LLMs become more covertly racist with human intervention
Since their inception, it’s been clear that large language models like ChatGPT absorb racist views from the millions of pages of the internet they are trained on. Developers have responded by trying to make them less toxic. But new research suggests that those efforts, especially as models get larger, are only curbing racist views that are overt, while letting more covert stereotypes grow stronger and better hidden. Researchers asked five AI models—including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and older models from Facebook and Google—to make judgments about speakers who used African-American English (AAE). The race of the speaker was not mentioned in the […]
VR headsets can be hacked with an Inception-style attack
In the Christoper Nolan movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character uses technology to enter his targets’ dreams to steal information and insert false details into their subconscious. A new “inception attack” in virtual reality works in a similar way. Researchers at the University of Chicago exploited a security vulnerability in Meta’s Quest VR system that allows hackers to hijack users’ headsets, steal sensitive information, and—with the help of generative AI—manipulate social interactions. The attack hasn’t been used in the wild yet, and the bar to executing it is high, because it requires a hacker to gain access to the VR headset […]
The Download: rise of the multimodal robots, and the SEC’s new climate rules
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. An OpenAI spinoff has built an AI model that helps robots learn tasks like humans The news: In the summer of 2021, OpenAI quietly shuttered its mulrobotics team, announcing that progress was being stifled by a lack of data necessary to train robots in how to move and reason using artificial intelligence. Now three of OpenAI’s early research scientists say the startup they spun off in 2017, called Covariant, has solved that problem. They’ve unveiled a system that […]
An OpenAI spinoff has built an AI model that helps robots learn tasks like humans
In the summer of 2021, OpenAI quietly shuttered its robotics team, announcing that progress was being stifled by a lack of data necessary to train robots in how to move and reason using artificial intelligence. Now three of OpenAI’s early research scientists say the startup they spun off in 2017, called Covariant, has solved that problem and unveiled a system that combines the reasoning skills of large language models with the physical dexterity of an advanced robot. The new model, called RFM-1, was trained on years of data collected from Covariant’s small fleet of item-picking robots that customers like Crate […]
The SEC’s new climate rules were a missed opportunity to accelerate corporate action
This week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission enacted a set of long-awaited climate rules, requiring most publicly traded companies to disclose their greenhouse-gas emissions and the climate risks building up on their balance sheets. Unfortunately, the federal agency watered down the regulations amid intense lobbying from business interests, undermining their ultimate effectiveness—and missing the best shot the US may have for some time at forcing companies to reckon with the rising dangers of a warming world. These new regulations were driven by the growing realization that climate risks are financial risks. Global corporations now face climate-related supply chain disruptions. […]
The Download: organoid uses, and open source voting machines
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The many uses of mini-organs This week, we reported on a team of researchers who managed to grow lung, kidney, and intestinal organoids from fetal cells. Because these tiny 3D cell clusters mimic some of the features of a real, full-size organ, they can provide a sneak peek at how the fetus is developing. That’s something nearly impossible to do with existing tools. But organoids can do so much more, ranging from weird, wild, and wonderful uses, to […]
A plan to bring down drug prices could threaten America’s technology boom
Forty years ago, Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was full of deserted warehouses and dying low-tech factories. Today, it is arguably the center of the global biotech industry. During my 30 years in MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, I witnessed this transformation firsthand, and I know it was no accident. Much of it was the direct result of the Bayh-Dole Act, a bipartisan law that Congress passed in 1980. The reform enabled world-class universities like MIT and Harvard, both within a couple of miles of Kendall Square, to retain the patent and licensing rights on discoveries made by their scientists—even when […]
The many uses of mini-organs
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. This week I wrote about a team of researchers who managed to grow lung, kidney, and intestinal organoids from fetal cells floating around in the amniotic fluid. Because these tiny 3D cell clusters come from the fetus and mimic some of the features of a real, full-size organ, they can provide a sneak peek at how the fetus is developing. That’s something nearly impossible to do with existing tools. An ultrasound, […]
How open source voting machines could boost trust in US elections
While the vendors pitched their latest voting machines in Concord, New Hampshire, this past August, the election officials in the room gasped. They whispered, “No way.” They nodded their heads and filled out the scorecards in their laps. Interrupting if they had to, they asked every kind of question: How much does the new scanner weigh? Are any of its parts made in China? Does it use the JSON data format? The answers weren’t trivial. Based in part on these presentations, many would be making a once-in-a-decade decision. These New Hampshire officials currently use AccuVote machines, which were made by […]
The Download: hydropower’s rocky path ahead, and how to reverse falling birth rates
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Emissions hit a record high in 2023. Blame hydropower. Hydropower is one of the world’s largest sources of renewable electricity. But last year, weather conditions caused hydropower to fall short in a major way, with generation dropping by a record amount. In fact, the decrease was significant enough to have a measurable effect on global emissions. Total energy-related emissions rose by just over 1% in 2023, and a shortfall of hydroelectric power accounts for 40% of that rise, […]