The ways we communicate are multilayered, and psychologists have devised many kinds of tests to measure our ability to infer meaning and understanding from interactions with each other. AI models are getting better at these tests. New research published has found that some large language models perform as well as, and in some cases better than, humans when presented with tasks designed to test the ability to track people's mental states, known as "theory of mind." This doesn't mean AI systems are actually able to work out how we're feeling. But it does demonstrate that these models are performing better and better in experiments designed to assess abilities that psychologists believe are unique to humans.

In the past few years, multiple researchers claim to have shown that large language models can pass cognitive tests designed for humans, from working through problems step by step, to guessing what other people are thinking. These kinds of results are feeding a hype machine predicting that these machines will soon come for white-collar jobs; that they could replace teachers, doctors, journalists, and lawyers. Geoffrey Hinton has called out GPT-4's apparent ability to string together thoughts as one reason he is now scared of the technology he helped create. There's little agreement on what those results really mean. Some people are dazzled by what they see as glimmers of human-like intelligence, while others aren't convinced one bit.

We would never allow a drug to be sold in the market without having gone through rigorous testing -- not even in the context of a health crisis like the coronavirus pandemic. Then why do we allow algorithms that can be just as damaging as a potent drug to be let loose into the world without having undergone similarly rigorous testing? At the moment, anyone can design an algorithm and use it to make important decisions about people -- whether they get a loan, or a job, or an apartment, or a prison sentence -- without any oversight or any kind of evidence-based requirement. The general population is being used as guinea pigs. Artificial intelligence is a predictive technology.

As AI's presence in all kinds of domains becomes more obvious every day, we can no longer think of it as something completely separate from the physical world. As visionaries predicted, the digital and the material are slowly merging. And, for the team at SparkCognition, an infrastructure-focused artificial intelligence company, this means that software and hardware should also be considered as a whole, not as different components. The HyperWerx campus will do just that, as a first-of-its-kind autonomy facility where AI exploration is set to lead the way. Instead of relying only on software and theoretical tests, the engineers at SparkCognition wanted to actually see how AI and the physical systems would interact.

A team led by computer scientists from MIT examined ten of the most-cited datasets used to test machine learning systems. They found that around 3.4 percent of the data was inaccurate or mislabeled, which could cause problems in AI systems that use these datasets. The datasets, which have each been cited more than 100,000 times, include text-based ones from newsgroups, Amazon and IMDb. Errors emerged from issues like Amazon product reviews being mislabeled as positive when they were actually negative and vice versa. Some of the image-based errors result from mixing up animal species.

Carmaker Toyota has unveiled plans for a 2,000-person "city of the future," where it will test autonomous vehicles, smart technology and robot-assisted living. The ambitious project, dubbed Woven City, is set to break ground next year in the foothills of Japan's Mount Fuji, about 60 miles from Tokyo. Announcing the project at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Toyota's CEO Akio Toyoda described the new city as a "living laboratory" that will allow researchers, scientists and engineers to test emerging technology in a "real-life environment." A digital mock-up shows small autonomous vehicles operating alongside pedestrians. "With people buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test AI technology, in both the virtual and the physical world, maximizing its potential," he said on stage during Tuesday's unveiling.

Are today's best artificial intelligence (AI) systems as smart as a mouse? A new contest aims to find out. The Animal-AI Olympics, which will begin this June, aims to "benchmark the current level of various AIs against different animal species using a range of established animal cognition tasks." At stake are bragging rights and $10,000 in prizes. The project, a partnership between the University of Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and GoodAI, a research institution based in Prague, is a new way to evaluate the progress of AI systems toward what researchers call artificial general intelligence.

Unity Technologies has a new game that you can't play. The maker of game development tools is releasing a new title called Obstacle Tower that is designed to challenge the capabilities of artificial intelligence. The release of the title is being accompanied by a contest, the Obstacle Tower Challenge, that will allow participants to run their AI agents through the 100-level challenge and compete for prizes. According to Unity, Obstacle Tower provides a game-like environment for machine learning researchers to play around with and fine-tune their AI. The tower operates similarly to a standard platforming game.

NEW YORK, USA – Businesses will soon be able to access dedicated testing services for AI systems, Accenture revealed in a new product announcement today. Accenture's AI Testing will provide companies with a methodology to help companies build, monitor, and measure reliable AI systems within their own infrastructure or by the cloud. It will form part of Accenture's Testing Services suite, which also includes testing strategy, engineering, digital, and enterprise technology for organizations. "The adoption of AI is accelerating as businesses see its transformational value to power new innovations and growth," said Bhaskar Ghosh, group chief executive of Accenture Technology Services. "As organizations embrace AI, it is critical to find better ways to train and sustain these systems – securely and with quality – to avoid adverse effects on business performance, brand reputation, compliance and humans."

With Ex Machina, the directorial debut of 28 Days Later and Sunshine writer Alex Garland, we can finally put the Turing test to rest. You've likely heard of it -- developed by legendary computer scientist Alan Turing (recently featured in The Imitation Game), it's a test meant to prove artificial intelligence in machines. But, given just how easy it is to trick, as well as the existence of more rigorous alternatives for proving consciousness, passing a test developed in the '50s isn't much of a feat to AI researchers today. Ex Machina isn't the first film to expose the limits of the Turing test, but it's by far one of the most successful. And, like the films 2001 and Primer, it's a work of science fiction that might end up giving you a case of philosophical whiplash. Ex Machina is constructed like a morality play.