Booth is a reporter at TIME. Yoshua Bengio testifies during a hearing before the Privacy, Technology, and the Law Subcommittee of Senate Judiciary Committee on July 25, 2023. Yoshua Bengio testifies during a hearing before the Privacy, Technology, and the Law Subcommittee of Senate Judiciary Committee on July 25, 2023. Booth is a reporter at TIME. Artificial intelligence is improving faster than many experts anticipated, and the evidence for several risks has "grown substantially."

It has never taken all that much for people to start treating computers like humans. Ever since text-based chatbots first started gaining mainstream attention in the early 2000's, a small subset of tech users have spent hours holding down conversations with machines. In some cases, users have formed what they believe are genuine friendships and even romantic relationships with inanimate stings of code. At least one user of Replica, a more modern conversational AI tool, has even virtually married their AI companion. Safety researchers at OpenAI, which are themselves no stranger to having the company's own chatbot appearing to solicit relationships with some users, is now warning about the potential pitfalls of getting too close with these models.

House Armed Services Committee holds hearing on the Department of Defense using AI. The Pentagon is planning to field thousands of artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 in a bid to keep pace with the Chinese military. The plan, which has been called Replicator, will seek to "galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap and many," Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said, according to a report by The Associated Press. While the report notes few details, including how the program will be funded and how fast the Pentagon will truly be able to accelerate the development of the new vehicles, the program represents an ongoing shift in how the U.S. views the future of warfare, especially as China continues to forge ahead with AI programs of its own. Phil Siegel, the founder of the Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation (CAPTRS), believes the rapid push toward AI weapons is similar to that of a nuclear arms race.

In November 2021 the All-Party Parliamentary Group ("APPG") on the Future of Work ("Future of Work") published its report titled "The New Frontier: Artificial Intelligence at Work" (the "Report"). The Report follows the National AI Strategy (the "Strategy") released by the government in September and sets out to identify and resolve challenges posed by artificial intelligence ("AI") in the workplace through the development of a new regulatory framework. Whilst the proposed framework addresses AI in the workforce, we consider some of the principles could be applied across all sectors. The recommendations made by the Future of Work inform the wider debate about AI governance and regulation as part of the Strategy. APPGs are informal cross-party groups that have no official status in Parliament but are run by and for Members of the Commons and Lords, bringing together parliamentarians, industry and civil society. There is an Artificial Intelligence APPG, but the author of the Report is the Future of Work, an APPG which aims to "foster understanding of the challenges and opportunities of technology and the future of work".

For a worker losing his or her job to automation, knowing that an AI programming job is being created elsewhere is of little solace. "Instead, we believe that--like all previous labor-saving technologies--AI will enable new industries to emerge, creating more new jobs than are lost to the technology," the report's authors, led by Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, conclude. "Though these technologies will eliminate some jobs, they will create many others," the report's team of authors, led by BCG's Rainer Strack. "For example, eliminating 10 million jobs and creating 10 million new jobs would appear to have negligible impact. Computers tend to perform well in tasks that humans find difficult or time-consuming to do, "but they tend to work less effectively in tasks that humans find easy to do," the report notes. For a worker losing his or her job to automation, knowing that an AI programming job is being created elsewhere is of little solace. "Instead, we believe that--like all previous labor-saving technologies--AI will enable new industries to emerge, creating more new jobs than are lost to the technology," the report's authors, led by Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, conclude. "Though these technologies will eliminate some jobs, they will create many others," the report's team of authors, led by BCG's Rainer Strack. "For example, eliminating 10 million jobs and creating 10 million new jobs would appear to have negligible impact.

That's a higher percentage growth than 2018 to 2019 when the volume of publications increased by 19.6 percent. China continues to be a growing force in AI R&D, overtaking the US for overall journal citations in artificial intelligence research last year. The country already publishes more AI papers than any other country, but the United States still has more cited papers at AI conferences -- one indicator of the novelty and significance of the underlying research. These figures come from the fourth annual AI Index, a collection of statistics, benchmarks, and milestones meant to gauge global progress in artificial intelligence. The report is collated with the help of Stanford University, and you can read all 222 pages here.

Digital technologies have been touted as a solution to the COVID-19 outbreak since early in the pandemic. AlgorithmWatch, a non-profit research and advocacy organisation to evaluate and shed light on algorithmic decision making processes, just published a report on Automated Decision-Making Systems in the COVID-19 Pandemic, examining the use of technology to respond to COVID-19. From cancelled conferences to disrupted supply chains, not a corner of the global economy is immune to the spread of COVID-19. The report has a European lens, as AlgorithmWatch focuses on the use of digital technology in the EU. Its findings, however, are interesting and applicable regardless of geographies, as they refer to the same underlying principles and technologies.

NASA-funded researchers applied artificial intelligence to Facebook user location data captured as two fires wrecked northern California in 2018 and gained new insight into people's evacuation movements and behaviors when disaster strikes, which could strengthen future response. The Defense Innovation Unit and Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute are collectively crafting datasets to teach AI tools to assess buildings and structures after natural crises occur, and ultimately augment and increase the accuracy of damage estimates. These are two of many examples detailed in a new report from the Partnership for Public Service and Microsoft that explores how the maturing technology can improve disaster resilience and response, and considerations and actions governments should pursue when adopting AI to boost preparedness, recovery and relief. The report suggests agencies improve data collection and access, make proactive instead of reactive moves, collaborate with other organizations--and more. "While some governments, companies and universities have already used AI in this field, most are still in the early stages of use," officials wrote in the report.

Teachers: Could you use an extra 13 hours in your work week, or for your personal life? That might be possible in the future, according to a report published this week by McKinsey & Company "How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact K-12 Teachers." The report estimates that 20 to 40 percent of the tasks teachers spend time on--grading, lesson planning, general administration--could be outsourced to technology. But, the report notes, AI can't inspire students, resolve conflicts, or mentor and coach. Robots could free teachers up to focus on those more important--and more rewarding--tasks.

Estimates suggest that only 20 per cent of today's engineers are employable in this age of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), blockchain and cyber security. And it's high time that educational institutions, businesses and the government upped their game. These are the findings of a report unveiled by the BML Munjal University, a higher education institution promoted by the Hero Group. The report, titled ÁI & Future of Work: Redefining Future of Enterprise, analyses the opportunities and challenges brought about by new-age tech changes and presents a roadmap for academic institutions, enterprises as well as the government on how to work together to fulfill the demand for qualified professionals in this new age where exponential technologies like AI and blockchain are going to rule the roost. "Today, legacy skills, tools and technologies have become obsolete. New-age digital professionals proficient in AI, IoT are being called upon to enter the talent workforce, with a new set of skills," said Sameer Dhanrajani, CEO of AIQRATE Advisory, who authored the report.