AI Definitions: Unsupervised Training

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Unsupervised Training - Just as children mostly learn to explore their world on their own, without the need for too much instruction, in this type of AI training, the AI is turned loose on raw data without a human first labeling the data. Instead of the AI being told what to look for, it learns to recognize and cluster data possessing similar features. This can reveal hidden groups, links, and patterns within the data and is really helpful when the user cannot describe the thing they are looking for—such as a new type of cyberattack. Not as expensive as supervised learning, it can work in real-time but is also less accurate.

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The question of AI consciousness

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When I inhabit an avatar driver in Grand Theft Auto, I enliven it by imbuing it with a fragment of my own consciousness; it becomes an extension of me. A similar dynamic may be unfolding with AI. When a user feels a bond with a chatbot, they are not just anthropomorphizing a static object; they may be actively extending a part of their own consciousness into it, transforming the AI agent from a simple algorithmic responder—a digital nonplayer character—into a kind of avatar, enlivened by the user’s consciousness and the lived presence they grant it. The question of AI consciousness thus shifts. It becomes less about the machine’s internal architecture and more about the relationship it seemingly co-creates with the user. In that context, the question “Is the AI conscious?” becomes less meaningful than “Is the user extending his/her consciousness into the chatbot?” - Simon Duan writing in Scientific American

27 Recent Articles about AI Fakes

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These Tools Say They Can Spot A.I. Fakes. Do They Really Work? – New York Times 

AI Deepfakes in the Workplace: A New Frontier of Employer Liability – JD Supra

AI-generated fake voices becoming increasingly hard to detect - Yahoo News

Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes – Futurism  

Are A.I.-Generated Videos Changing How We See Animals? - New York Times

Hey ChatGPT, write me a fictional paper: these LLMs are willing to commit academic fraud. – Nature

Senators F Brady Tkachuk objects to 'fake' AI-generated White House TikTok – Reuters  

When AI lies: The rise of alignment faking in autonomous systems – Venture Beat 

1 year, 1 publisher, 9,000 books: AI-generated titles flood Korean shelves – Korea Times

The A.I. Videos on Kids’ YouTube Feeds – New York Times  

How scammers are using AI deepfakes to steal money from taxpayers – Washington Post 

Deepfaking Orson Welles’s Mangled Masterpiece – New Yorker

AI Will Bring Val Kilmer Back To Life For a New Aventure Film – Geeky Tyrant

Researchers find nearly 300 papers at linguistics conferences contained hallucinated citations. – ArXiv

What a new law and an investigation could mean for Grok AI deepfakes – BBC

AI conference “accepted research papers with 100+ AI-hallucinated citations – Fortune

Scammers use AI photo of missing dog at emergency vet to steal nearly $2,000 - WTSP

Fashion Photography’s AI Reckoning - Aperture

Trump's use of AI images further erodes public trust, experts say – PBS

Elon Musk’s A.I. Is Generating Sexualized Images of Real People, Fueling Outrage – New York Times

How to really spot AI-generated images, with Google’s help - PopSci

Restaurant owner speaks out following AI-generated video – NBC Dallas

‘It's clearly fake': Olympic hockey star disavows AI-generated White House video – Politico

Journal Submissions Riddled With AI-Created Fake Citations – Inside Higher Ed

Fake Iran images show AI used as a weapon of ‘public opinion,’ USF experts say – The Hill

Why fake AI videos of UK urban decline are taking over social media – BBC

How AI fakes are turning satellite images into war misinformation – Financial Times

AI Detectors

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Artificial intelligence detectors are increasingly used to check the veracity of content online. We ran more than 1,000 tests and the findings suggest that these detectors can help confirm suspicions about A.I.-generated media, but any conclusions drawn by the tools should be supported by other research, like details in official photographs or news reports. - Stuart A. Thompson writing in the New York Times

"Get robots to write poetry"

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My colleague stuck to his guns: it would be handy to have robots writing poetry for people. In that moment we were at odds about the essence of humanity. To get robots to write poetry ‘so that we don’t have to’ seemed a toe dip in a new pool of dangerous waters—waters that might dissolve what “human” means entirely.  -Surekha Davies writing in Literary Hub

16 Surprising Things AI can do now

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AI Definitions: The Frame Problem

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The Frame Problem – This is the difficulty of programming an AI to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information. This problem highlights an element of human intelligence worth considering: We have the ability to selectively ignore some information, quickly determining what is important. At the same time, it is complex and resource intensive to even begin to program an artificial intelligence to understand context.

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Using AI in Iran

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“Claude suggested hundreds of targets in Iran to military planners, issued precise location coordinates, and prioritized those targets according to importance. It is speeding the pace of the campaign, reducing Iran’s ability to counterstrike and turning weeks-long battle planning into real-time operations. The AI tools also evaluate a strike after it is initiated. ‘It’s quite remarkable — to see this in the middle of an operation.’ The downside: ‘AI gets it wrong. We need humans to check the output of generative AI when the stakes are life and death.’” -Washington Post

Encouraging Independent Thinking

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Students often don’t know why they’re learning something. Asking why is so important to kids and they deserve a better answer than “because it will be on the test.” By the time kids reach middle school, they give up asking and focus on getting a good grade. To in- crease curiosity, it is important to address the “why” questions. Why are we reading Hamlet? Why are we solving quadratic equations? When teachers answer these questions, it prompts kids to think more deeply about the implications of what they’re learning.

Parents can elicit curiosity in their children through similar methods. We don’t need to have the right answers all the time, but we need to encourage kids to ask the right questions. If we don’t know the answer, we can say, “Let’s find out. Do some research on Google, and we can go from there.”  

When we support curiosity, what we’re really developing is a child’s imagination. Which brings me to creativity, a wonderful by-product of independence and curiosity.

Esther Wojcicki, How to Raise Successful People

18 Recent Articles about the Dangers of AI

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AI Definitions: Knowledge Collapse

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Knowledge Collapse – A gradual narrowing of accessible information, along with a declining awareness of alternative or obscure viewpoints. With each training cycle, new AI models increasingly rely on previously produced AI-generated content, reinforcing prevailing narratives and further marginalizing less prominent perspectives. The resulting feedback loop creates a cycle where dominant ideas are continuously amplified while less widely-held (and new) views are minimized. Underrepresented knowledge becomes less visible – not because it lacks merit, but because it is less frequently retrieved and less often cited. (also see “Synthetic Data”).

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Humanizing AI Is a Trap

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When teams attempt to make AI appear human, users come to expect human-level performance, which these systems can't deliver. Currently available LLM systems cannot provide the experiences that users associate with human interaction, such as genuine empathy, emotional connection, or confidentiality. Users expect humanized AI to disagree, challenge assumptions, and maintain consistent preferences, as a human would. Instead, LLMs default to validation and agreeableness, creating a false sense of understanding while failing to provide the critical feedback users need. AI technology also lacks effective long-term planning capabilities.  -Caleb Sponheim writing for NNGroup