology poses. As part of the TIME100 Talks series in San Francisco, senior correspondent Alice Park spoke with panelists Cynthia Breazeal, a pioneer in social robotics and the Dean for Digital Learning at MIT, James Landay, a computer science professor and vice director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford University, and Raquel Urtasun, CEO and founder of self-driving tech startup Waabi, which recently put a fleet of trucks into service on Uber Freight's trucking network. The panelists discussed the ethical considerations of AI and the ways in which leaders can ensure its benefits reach every corner of the world. During the discussion, the three panelists highlighted the transformative journey of AI and delved into its profound implications, emphasizing the need for responsible AI deployment.

General Motors (GM) will slash spending in its self-driving car unit Cruise, after an accident last month seriously injured a pedestrian and prompted regulators to retract its operating permit for driverless cars in San Francisco. The company announced today that it will "substantially lower" its spending on Cruise next year, according to Mary Barra, GM's CEO. "We expect the pace of Cruise's expansion to be more deliberate when operations resume," she said in a letter to shareholders. Until the accident, Cruise had been operating driverless taxis in three US cities, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin, with plans to expand. In October, the company said it would no longer operate its vehicles without safety drivers behind the wheel.

UPDATE: Nov. 27, 2023, 5:00 a.m. EST This story has been updated with new information about when Cyber Monday sales officially begin (or began) at various retailers and new Cyber Monday travel deals. While major retailers have been running holiday sales throughout November, savvy shoppers know that both Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain two of the absolute biggest shopping days of the year for their ability to reliably trigger record-low prices on big-ticket items (like 4K TVs, Apple devices, robot vacuums, headphones, and video games). That includes discounts that beat Amazon's massively-hyped fall Prime Day deals. It's true that the novelty of Cyber Monday has shifted over the years as Black Friday deals have become readily available online. Now, Cyber Monday means a few things: Many Black Friday deals last through the weekend, and new ones that pop up for a limited time on actual Cyber Monday -- maybe discounts that we'd hoped to see for Black Friday -- are all the more exciting.

UPDATE: Nov. 26, 2023, 3:00 a.m. EST This story has been updated with additional early Cyber Monday deals on unlocked cell phones. Savvy shoppers know that both Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain two of the absolute biggest shopping days of the year for their ability to trigger reliably low deals on big-ticket items (like 4K TVs, Apple devices, robot vacuums, headphones, and video games). That includes discounts that beat Amazon's massively-hyped fall Prime Day deals. It's true that the novelty of Cyber Monday has shifted over the years now that Black Friday has totally stolen its thunder with the whole "online deals" bit. Now Cyber Monday means a few things: Many Black Friday deals at retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Dell, and Samsung are simply rolling over, and new Cyber Monday deals (maybe ones that we had hoped to see for Black Friday) could very well make an appearance.