The internet has made it easier than ever before to encounter and spread conspiracy theories. And while some are harmless, others can be deeply damaging, sowing discord and even leading to unnecessary deaths. Now, researchers believe they’ve uncovered a new tool for combating false conspiracy theories: AI chatbots. Researchers from MIT Sloan and Cornell University found that chatting about a conspiracy theory with a large language model (LLM) reduced people’s belief in it by about 20%—even among participants who claimed that their beliefs were important to their identity. The research is published today in the journal Science. The findings could […]

As long as chatbots have been around, they have made things up. Such “hallucinations” are an inherent part of how AI models work. However, they’re a big problem for companies betting big on AI, like Google, because they make the responses it generates unreliable.  Google is releasing a tool today to address the issue. Called DataGemma, it uses two methods to help large language models fact-check their responses against reliable data and cite their sources more transparently to users.  The first of the two methods is called Retrieval-Interleaved Generation (RIG), which acts as a sort of fact-checker. If a user […]

A recent article in Computerworld argued that the output from generative AI systems, like GPT and Gemini, isn’t as good as it used to be. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard this complaint, though I don’t know how widely held that opinion is. But I wonder: is it correct? And why? I think a few things are happening in the AI world. First, developers of AI systems are trying to improve the output of their systems. They’re (I would guess) looking more at satisfying enterprise customers who can execute big contracts than at individuals paying $20 per month. If […]