Machine learning & AI news

Robotics

Chinese humanoid robots smash human records in 100m sprint and high jump at Beijing robot games

Chinese humanoid robots broke records set by humans, including beating Usain Bolt's 100-meter sprint world record, on the opening day of the Olympics-like World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Saturday.

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 ...

Business

AI-generated ads outperform human designers in live campaign, advantage holds 18 months later

The common belief throughout the marketing and advertising world is that generative AI can produce striking visuals, but it struggles to match the performance and brand discipline of skilled human designers. New research ...

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 ...

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 ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Chatbots may fuel 'delusional spirals' that lead to real-world harm

Perhaps to the surprise of their creators, large language models have become confidants, therapists, and, for some, intimate partners to real human users. In a new study, AI researchers at Stanford studied verbatim transcripts ...

Machine learning & AI

AI works best with humans—not instead of them

A new academic study says the most effective use of artificial intelligence may be to strengthen human thinking and decision-making, rather than replace it. Published in the Journal of Knowledge Management, the paper examines ...

Consumer & Gadgets

New study reveals chatbot empathy can worsen customer reactions

When a service encounter goes south, customers expect empathy. Hearing an employee say, "I share your frustration," can calm tensions and rebuild trust. But new research from the University of South Florida suggests that ...

Business

Amazon invests another $5 bn in Anthropic

Amazon on Monday said it pumped another $5 billion into Anthropic as it ramps up its collaboration with the startup behind Claude artificial intelligence.

Machine learning & AI

Anthropic says will put AI risks 'on the table' with Mythos model

American AI developer Anthropic plans to "lay the risks out on the table" even as it restricts deployment of a new model dubbed Mythos, whose powerful cybersecurity capabilities raise stark questions for companies and governments.

Machine learning & AI

AI 'agent' fever comes with lurking security threats

Artificial intelligence "agents" promise to save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems like OpenClaw is setting cybersecurity experts on edge.

Machine learning & AI

China seeks to rein in risks from AI 'digital humans'

After her father died from cancer, Zhang Xinyu had an artificial intelligence avatar made that looks and sounds just like him, part of a growing "digital human" industry that China is moving to govern more tightly.

Machine learning & AI

Unpredictable AGI may resist full control, making diverse AI safer

Public concern about AI safety has grown significantly in recent years. As AI systems become more powerful, a key question is how we make sure they do what we actually want. Now, researchers suggest that rather than trying ...

Security

What could your voice give away?

With AI, the voice has acquired a new significance. Behind the words lies data that can be used both to diagnose a health problem and to steal someone's identity. Speaking to machines is no longer the stuff of science fiction. ...

Security

Making AI safer for victims of intimate partner violence

Conversational AI tools denied blunt requests for harmful content by researchers posing as intimate partner abusers, but these guardrails were easily circumvented when they requested the content under false pretenses, a new ...