On Tuesday, speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries launched a bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and Jeffries, a New York Democrat, each appointed 12 members to the Task Force, which will be chaired by Representative Jay Obernolte, a California Republican, and co-chaired by Representative Ted Lieu, a California Democrat. According to the announcement, the Task Force will "produce a comprehensive report that will include guiding principles, forward-looking recommendations and bipartisan policy proposals developed in consultation with committees of jurisdiction." Obernolte--who has a masters in AI from the University of California, Los Angeles and founded the video game company FarSight Studios--and Lieu--who studied computer science and political science at Stanford University--are natural picks to lead the Task Force. But many of the members have expertise in AI too.

The rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT has increased the potential for a wide range of attackers to target elections around the world in 2024, according to a new report by cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike. Both state-linked hackers and allied so-called "hacktivists" are increasingly experimenting with ChatGPT and other AI tools, enabling a wider range of actors to carry out cyberattacks and scams, according to the company's annual global threats report. This includes hackers linked to Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, who have been testing new ways to use these technologies against the U.S., Israel, and European countries. With half the world's population set to vote in 2024, the use of generative AI to target elections could be a "huge factor," says Adam Meyers, head of counter-adversary operations at CrowdStrike. So far, CrowdStrike analysts have been able to detect the use of these models through comments in the scripts that would have been placed there by a tool like ChatGPT.

Hilke Schellmann, author of "The Algorithm," argues that AI-based tools aren't ready for use in the hiring process. Yet, many large American companies already rely upon them.

This week Microsoft announced that it would invest 3.2 billion ( 3.5 billion) in Germany over the next two years. The U.S. tech giant will use the money to double the capacity of its artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure in Germany and expand its training programmes, according to Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith. The move follows a similar announcement from November 2023, when Microsoft said it would invest 2.5 billion ( 3.2 billion) in infrastructure in the U.K. over the next three years. Both countries hailed the investments as significant steps that would permit them to compete on the world stage when it comes to AI. However, the investments are dwarfed by investments made by U.S.-based cloud service providers elsewhere, particularly in the U.S. As AI becomes increasingly economically and militarily important, governments are taking steps to ensure they have control over the technology that they depend on.

Have you ever wanted to know what two golden retrievers podcasting on top of a mountain might look like? Or perhaps watch a bicycle race on the ocean with different animals riding the bicycles? OpenAI's latest generative artificial intelligence offering, Sora, can generate breathtakingly realistic videos that are up to a minute long from text prompts. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the model's creation on X on Thursday. Sora is not yet available to the public. For now, OpenAI is only granting access to red teamers--individuals employed to look for issues--who will assess potential risks associated with the model's release, as well as a limited number of "visual artists, designers, and filmmakers to gain feedback on how to advance the model to be most helpful for creative professionals," according to a blog post.

Each year, the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list recognizes businesses making extraordinary impact around the world. Enter your company here today. As investors were wowed by ChatGPT and the rapid progress made by artificial intelligence in recent years, money poured into the industry. Generative AI and AI-related startups raised nearly 50 billion in 2023, according to Crunchbase, a business data provider. Already in 2024, share prices for firms that play a role in manufacturing the advanced chips required for the most powerful AI models have skyrocketed, with Nvidia, AMD, and Arm share prices up 27%, 51%, and 82% respectively.

TikTok is launching an in-app Election Center to mitigate the spread of online misinformation during the 2024 European Parliament elections. In a blog post published on Wednesday, Kevin Morgan, Head of Safety and Integrity for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said the ByteDance-owned social media platform will host local language centers for each of the 27 E.U. countries to help viewers "separate fact from fiction." The tool is set to be available for TikTok's 134 million monthly European users to access in March, ahead of the bloc taking to the polls in early June. The centers will aim to inform European voters about the elections, and videos linked to the electoral process will be clearly signposted and guide users to the relevant center. TikTok also noted that it has a team of 6,000 people working to moderate E.U. languages content.

When I met my husband, who happens to be white, he told me that he was always seeing women with blonde hair on Tinder and he's not really into blondes. No matter how many times he had swiped left on blondes, the algorithms were always recommending them to him, presumably because pop culture dictates that white men prefer blondes. Luckily for us, the algorithms' tendency to stack blonde women in his swipe deck worked out in our favor because I'm a black woman who, at the time, had blonde hair. In nearly 10 years of swiping through profiles on Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and OkCupid, I learned that dating apps can provide pathways for finding friendship, adventure, romance, and sometimes, love. But there was one aspect of dating app culture that I couldn't ignore because it was often the first thing matches wanted to talk about: race.

Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, received another accolade to add to his long list of awards on Sunday, when he was recognized with a TIME100 Impact Award for his contributions to the world of artificial intelligence. Ahead of the award ceremony in Dubai, LeCun sat down with TIME to discuss the barriers to achieving "artificial general intelligence" (AGI), the merits of Meta's open-source approach, and what he sees as the "preposterous" claim that AI could pose an existential risk to the human race. TIME spoke with LeCun on Jan. 26. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Many people in the tech world today believe that training large language models (LLMs) on more computing power and more data will lead to artificial general intelligence.

In 1976, Frank Collin, an ambitious leader in the small but resilient Nazi party of the United States, planned a march in Skokie, Illinois--an attempt to raise the profile of his organization and build support for his cause. The town, many of whose residents were Jewish and had lived through the war, vehemently opposed the demonstration, and the case went to the courts. The American Civil Liberties Union came to the legal defense of Collin and his fellow Nazis on First Amendment grounds--a move that would be almost unthinkable today. Aryeh Neier, the national executive director of the ACLU at the time, received thousands of letters condemning his organization's decision to defend the free speech rights of Nazis. Neier was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1937 and fled from Germany to England along with his parents as a child.