The rapid advance of artificial intelligence technology has raised concerns about eliminating jobs held by humans. Professional photography is now coming into focus as one such potential casualty. "The rapid advancements in AI and image processing are transforming photography from a skill-based art to one that is increasingly technology-driven. This evolution is making high-quality photography accessible to a broader audience, challenging the traditional notion of professional photography as a skill," according to a report published Tuesday by Medium. "As we move further into this AI-driven era, it becomes evident that the role and relevance of professional photography skills, as we have known them, are becoming obsolete."

The rapid development of artificial intelligence has led some to fear dangerous scenarios where the technology is smarter than the humans who created it, but some experts believe AI has already reached that point in certain ways. "If you define it as performing intellectual but repetitive and bounded problems, they already are smarter. The best chess players and GO players are machines. And soon we can train them to do all tasks like that. Examples include legal analysis, simple writing and creating pictures on demand," Phil Siegel, the founder of the Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation, told Fox News Digital.

OpenAI, the parent company of the popular artificial intelligence chatbot platform ChatGPT, altered its usage policy to get rid of a prohibition on using their technology for "military and warfare." OpenAI's usage policy specifically banned the use of its technology for "weapons development, military and warfare" before January 10 of this year, but that policy has since been updated to only disallow use that would "bring harm to others," according to a report from Computer World. "Our policy does not allow our tools to be used to harm people, develop weapons, for communications surveillance, or to injure others or destroy property," an OpenAI spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "There are, however, national security use cases that align with our mission. For example, we are already working with DARPA to spur the creation of new cybersecurity tools to secure open source software that critical infrastructure and industry depend on. It was not clear whether these beneficial use cases would have been allowed under'military' in our previous policies. So the goal with our policy update is to provide clarity and the ability to have these discussions."

Last year saw new artificial intelligence products released at the most rapid pace yet, though predictions of an AI boom on the scale of last decade's tech explosion have yet to come to fruition. "I think 2023 was the year that AI astonished people and 2024 will be the year of retrenchment as people learn the limitations of AI and where various AI systems have the greatest utility," Christopher Alexander, chief analytics officer for Pioneer Development Group, told Fox News Digital. "I think that the race for AI utility has just begun and AI will become a permanent fixture in people's lives. I think that the grand predictions for AI in this past year confused the current state of AI and the future state, which has led to some confusion in the market." Alexander's comments come after what was in many ways a landmark year for AI technology in 2023, with new platforms and developments making headlines throughout the year.

Center for AI Safety Director Dan Hendrycks explains concerns about how the rapid growth of artificial intelligence could impact society. When Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced a "major effort" in April to put the Senate's imprint on artificial intelligence policy, he talked about having an "urgency to act" and said a legislative plan would start taking shape in a matter of weeks. "In the coming weeks, Leader Schumer plans to refine the proposal in conjunction with stakeholders from academia, advocacy organizations, industry, and the government," he said in an April 13 statement. But on Thursday, more than two months later, Schumer indicated that legislation may not be ready until 2024. In Wednesday remarks to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Schumer said the process of getting input for the plan is still months away.

The state of autonomous vehicle safety standard regulation in the US today is between two presidential administrations, with the Trump Administration-era regulations issued Jan. 14 likely to be soon superseded by policies of the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration rules would allow self-driving vehicle manufacturers to skip certain federal crash safety requirements in vehicles not designed to carry people, marking the first major update to federal safety standards to accommodate innovations of driverless technology, according to an account in The Detroit News.This would apply for example to the delivery vehicle from startup Nuro, which has no driver or passengers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated the rule would save automakers and consumers $5.8 billion in 2050. "With more than 90% of serious crashes caused by driver error, it's vital that we remove unnecessary barriers to technology that could help save lives," stated then NHTSA Deputy Administrator James Owens. On Jan. 25, Steve Cliff, deputy executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, was named deputy administrator of the NHTSA. Ariel Wolf, counsel to the Self-Driving Coalition, said of the Jan. 14 announcement that the NHTSA rule was a "highly significant" development in safety rules for self-driving vehicles.

After breakfast one morning in August, the mathematician Terence Tao opened an email from three physicists he didn't know. The trio explained that they'd stumbled across a simple formula that, if true, established an unexpected relationship between some of the most basic and important objects in linear algebra. The formula "looked too good to be true," said Tao, who is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, a Fields medalist, and one of the world's leading mathematicians. "Something this short and simple -- it should have been in textbooks already," he said. "So my first thought was, no, this can't be true."

Announced at Microsoft's annual Ignite conference in Orlando, Fla., the tool is the first major product launch for Microsoft 365 since Microsoft Teams, an enterprise collaboration tool announced in 2017. Microsoft 365 includes Office 365, a cloud-based suite of apps including Outlook, Word and PowerPoint; Windows 10; and Microsoft's security services for businesses. The tool uses AI models to comb through millions of data points that a business stores in Microsoft services, including those found in emails, documents and calendars. It then automatically generates "topic cards" about company projects, products, customers and internal experts. "It's a way to help [employees] get access to knowledge, enterprise and learning, within the context of their work," said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office 365.

Lawyers spend years in school learning how to sift through millions of cases looking for the exact language that will help their clients win. What if a computer could do it for them? It's not the kind of question many lawyers would dignify with an answer. But Jimoh Ovbiagele isn't a lawyer, and as a budding computer scientist studying at the University of Toronto a couple of years ago the idea made perfect sense. He and his colleagues combined it with IBM's Watson artificial intelligence platform to co-found ROSS Intelligence, a multimillion-dollar legal research firm that has lined up global law giant Dentons as a backer and customer, along with other prominent customers including Baker & Hostetler and Latham & Watkins.

Denton initially shod the Mantis in modified go-kart tires. "They worked out really well," he notes, "but they weren't very grippy." So he fabricated custom rubber feet, modeling the hexagonal pattern after off-road tires. Now he alternates shoes based on the terrain. In 2007, Matt Denton stopped on the side of the road near his home in Hampshire, England, to watch an excavator dig.