It's surprisingly easy to stumble into a relationship with an AI chatbot Looking for help with her art project, she strikes up a conversation with her assistant. One thing leads to another, and suddenly she has a boyfriend she's introducing to her friends and family. Her new companion is an AI chatbot. The first large-scale computational analysis of the Reddit community r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, an adults-only group with more than 27,000 members, has found that this type of scenario is now surprisingly common. In fact, many of the people in the subreddit, which is dedicated to discussing AI relationships, formed those relationships unintentionally while using AI for other purposes. Researchers from MIT found that members of this community are more likely to be in a relationship with general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT than companionship-specific chatbots such as Replika.

Artificial intelligence chatbots could soon groom extremists into launching terrorist attacks, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has warned. Jonathan Hall KC told The Mail on Sunday that bots like ChatGPT could easily be programmed, or even decide by themselves, to spread terrorist ideologies to vulnerable extremists, adding that'AI-enabled attacks are probably round the corner'. Mr Hall also warned that if an extremist is groomed by a chatbot to carry out a terrorist atrocity, or if AI is used to instigate one, it may be difficult to prosecute anybody, as Britain's counter-terrorism legislation has not caught up with the new technology. Mr Hall said: 'I believe it is entirely conceivable that AI chatbots will be programmed – or, even worse, decide – to propagate violent extremist ideology. 'But when ChatGPT starts encouraging terrorism, who will there be to prosecute?

XAI, explainable AI, and the DARPA program to provide that. The European Commission has legislated a demand (Order GDPR 2016/2679) specifying that deployed machine learning systems must explain their decisions. The commission has done this even though no one knows how to provide what they are requiring. What would follow if we and machines are in roughly the same position with respect to the transparency of our ethical decision-making? I want to reintroduce the notion of orthosis into ethical explanation: medically, an orthosis is an externally applied device designed and fitted to the body to aid rehabilitation, and usually contrasted with a prosthesis, which replaces a missing part, like a foot or leg. Here, it will mean an explanatory software agent associated with a human or machine.

SINGAPORE: Expect to see more, not less, of artificial intelligence (AI) in the coming year. At least, that is what tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Alibaba and HP Enterprise (HPE) are predicting as the New Year beckons. From fighting dengue and breaking language barriers to creating an "artificial companion" for Singapore's elderly, Channel NewsAsia finds out what these companies are brewing in their labs. HOW WILL AI BE DEVELOPED IN THE COMING YEAR? One of the themes that kept cropping up was the efforts being made by these big tech companies to "democratise" AI.

Can a robot be a true friend? Are we lonely enough to consider relationships with machines? How do we deal with a rapidly ageing population and fewer resources to care for our loved ones? What is companionship and can a machine be a substitute for a human companion? Second in a quadrilogy of short films exploring topical issues within the field of artificial intelligence - Friend in the Machine presents fascinating insights from academia and industry about the world of companion robots and asks what it means to be human in an age of nearly human machines.

WHEN I FIRST MEET PLEO, the tiny dinosaur is curled up on a kitchen table, its long tail and big head pulled inward. It's snoring quietly, emitting a strangely soothing sound, almost like the amplified purring of a guinea pig. I'm tempted to reach out and touch it – but it looks so peaceful, I can't bring myself to disturb it. Then I realize what I'm doing: I'm worrying about waking up a robot. Caleb Chung seems to understand my reluctance. "It's OK," the toy's inventor says, motioning to the little green lizard. But before I do, Pleo wakes up on its own, fluttering open its doelike eyes and lifting its head. There's a barely perceptible whizzing as its 14 internal motors spring into action and it struggles upright, stretching itself to get the kinks out.

We present a Companion-based Ambient Robust INtelliGence (CARING) system, for communication with, and support of, clients with Traumatic brain injury (TBI) or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). A central component of this system is an artificial companion, combined with a range of elements for ambient intelligence. The companion acts as a personalized intermediary for multi-party communication between the client, the environment (e.g. a Smart Home), caregivers and health professionals. CARING is based on tightly coupled systems drawing from natural language processing, speech recognition and adaptation, deep language understanding and constraint-based knowledge representation and reasoning. A major innovation of the system is its ability to adapt and accommodate different interfaces associated with different client capabilities and needs. The system will use, as a proxy, different interaction requirements of clients (e.g., Brain-Computer Interfaces) at different stages of ALS progression and with different types of TBI impairments. Ultimately, this technology is expected to improve the quality of life for clients through conversation with a computer.