The most recent generation of chatbots has surfaced longstanding concerns about the growing sophistication and accessibility of artificial intelligence. Fears about the integrity of the job market -- from the creative economy to the managerial class -- have spread to the classroom as educators rethink learning in the wake of ChatGPT. Yet while apprehensions about employment and schools dominate headlines, the truth is that the effects of large-scale language models such as ChatGPT will touch virtually every corner of our lives. These new tools raise society-wide concerns about artificial intelligence's role in reinforcing social biases, committing fraud and identity theft, generating fake news, spreading misinformation and more. A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science is seeking to empower tech users to mitigate these risks.

Former DARPA director and leader of secretive skunkworks divisions at Facebook and Google Regina Dugan said companies need to think about how using AI technology can go wrong in order to try to understand the ethical, societal, and legal implications of their work. More specifically, she suggests technologists and engineers working with emergent technologies practice red teaming and blue teaming to imagine best and worst-case scenarios. Doing both allows you to consider how to mitigate negative consequences. Thinking in these terms should take place at the earliest stages in order for changes to have long-term impact. "I think it's impossible to know at any one point in time what all the unintended consequences will be," Dugan said in an interview with Samsung Electronics president and chief strategy officer Young Sohn.

A new report claims Facebook is planning to release a smart speaker in 2018. Amazon's Alexa-powered Echo Show does feature a touchscreen display, but that only measures 7 inches. Richardson also worked for Amazon's Lab126 as its principal technical manager, and is believed to have worked on Amazon's Echo smart speakers. Research firm Strategy Analytics reported that worldwide smart speaker shipments reached 5.9 million back in 2016, 4.2 million of those were shipped during the fourth quarter of the year.

Facebook has revealed its secret "Building 8" where it is crafting technology to read people's minds. As well as its brain-computer interface, the company is working on a wide range of secret projects that use technology in ways never before imagined. Those include special ways of making people sense touch and re-wiring people's brains. The company showed off some of the secretive unit's plans during a speech at its F8 conference. Until now, the team's work has been kept entirely quiet – only leaking out in job ads and other publications.

Facebook concluded its two-day F8 annual conference Wednesday where it announced its plan over the next 10 years. The Menlo Park-based company will be investing in a number of foundational technologies including connectivity, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality. But what is most interesting is Facebook's investment into building a brain-computer interface that will let users type using their mind. Once developed, brain-computer interfaces could let people control augmented reality and virtual reality experiences with their mind instead of a screen. "We are working on a system that will let people type with their brains. Specifically, we have a goal of creating a silent speech system capable of typing 100 words per minute straight from your brain – that's five times faster than you can type on a smartphone today," Facebook said on its official blog Wednesday.

Today at F8, Facebook revealed it has a team of 60 engineers working on building a brain-computer interface that will let you type with just your mind without invasive implants. The team plans to use optical imaging to scan your brain a hundred times per second to detect you speaking silently in your head, and translate it into text. Regina Dugan, the head of Facebook's R&D division Building 8, explained to conference attendees that the goal is to eventually allow people to type at 100 words per minute, 5X faster than typing on a phone, with just your mind. Eventually, brain-computer interfaces could let people control augmented reality and virtual reality experiences with their mind instead of a screen or controller. Facebook's CEO and CTO teased these details of this "direct brain interface" technology over the last two days at F8.

Facebook wants you to use your brain to interact with your computer. Specifically, instead of using something primitive like a screen or a controller, the company is looking into ways that you and I can interact with our PCs or phones just by using our mind. Regina Dugan, the head of Building 8, the company's secretive hardware R&D division, delved into this on stage at F8. "What if you could type directly from your brain?" she asks. In a video demo, Dugan showed the example of a woman in a Stanford lab who is able to type eight words per minute directly with her brain. This means, Dugan says, that you can text your friends without using your phone.

Roughly 170,000 people descended on San Francisco this week to attend Dreamforce, an annual conference hosted by cloud computing company Salesforce. We round up the themes that dominated the on-site conversations. The biggest theme of the week was artificial intelligence (AI), not least because Salesforce unveiled its new'Einstein' product during the event, which has predictive capabilities and looks to bring AI technology to brand campaigns. But the technology also dominated conversations held away from the keynote sessions. Bob Stutz, chief analytics officer of'data visualisation engine' Wave Analytics, certainly seems convinced of its uses.

Facebook built its fortune on the internet, that non-physical space where people share updates and digital videos with friends. But deep inside its Silicon Valley headquarters, Facebook engineers have stocked a new lab with computerized lathes, industrial mills and tools for making physical goods. Model maker Spencer Burns, looks over a globe under construction inside a 5 axis vertical milling machine during a tour of Area 404, the hardware R&D lab, at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park. Facebook engineers have stocked a new lab with computerized lathes, industrial mills and tools for making physical goods. The lab is dubbed Area 404, an inside joke playing off the'error 404' message that internet users see when they try to visit a web page that can't be found.