You can only throw so much money at a problem. This, more or less, is the line being taken by AI researchers in a recent survey. Asked whether "scaling up" current AI approaches could lead to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), or a general purpose AI that matches or surpasses human…

Well, that's not good. Power Bot 'Em Researchers have found that ChatGPT "power users," or those who use it the most and at the longest durations, are becoming dependent upon — or even addicted to — the chatbot. 0:16 0:16 In a new joint study, researchers with OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab found that…

OpenAI researchers have admitted that even the most advanced AI models still are no match for human coders — even though CEO Sam Altman insists they will be able to beat "low-level" software engineers by the end of this year. In a new paper, the company's researchers found that even frontier models,…

Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter. AI search tools are rapidly gaining in popularity, with nearly one in four Americans now saying they have used AI in place of traditional search engines. These tools derive their value from crawling the internet for up-to-date, relevant…

Your support helps us to tell the story Support Now From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which…

The explosive potential of custard powder 17 March 2025 Veronique Greenwood Getty Images (Credit: Getty Images) Custard powder makes a delicious dessert but also has a rather less savoury potential – in certain conditions, it can be a powerful explosive. Instant custard powder is a staple of many…

In this post, we are sharing what we have learned about the trajectory of potential national security risks from frontier AI models, along with some of our thoughts about challenges and best practices in evaluating these risks. The information in this post is based on work we’ve carried out over the…

Hello, friend. A colleague bemoaned to me today that there are so many things to do and "there isn't enough time." I totally relate to my colleague feeling pressed for time—I, too, have a ridiculously long to-do list. But spending time with my 87-year old father has given me another perspective. In…

(CN) — In a landmark opinion over the copyrightability of works created by artificial intelligence, a D.C. Circuit panel ruled on Tuesday that human authorship is required for copyright protection. As AI technology quickly advances and intertwines with human creations, the unanimous opinion lays…

Information security has a reputation of being a hard problem in tech. I don’t think it’s because it takes a genius to spot vulnerabilities; it’s because for any enterprise, the number of people adding risk — together with the number of people trying to get in — is orders of magnitude greater than…

Dark energy, the mysterious force powering the expansion of the universe, appears to be weakening, according to a survey that could “overthrow” scientists’ current understanding of the fate of the cosmos. If confirmed, the results from the dark energy spectroscopic instrument (Desi) team at the Kitt…

Amazon’s first Kindle with a colour screen had been a very long time coming and then suffered a rough landing last year, plagued with yellowing screen issues and shipping delays. But with those problems fixed, is a splash of colour the revolution the Kindle needs? The Guardian’s journalism is…

Four-day week 'an overwhelming success' in Iceland 6 July 2021 Getty Images Reykjavík City Council took part in the trial Trials of a four-day week in Iceland were an "overwhelming success" and led to many workers moving to shorter hours, researchers have said. The trials, in which workers were paid…

Unsafe at any seed AI search engines cite incorrect sources at an alarming 60% rate, study says CJR study shows AI search services misinform users and ignore publisher exclusion requests. Benj Edwards – Mar 13, 2025 9:16 PM | 112 Credit: Wong Yu Liang via Getty Images Credit: Wong Yu Liang via Getty…

Staying informed is critical, and a bit challenging these days. A revisionist and censorious US administration, a media and political landscape significantly captured by billionaires, misinformation and disinformation, and a flood of low quality computer generated text ... the deck is stacked…

In the last few months, artificial intelligence (AI) is popping up in all kinds of headlines, ranging from technical software developer websites to the Sunday comics. There’s no secret why. Given the recent explosion in the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI,…

GLASGOW, Scotland – A new Scottish tartan has been created to honor the thousands of people—primarily women—executed for witchcraft in Scotland between the 16th and 18th centuries. The Witches of Scotland is a movement seeking “Justice for people accused and convicted under the Witchcraft Act…

OPSEC FAILURE OF THE YEAR How North Korea pulled off a $1.5 billion crypto heist—the biggest in history Attack on Bybit didn't hack infrastructure or exploit smart contract code. So how did it work? Dan Goodin – Feb 24, 2025 6:41 pm | 222 An ethereum coin. Credit: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty…

Apple has promised to fix a bug in its iPhone automatic dictation tool after some users reported it had suggested to them “Trump” when they said the word “racist”. The glitch was first highlighted in a viral post on TikTok, when the speech-to-text tool sometimes briefly flashed up the word “Trump”…

This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here. Six months. Five-hundred-seventy-six applications. Twenty-nine responses. Four interviews. And still, no job. When my younger brother rattled off these numbers to me in…

I keep running up against this argument about LLMs and generative AI: It's just like a calculator; it makes work faster, but doesn't change anything about the work you're doing. This isn't anything new. I get the instinct to normalize this invention, to place it in a box with others that came…

Lauren Feiner is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform. Around a dozen current and former federal workers are behind a new…

Back in 2021, the tech industry was booming. Fueled by generous government subsidies and the pandemic economy, tech companies went on a hiring spree, promising unlimited time off and upward growth opportunities at open offices where kombucha and cold brew flowed from taps. Flash forward to now, and…

(Last updated 9:52 am CST February 16th, 2025) [Updated this post on 2/16/2025 to reflect changes in the process, and additional apps I install.] Because I regularly review Apple’s Mac laptops and desktops, I’ve developed a setup routine for to make them my own for the brief period I have them. It’s…

A new paper from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University finds that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI in their work, they use less critical thinking, which can “result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved.” “[A] key irony of automation is…

This first appeared in the Planet Money newsletter. You can sign up here. Last week, news spread that a Chinese AI company, DeepSeek, had built a cutting-edge chatbot at a fraction of the cost of its American competitors. It sent the stock prices of American tech companies plummeting. But Microsoft…

404 Media is an independent website whose work is written, reported, and owned by human journalists and whose intended audience is real people, not AI scrapers, bots, or a search algorithm. Become a paid subscriber here for access to all of our articles ad-free and bonus content. If there’s one…

The Google logo is displayed during a company event at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., on Aug. 13, 2024. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images A chunk of Google’s workforce is getting a rare offer: Choose to quit, and receive a severance package. Watch More On Thursday, senior vice president Rick…

Google announced Tuesday that it is overhauling the principles governing how it uses artificial intelligence and other advanced technology. The company removed language promising not to pursue “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” “weapons or other technologies whose…

Howdy! It’s been a dog’s age since my last post 😅 consider this an official SOL. Over the past three months, I’ve been in the trenches of offensive ML, AI, and, unfortunately, Data Science. It’s been a rollercoaster of fun and frustration. This field is equal parts interesting and wildly…

Google reveals how it combats AI hacking with it's [+][-] own AI hacking bots. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Don’t think just because most of the security-related headlines concerning Google concern ongoing attacks such as those recently reported against Google Cloud, for example, or…

Subscribe Join the newsletter to get the latest updates. A declassified World War II-era government guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes…

404 Media is an independent website whose work is written, reported, and owned by human journalists and whose intended audience is real people, not AI scrapers, bots, or a search algorithm. Become a paid subscriber here for access to all of our articles ad-free and bonus content. Subscribe Join the…

Bird flu poses a threat that is “unique and new in our lifetime” because it has become a “‘panzootic” that can kill huge numbers across multiple species, experts warn. For months, highly pathogenic bird flu, or H5N1, has been circulating in dairy farms, with dozens of human infections reported among…

The global economy could face 50% loss in gross domestic product (GDP) between 2070 and 2090 from the catastrophic shocks of climate change unless immediate action by political leaders is taken to decarbonise and restore nature, according to a new report. The stark warning from risk management…

Hey, thanks for subscribing to SatPost. Today, we are talking about how Jerry Seinfeld and Ichiro Suzuki have dedicated their lives to mastering a skill (comedy, baseball). Also this week: Netflix’s Password Crackdown Worked Red Lobster’s Bankruptcy …and them fire memes (including Chipotle) Jerry…