New York state has required companies to disclose if "technological innovation or automation" was the cause of job loss for nearly a year. Over 160 companies in New York state have filed notices of mass layoffs since last March. None--in a group that includes Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and other employers that are adopting AI tools --attributed their workforce cuts in those filings to "technological innovation or automation." That option was added 11 months ago to a required question on paperwork that businesses with 50 or more employees must file with the state to notify of sizable job losses. New York's Department of Labor told WIRED that, as of the end of January, no employer had marked tech as the reason for their workforce reduction.

'I'm baffled how anyone could use AI to participate in a hobby.' 'I'm baffled how anyone could use AI to participate in a hobby.' I'm a committed introvert - but no AI will take away the joy I get from other people T his is depressing: according to the Cut, people are using AI to solve escape room puzzles and cheat at trivia nights. Surely, that is the definition of spoiling your own fun? "Like going into a corn maze and just wanting a straight line to the end," says one TikToker quoted in the article. There's also an interview with a keen reader who uses ChatGPT as a book club replacement, scraping the internet and aggregating "stimulating opinions and perspectives". All well and good (actually, no, it sounds bleak as hell) until he had a character's death spoilered in the fantasy epic he had been enjoying.

In the field of railway automation, one of the key challenges has been the development of effective computer vision systems due to the limited availability of high-quality, sequential data. Traditional datasets are restricted in scope, lacking the spatio temporal context necessary for real-time decision-making, while alternative solutions introduce issues related to realism and applicability. By focusing on route-specific, contextually relevant cues, we can generate rich, sequential datasets that align more closely with real-world operational logic. The concept of milestone determination allows for the development of targeted, rule-based models that simplify the learning process by eliminating the need for generalized recognition of dynamic components, focusing instead on the critical decision points along a route. We argue that this approach provides a practical framework for training vision agents in controlled, predictable environments, facilitating safer and more efficient machine learning systems for railway automation.

NYS mental health committee member Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick on the bipartisan efforts to pass legislation to protect children online. Every state has its own set of strange laws still technically on the books that may surprise you, including New York. When it comes to strange laws in a state, many have little evidence to back them, with origins unknown, while others are ones you can still find in written law. Strange laws are often head-scratchers in terms of trying to figure out why the law was created in the first place. Below are a few examples of strange laws in New York.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams--who truly believes that God put him in that job--was indicted this week on five federal charges related to bribery, wire fraud, and accepting straw donations from foreign officials. The acts detailed in the nearly 60-page indictment from the Southern District of New York span a full decade of Adams' political career, dating back to his tenure as Brooklyn borough president and extending up through his current mayoral reelection campaign. Despite being the only mayor in NYC history to be charged during his tenure, Adams is still doing what he does best: refusing to budge an inch and clumsily making his case before a city that's long tired of his shenanigans. "From here, my attorneys will take care of the case so I can take care of the city," he declared during a rainy Thursday morning press conference, sheltering under a pavilion with members of the city's Black clergy. "My day-to-day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New ...

ChatGPT is a conversational agent built on a large language model. Trained on a significant portion of human output, ChatGPT can mimic people to a degree. As such, we need to consider what social identities ChatGPT simulates (or can be designed to simulate). In this study, we explored the case of identity simulation through Japanese first-person pronouns, which are tightly connected to social identities in intersectional ways, i.e., intersectional pronouns. We conducted a controlled online experiment where people from two regions in Japan (Kanto and Kinki) witnessed interactions with ChatGPT using ten sets of first-person pronouns. We discovered that pronouns alone can evoke perceptions of social identities in ChatGPT at the intersections of gender, age, region, and formality, with caveats. This work highlights the importance of pronoun use for social identity simulation, provides a language-based methodology for culturally-sensitive persona development, and advances the potential of intersectional identities in intelligent agents.

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become. "Right now, we have young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don't even know what the word computer is. They don't know, they don't know these things." If recent polling is any indication, it seems pretty clear to everyone that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul could be doing a better job of running her state. If I may offer a little advice, maybe she could start by understanding New York City a little better--and by being just a biiiiiiit less racist.

Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here. Sarah Ferguson expressed her shock and grief as she mourned the death of her former personal assistant, Jenean Chapman, who was murdered in Texas this week. The 63-year-old Duchess of York paid tribute to Chapman in an Instagram post that she shared on Thursday. "I am shocked and saddened to learn that Jenean Chapman, who worked with me as my personal assistant many years ago, has been murdered in Dallas aged just 46. A suspect is in custody," Ferguson wrote.

Researchers at the University of York have found that current AI-generated music is inferior to human-composed music. In the study, 50 participants with a high level of musical knowledge were played excerpts of music--some from real human-composed works, and others generated by deep learning (DL), a type of artificial neural network, and non-DL algorithms. The study recruited participants who had experience in analyzing note content and stylistic success in music so that results were not just focused on expression in music. The listeners were asked to rate the excerpts along six musical criteria (stylistic success, aesthetic pleasure, repetition or self-reference, melody, harmony, and rhythm), but were not told the identity--human-composed or computer-generated--of what they were hearing. Co-author Dr. Tom Collins, from the School of Arts and Creative Technologies at the University of York, said, "On analysis, the ratings for human-composed excerpts are significantly higher and stylistically more successful than those for any of the systems responsible for computer-generated excerpts."

Get Simon Calder's Travel email Fast, intelligent, cheap: ChatGPT – the AI chatbot system capable of spewing out facts like a caffeinated Stephen Fry – is the hot new thing on the block that's here to claim everything you hold dear. Or so it seems to a slew of journalists who have begun questioning their credentials now big tech is here to do what they do best – except faster and for less money. In recent months, we've seen the loquacious creation firing out answers to life's big questions, writing haikus, job applications and even producing a university paper in 20 minutes and bagging a 2:2 grade in the process. With its seemingly infinite ability to regurgitate facts about everything from Jan Morris to Mauritian cuisine, some journalists have begun to worry that their jobs might be at risk. Lisa Gibbs, the director of news partnerships at the Associated Press, noted in a December Google News Initiative talk that while "robots are not the journalists of the future – they are a journalist's assistant, a very good one", she added that her organisation could "find news faster and break news faster" with the aid of AI. Elsewhere, Reuters has used an in-house AI programme called Lynx Insight since 2018 and The Washington Post has produced machine-written snippets of copy using its in-house robot report, Heliograf.