It was clear that OpenAI was on to something. In late 2021, a small team of researchers was playing around with a new version of OpenAI's text-to-image model, DALL-E, an AI that converts short written descriptions into pictures: a fox painted by Van Gogh, perhaps, or a corgi made of pizza. Now they just had to figure out what to do with it. Nobody could have predicted just how big a splash this product was going to make. The rapid release of other generative models has inspired hundreds of newspaper headlines and magazine covers, filled social media with memes, kicked a hype machine into overdrive--and set off an intense backlash from creators.

In the last few months, a new AI called ChatGPT has emerged and is already upending education at all levels. How will ChatGPT impact Jewish education and Jewish learning? Identity/Crisis guest host David Zvi Kalman, Director of New Media and Scholar in Residence speaks with Sara Wolkenfeld, Rabbinic Fellow of the David Hartman Center and Chief Learning Officer at Sefaria about what these technologies mean for Jewish learning, how we think about the sacredness of texts, and where we go from here. Identity/Crisis is a weekly podcast from the Shalom Hartman Institute about news and ideas. Subscribe to Identity/Crisis on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you receive your podcasts.

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Many "futurists" insist that technological advances will enable humans to "upload our minds" into computer systems, thereby allowing us to "live forever," defying our biological limitations. This concept is deeply flawed but has gained popular attention in recent years. So much so, Amazon has a TV series based on the premise called Upload, not to mention countless other pop-culture references.

Artificially intelligent behavior is emergent rather than designed, which is why we have little understanding of what it is capable of. Now computer scientists are saying this needs to change before AI's widespread deployment.

This June marks the 30th anniversary of an iconic and timeless video game mascot: Sonic the Hedgehog. After arriving on the Sega Genesis--the 16-bit little console that could--on June 23, 1991, the game quickly became a buzzworthy system seller and corporate mascot. It was a defining character of the '90s, and a phenomenon the company needed to stand a chance against rival Nintendo. The brainchild of Yuji Naka, Sonic the Hedgehog touted vibrant graphics and innovative level design. The speed of its gameplay ran rings around Mario and became the emphasis of Sega's famously angsty and clever "Sega Does What Nintendon't" marketing campaign.

This series Identity Crisis is an exploration into generative art utilizing Machine Learning as a tool to create artwork that has never existed previously. By training an ML model with a dataset of 4000 images of abstract portraits & paintings, image synthesis is performed analyzing the existing media. Learning colors, features & characteristics, finally creating endless variations of the portraits that are entirely unique. The final output is an animation flowing between generated images that many artists relate to as a "machine hallucination".This listing also comes with Unlockable Content a collection of 8 images (1024px x 1024px JPEG's)

It is an increasingly common modern annoyance: arriving at the front of the queue to pay in a shop, pulling out a smartphone for a hygienic contact-free payment, and staring down at an error message because your phone fails to recognise your masked face. As more and more nations mandate masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus, technology companies are scrambling to keep up with the changing world. But some experts are warning that the change may have to start with users themselves. Apple's Face ID is the most well-known example of a consumer facial verification system. The technology, which uses a grid of infrared dots to measure the physical shape of a user's face, secures access to the company's iPhones and iPads, as well as other features such as Apple Pay.

Fei-Fei Li is among the brightest stars in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, somehow managing to hold down two demanding jobs simultaneously: head of Stanford University's A.I. lab and chief scientist for A.I. at Google Cloud, one of the search giant's most promising enterprises.

Fei-Fei Li is among the brightest stars in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, somehow managing to hold down two demanding jobs simultaneously: head of Stanford University's A.I. lab and chief scientist for A.I. at Google Cloud, one of the search giant's most promising enterprises. Yet last September, when nervous company officials discussed how to speak publicly about Google's first major A.I. contract with the Pentagon, Dr. Li strongly advised shunning those two potent letters. "Avoid at ALL COSTS any mention or implication of AI," she wrote in an email to colleagues reviewed by The New York Times. "Weaponized AI is probably one of the most sensitized topics of AI -- if not THE most. This is red meat to the media to find all ways to damage Google."