This summer, Ayad Akhtar was struggling with the final scene of “McNeal,” his knotty and disorienting play about a Nobel Prize-winning author who uses artificial intelligence to write a novel. He wanted the title character, played by Robert Downey Jr. in his Broadway debut, to deliver a monologue that sounded …
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This week, my newsroom colleague Kevin Roose chronicled the heartbreaking story of Sewell Setzer III, a Florida teenager who took his own life — and whose mother blames Character.AI, a role-playing app where users interact with artificial intelligence chatbots, for his retreat from normal social life and then reality itself. …
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Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube | iHeartRadio Hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton Produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones Edited by Jen Poyant Engineered by Daniel Ramirez Original music by Dan PowellSophia Lanman and Rowan Niemisto Note: This episode contains mentions …
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In 2005, there was no inkling of the artificial intelligence boom that would come years later. But directors at Intel, whose chips served as electronic brains in most computers, faced a decision that might have altered how that transformative technology evolved. Paul Otellini, Intel’s chief executive at the time, presented …
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On a recent Friday afternoon, Kashif Hoda was waiting for a train near Harvard Square when a young man asked him for directions. Mr. Hoda was struck by the man’s nerdy, thick-framed glasses, but he did not realize that they were Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and that a small white …
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After eight months in custody in Nigeria, an American working for the cryptocurrency firm Binance is coming home, ailing but alive, in a case that had strained U.S. ties with one of Africa’s most influential countries. Tigran Gambaryan, a compliance officer for Binance, had been held on money-laundering charges as …
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President Biden on Thursday signed the first national security memorandum detailing how the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies and other national security institutions should use and protect artificial intelligence technology, putting “guardrails” on how such tools are employed in decisions varying from nuclear weapons to granting asylum. The new document is …
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A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don’t need to type any of them to search the internet these days. Boosted by artificial intelligence, software on your phone can automatically analyze objects live in your camera view or in a photo (or video) to immediately round up a …
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Cleaning up the technology industry was supposed to be easy. Powering server racks and personal computers isn’t nearly as energy-intensive as making concrete or steel. So until recently, eliminating planet-warming emissions in the tech sector was expected to be relatively straightforward. Tech companies positioned themselves as climate leaders and boasted …
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“The best bromance in tech” is under pressure Few partnerships in the technology world in recent history have been as transformative as Microsoft’s alliance with OpenAI, which paired a computing giant with a start-up that is among the leaders in artificial intelligence. But that alliance is showing signs of strain, …
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