Machine learning & AI news

Machine learning & AI

AI agents can build consensus on a scale humans can't

Everyone is familiar with the situation: A larger group of people plans to visit a restaurant together, but it can take time and sometimes a great deal of patience to agree on a time and place to meet. The better the participants ...

Engineering

AI could help design cities, but planners need safeguards

AI is showing up in nearly every aspect of daily life—from internet searches to visits to the doctor's office. It could one day even play a role in the street layout in front of your apartment building.

Robotics

Robots learn new skills from a single video—in just 29 seconds

To operate reliably in dynamic real-world settings, robots should be able to acquire new skills quickly without undergoing extensive additional training. Most existing robotic systems, however, primarily perform well on the ...

Security

Swarm-inspired AI may expose suspicious blockchain cash flows more effectively

An AI model inspired by ants, bees and birds could be key to cracking down on blockchain-based money laundering, new research led by Charles Darwin University (CDU) has found. The study is published in the journal Communications ...

Machine learning & AI

AI helps turn citizen photos into water-level data

For the past 15 years, Christopher Lowry, Ph.D., has led CrowdHydrology, a University at Buffalo citizen-science project that relies on thousands of volunteers to collect water-level observations from streams and other waterways ...

Machine learning & AI

Q&A: Promise and perils of agentic AI

Chatbots and large language models can execute a seemingly countless number of tasks, from writing emails and reports to generating code and analyzing data. However, they still primarily act only in response to user prompts ...

Security

How attackers persuade AI agents to break the rules

Today, most of us interact with AI assistants—reactive bots that wait for human instructions. Yet AI assistants are rapidly being replaced by agentic AI agents that can interact with external tools, browse the web, generate ...

Machine learning & AI

OpenAI says ads are coming to ChatGPT in Europe next week

European users of ChatGPT's free and low-cost artificial intelligence agents will start seeing ads Aug. 24 as its creator, OpenAI, expands its plan to extract more revenue from its models.

Machine learning & AI

China goes rural with data centers in quest to power AI

In China's hilly Guizhou province, a cluster of European-style buildings complete with a clock tower and a multi-arched bridge emits a low, permanent hum—a clue to its unexpected identity as tech giant Huawei's largest data ...

Machine learning & AI

China's top AI players

China's artificial intelligence boom is in full swing, with the release of a new large language model (LLM) by top startup DeepSeek on Friday highlighting the country's rapid progress despite U.S. export restrictions on advanced ...

Business

'Clearly me': AI drama accused of stealing faces

Christine Li is a model and influencer, but not an actor, so when she saw herself playing a cruel character in a Chinese microdrama she felt bewildered, then angry and afraid.

Internet

YouTube offers deepfake detection to Hollywood

YouTube is offering Hollywood celebrities and entertainers a free detection tool to help combat their deepfakes, expanding the Google-owned video platform's efforts to guard against AI-driven impersonations.

Internet

How AI bias can creep into online content moderation

A University of Queensland study has shown large language models (LLMs) used in AI content moderation may be prone to subtle biases that undermine their neutrality. A team led by data scientist Professor Gianluca Demartini ...

Business

Making big tech algorithms 'fair' is harder than it looks

Before big tech engineers can improve the fairness of recommendation systems, such as social media feeds and online shopping results, they need to define what "fairness" even means. Should an app show people only the content ...

Robotics

AI-powered robots offer new hope to German factories

A blue-eyed humanoid robot carefully opens a box and places a tool inside as a crowd of visitors watch the demonstration of "physical AI" skills at a major industrial trade fair in Germany.