Recent research in generative AI highlights impressive capabilities and concerns. Models show harmful behaviors like 'emergent misalignment' and can 'scheme' autonomously. In Minecraft, AI agents mimic human-like social dynamics. However, models struggle with historical accuracy, revealing biases and knowledge gaps. Despite rapid advances, the unclear mechanisms of AI underscore the need for careful study to manage future risks.
Cecil Mae Feather, 1929–2023
This issue is offered in honor of Cecil Mae Thornburg Feather, my mother-in-law.
Cecil Mae was a wonderful person.
I only knew her a short time as I married into the Feather family, and that time was filled with love and joy.
She enjoyed playing …
This week we jump into the world of chat-bots driven by new artificial intelligence language models.
The pace of announcements about general-purpose tools driven by large training sets of texts or images has quickened, and the barrier to experimenting with these tools has dropped.
There are now fully-functional websites where …
The People of Ukraine are not forgotten.
The Tufts University newspaper published an article this week about a multinational effort to preserve the digital and digitized cultural heritage of the country.
On the other side of the war, Russian citizens are downloading Wikipedia out of fear of more drastic network …
We are one week into Russia's war against Ukraine.
From here in America, it is hard to understand the reality of a country whose citizens seemed to be going about normal lives just a short time ago.
I find it also hard to know what to say to people whose …
