News Archive
Pick a date to read that day's stories.
Days with a blue dot have stories.
- 01 of 10RULES
ChatGPT text gets a hidden watermark in Europe
OpenAI will add an invisible watermark to text written by ChatGPT for users in the EU, to meet new European AI rules. The mark works by nudging word choices in a pattern a detector can spot. Swapping a tenth of the words for synonyms makes it much harder to find.
OUR TAKEA watermark you can wash off with a thesaurus is more of a suggestion than a seal.
Read more → - 02 of 10MODELS
US startup Reflection takes on Chinese open models
Reflection AI has released Beam, a free to download AI model it says matches the best Chinese open models at reasoning. The company claims it needs three to four times less computing power to run. Nobody outside the firm has checked those claims yet.
OUR TAKEBold claims, unverified benchmarks and a launch blog post: the holy trinity of AI announcements.
Read more → - 03 of 10SCIENCE
DeepMind puts a watermark on AI designed proteins
Google DeepMind has built SynthID Bio, a way to hide a signal inside proteins designed by AI. It should help labs tell real, tested proteins from ones a computer imagined, and help spot risky designs. Some scientists worry it can slightly weaken the proteins.
OUR TAKEEven molecules now need a label saying "made by a computer", which is more than most supermarket food gets.
Read more → - 04 of 10MATHS
Meta chatbot helps crack five unsolved maths puzzles
Meta researchers working with human mathematicians used its ordinary Muse Spark chatbot to answer five open maths problems. The results span areas from probability to algebra and were published as six papers. Meta says it used the normal chat window, with no special research setup.
OUR TAKEMost of us use chatbots to write birthday messages, so this does rather raise the bar.
Read more → - 05 of 10GOVERNMENT
Korea plans $3.5 billion push for top AI model
South Korea will launch a state backed project next year to build an AI model that can compete with the best Chinese open models. Most of the money will buy 10,000 Nvidia chips. Companies taking part must match the government's investment.
OUR TAKEKorea has decided that if you want a world class model, you had better bring your own chips.
Read more → - 06 of 10SCIENCE
17 nations sign up to use AI in research
At a science forum in Kyoto, the US and 16 partner countries backed a joint plan to build AI into scientific research. The declaration sets out shared goals for faster, more automated labs. It comes with no budget and no binding promises.
OUR TAKEA pledge with no money and no obligations is what the rest of us call a nice chat.
Read more → - 07 of 10WORLD
China may build a second Belt and Road on AI
A researcher argues that China is using groups like BRICS to spread its whole AI system, from apps to chips, across poorer countries. Beijing has promised cheap computing and shared tools to developing nations. Their users and money could help fund China's next leap.
OUR TAKERoads and ports were last decade, apparently the new silk is made of silicon.
Read more → - 08 of 10SCIENCE
AI scientist runs its own lab in Sweden
Researchers at Chalmers University have built an AI system that comes up with its own ideas about yeast, plans experiments and runs them with lab robots. It then reads the results and decides what to test next. It made new discoveries with very little human help.
OUR TAKEThe yeast, for its part, was not consulted.
Read more → - 09 of 10HEALTH
Egyptian study finds ChatGPT spots appendicitis well
Doctors at Mansoura University Hospital in Egypt tested ChatGPT on records from 162 patients with suspected appendicitis. It beat a long used checklist, especially at ruling the illness out. The study looked back at past cases, so it still needs testing in real time.
OUR TAKEPromising, though most of us would still like a doctor to do the prodding.
Read more → - 10 of 10POLICY
China sets a five year plan for AI and chips
China's State Council has laid out a five year plan focused on AI, computer chips, robots and the next generation of mobile networks. The aim is faster growth and less reliance on foreign technology. National money and resources will be pointed at these areas.
OUR TAKEFive year plans are nothing new in Beijing, but this one has rather more robots in it.
Read more →