The California Public Utilities Commission--a state agency that regulates power, water, and telecommunications companies, as well as movers, taxicabs, rideshare services, and self-driving cars--is headquartered in a large, curved building on Van Ness Avenue, in San Francisco, that looks a bit like a sun visor. Last Thursday morning, a small group of protesters gathered on the steps in advance of the commission's vote on whether to allow the autonomous-vehicle companies Cruise and Waymo to expand their fleets, and charge for rides, like a taxi service, in the city. A man holding a megaphone denounced corporate greed, while other people unfurled hand-painted banners. One depicted a dead dog lying in the street--possibly a reference to the small dog killed earlier this summer by a Waymo car. Another showed an autonomous vehicle in flames bearing down on a crowd of firemen, police officers, and taxi-drivers.

Artificial intelligence chatbots tend to agree with the opinions of the person using them, even to the point that they nod along to objectively false statements. Research shows that this problem gets worse as language models increase in size, adding weight to concerns that AI outputs cannot be trusted.

Driverless cars may be worse at detecting children and people with darker skin, tests on artificial intelligence systems suggest. The researchers who carried out the work say that tighter government regulation is needed and that car-makers must be transparent about the development and testing of these vehicles. Jie Zhang at King's College London and her colleagues assessed eight AI-based pedestrian detectors used in driverless car research.

In recent years, intelligent autonomous weapons--weapons that can select and fire upon targets without any human input--have become a matter of serious concern. Giving an AI system the power to decide matters of life and death would radically change warfare forever. But intelligent autonomous weapons that fully displace human decision-making have (likely) yet to see real-world use. Even the "autonomous" drones and ships fielded by the US and other powers are used under close human supervision. However, these systems have become sophisticated enough to raise novel questions--ones that are trickier to answer than the well-covered wrangles over killer robots.

Detection tools being developed to combat the growing threat of deepfakes – realistic-looking false content – must use training datasets that are inclusive of darker skin tones to avoid bias, experts have warned. Most deepfake detectors are based on a learning strategy that depends largely on the dataset that is used for its training. It then uses AI to detect signs that may not be clear to the human eye. This can include monitoring blood flow and heart rate. However, these detection methods do not always work on people with darker skin tones, and if training sets do not contain all ethnicities, accents, genders, ages and skin-tone, they are open to bias, experts warned.

Multilingual large language models (LLMs) seem to work better in English. These AIs are designed to respond to queries in multiple languages but they respond better if asked to translate the request into English first. LLMs have become a key part of the artificial intelligence revolution since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022.

A robotic gripper made from flexible ribbons can pick up objects as delicate as a dandelion to something 16,000 times heavier than itself. Most robotic grippers are specialised to perform a narrow set of tasks, but performing well in one domain often entails a trade-off. A tool well suited to picking up heavy objects, for example, normally struggles to manipulate much lighter, intricate objects.

TikTok recently announced that its users in the European Union will soon be able to switch off its infamously engaging content-selection algorithm. The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) is driving this change as part of the region's broader effort to regulate AI and digital services in accordance with human rights and values. TikTok's algorithm learns from users' interactions--how long they watch, what they like, when they share a video--to create a highly tailored and immersive experience that can shape their mental states, preferences, and behaviors without their full awareness or consent. An opt-out feature is a great step toward protecting cognitive liberty, the fundamental right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. Rather than being confined to algorithmically curated For You pages and live feeds, users will be able to see trending videos in their region and language, or a "Following and Friends" feed that lists the creators they follow in chronological order.

Take a walk around San Francisco this summer and you'll see something curious: Jaguar SUVs and Chevrolet hatchbacks driving around with no one inside. The ghostly vehicles are owned and operated by Google spinoff Waymo and General Motors subsidiary Cruise. Soon there will likely be a lot more of them, because last week, the companies received a state regulator's permission to operate paid robotaxi services anywhere in the city around the clock, after years and billions spent on testing and development. San Francisco's 10,000-odd Uber and Lyft drivers have already gotten used to sharing the road with trainee machines designed to make their work obsolete. From that front-row seat they have watched the robots trigger on-road drama that has angered city officials, as the self-driving vehicles have blocked fire trucks, emergency vehicles, and city buses, and caused jams by "freezing" in traffic.

The rise of AI chatbots has sowed confusion and panic among educators who worry they are ill-equipped to incorporate the technology into their classes and fear a stark rise in plagiarism and reduced learning. Absent guidance from university administrators on how to deal with the software, many teachers are taking matters into their own hands, turning to listservs, webinars and professional conferences to fill in gaps in their knowledge -- many shelling out their own money to attend conference sessions that are packed to the brim.