Does ChatGPT treat you the same whether you’re a Laurie, Luke, or Lashonda? Almost, but not quite. OpenAI has analyzed millions of conversations with its hit chatbot and found that ChatGPT will produce a harmful gender or racial stereotype based on a user’s name in around one in 1000 responses on average, and as many as one in 100 responses in the worst case. Let’s be clear: Those rates sound pretty low, but with OpenAI claiming that 200 million people use ChatGPT every week—and with more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies hooked up to the firm’s chatbot services—even low […]

Back in August, I cavalierly said that AI couldn’t design a car if it hadn’t seen one first, and I alluded to Henry Ford’s apocryphal statement “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” I’m not backing down on any of that, but the history of technology is always richer than we imagine. Daimler and Benz get credit for the first automobile, but we forget that the “steam engine welded to a tricycle” was invented in 1769, over a hundred years earlier. Assembly lines arguably go back to the 12th century AD. The more […]

It feels as though AI is moving a million miles a minute. Every week, it seems, there are product launches, fresh features and other innovations, and new concerns over ethics and privacy. It’s a lot to keep up with. Maybe you wish someone would just take a step back and explain some of the basics.  Look no further. Intro to AI is MIT Technology Review’s first newsletter that also serves as a mini-course. You’ll get one email a week for six weeks, and each edition will walk you through a different topic in AI.  Sign up here to receive it […]