If we all start opting out of our posts being used for training models, doesn't that reduce the influence of our unique voice and perspectives on those models? Increasingly, the models will be everyone's primary window into the rest of the world. It seems like the people who care the least about these things will be the ones with the most data that ends up training the models' default behavior. Honestly, it's frustrating to me that users of the internet are forced to opt out of artificial intelligence training as the default. Wouldn't it be nice if affirmative consent was the norm for generative AI companies as they scrape the web and any other data repositories they can find to build increasingly larger and larger frontier models?

OpenAI is close to finalizing a 40 billion ( 6 trillion) funding round led by SoftBank Group -- with investors including Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, Founders Fund and Altimeter Capital Management in talks to participate, according to people familiar with the matter. Magnetar Capital -- an Evanston, Illinois-based hedge fund -- could contribute up to 1 billion, according to multiple people, all of whom asked not to be identified because the information is private. The artificial intelligence developer's funding round would be the largest of all time, according to data compiled by research firm PitchBook. The deal is set to value the company at 300 billion including dollars raised -- almost double the ChatGPT maker's previous valuation of 157 billion from when it raised money in October.

Generative AI models offer many possibilities for text creation and transformation. Current graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for prompting them lack support for iterative exploration, as they do not represent prompts as actionable interface objects. We propose the concept of a composable prompting canvas for text exploration and iteration using dynamic widgets. Users generate widgets through system suggestions, prompting, or manually to capture task-relevant facets that affect the generated text. In a comparative study with a baseline (conversational UI), 18 participants worked on two writing tasks, creating diverse prompting environments with custom widgets and spatial layouts. They reported having more control over the generated text and preferred our system over the baseline. Our design significantly outperformed the baseline on the Creativity Support Index, and participants felt the results were worth the effort. This work highlights the need for GUIs that support user-driven customization and (re-)structuring to increase both the flexibility and efficiency of prompting.

Discrete-event simulation (DES) is widely used in healthcare Operations Research, but the models themselves are rarely shared. This limits their potential for reuse and long-term impact in the modelling and healthcare communities. This study explores the feasibility of using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to recreate published models using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), based on the descriptions provided in an academic journal. Using a structured methodology, we successfully generated, tested and internally reproduced two DES models, including user interfaces. The reported results were replicated for one model, but not the other, likely due to missing information on distributions. These models are substantially more complex than AI-generated DES models published to date. Given the challenges we faced in prompt engineering, code generation, and model testing, we conclude that our iterative approach to model development, systematic comparison and testing, and the expertise of our team were necessary to the success of our recreated simulation models.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) or large language models (LLMs) have the potential to revolutionize computational social science, particularly in automated textual analysis. In this paper, we conduct a systematic evaluation of the promises and risks of using LLMs for diverse coding tasks, with social movement studies serving as a case example. We propose a framework for social scientists to incorporate LLMs into text annotation, either as the primary coding decision-maker or as a coding assistant. This framework provides tools for researchers to develop the optimal prompt, and to examine and report the validity and reliability of LLMs as a methodological tool. Additionally, we discuss the associated epistemic risks related to validity, reliability, replicability, and transparency. We conclude with several practical guidelines for using LLMs in text annotation tasks, and how we can better communicate the epistemic risks in research.

We propose a method to explore the flavor structure of leptons using diffusion models, which are known as one of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI). We consider a simple extension of the Standard Model with the type I seesaw mechanism and train a neural network to generate the neutrino mass matrix. By utilizing transfer learning, the diffusion model generates 104 solutions that are consistent with the neutrino mass squared differences and the leptonic mixing angles. The distributions of the CP phases and the sums of neutrino masses, which are not included in the conditional labels but are calculated from the solutions, exhibit non-trivial tendencies. In addition, the effective mass in neutrinoless double beta decay is concentrated near the boundaries of the existing confidence intervals, allowing us to verify the obtained solutions through future experiments. An inverse approach using the diffusion model is expected to facilitate the experimental verification of flavor models from a perspective distinct from conventional analytical methods.

Modern transportation systems face pressing challenges due to increasing demand, dynamic environments, and heterogeneous information integration. The rapid evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) offers transformative potential to address these challenges. Extensive knowledge and high-level capabilities derived from pretraining evolve the default role of LLMs as text generators to become versatile, knowledge-driven task solvers for intelligent transportation systems. This survey first presents LLM4TR, a novel conceptual framework that systematically categorizes the roles of LLMs in transportation into four synergetic dimensions: information processors, knowledge encoders, component generators, and decision facilitators. Through a unified taxonomy, we systematically elucidate how LLMs bridge fragmented data pipelines, enhance predictive analytics, simulate human-like reasoning, and enable closed-loop interactions across sensing, learning, modeling, and managing tasks in transportation systems. For each role, our review spans diverse applications, from traffic prediction and autonomous driving to safety analytics and urban mobility optimization, highlighting how emergent capabilities of LLMs such as in-context learning and step-by-step reasoning can enhance the operation and management of transportation systems. We further curate practical guidance, including available resources and computational guidelines, to support real-world deployment. By identifying challenges in existing LLM-based solutions, this survey charts a roadmap for advancing LLM-driven transportation research, positioning LLMs as central actors in the next generation of cyber-physical-social mobility ecosystems. Online resources can be found in the project page: https://github.com/tongnie/awesome-llm4tr.

Deep generative models have become ubiquitous due to their ability to learn and sample from complex distributions. Despite the proliferation of various frameworks, the relationships among these models remain largely unexplored, a gap that hinders the development of a unified theory of AI learning. We address two central challenges: clarifying the connections between different deep generative models and deepening our understanding of their learning mechanisms. We focus on Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs), known for their universal approximation capabilities for discrete distributions. By introducing a reciprocal space formulation, we reveal a connection between RBMs, diffusion processes, and coupled Bosons. We show that at initialization, the RBM operates at a saddle point, where the local curvature is determined by the singular values, whose distribution follows the Marcenko-Pastur law and exhibits rotational symmetry. During training, this rotational symmetry is broken due to hierarchical learning, where different degrees of freedom progressively capture features at multiple levels of abstraction. This leads to a symmetry breaking in the energy landscape, reminiscent of Landau theory. This symmetry breaking in the energy landscape is characterized by the singular values and the weight matrix eigenvector matrix. We derive the corresponding free energy in a mean-field approximation. We show that in the limit of infinite size RBM, the reciprocal variables are Gaussian distributed. Our findings indicate that in this regime, there will be some modes for which the diffusion process will not converge to the Boltzmann distribution. To illustrate our results, we trained replicas of RBMs with different hidden layer sizes using the MNIST dataset. Our findings bridge the gap between disparate generative frameworks and also shed light on the processes underpinning learning in generative models.

OpenAI has updated ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode feature, promising a more natural conversation experience. The aim is to make the AI-powered assistant more pleasant to talk to and less prone to interrupting you mid-sentence. In a video posted on the OpenAI YouTube channel on Monday, researcher Manuka Stratta showed off the improvements. One of the most common annoyances with voice assistants is that they tend to interrupt you when you pause to think. That's now been fixed here.

Microsoft has launched two new "reasoning agents" for Copilot that were designed to analyze vast amounts of work data, including emails, meetings, chats and documents. The first tool called "Researcher" is based on OpenAI's deep research model combined with Copilot's advanced orchestration and deep search capabilities. Researcher was made for "complex, multi-step research" at work. It can take a user's internal work data along with additional information from the web, such as competitive data, emerging trends and the latest market analysis, to create market strategies and comprehensive quarterly reports, among other potential uses. Plus, it can pull data from Salesforce, ServiceNow and other external sources. Meanwhile, the new "Analyst" tool was built to function like a skilled data scientist.