THE ATLANTIC – Technology | Internet & Technology

For nearly three years, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, was a ChatGPT devotee. Then, late last month, he abruptly converted to Google’s chatbot, Gemini. “Holy shit,” he wrote on X. “I’ve used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back. The leap is insane.”When Gemini 3 was released in mid-November, it appeared to crush OpenAI’s top model on a suite of evaluations shared by Google. The bot has since received widespread praise from the tech industry. One analyst said that Gemini 3 is “the best model ever.” Another crowned Google as the “AI winners.” Sam Altman appears alarmed: Last week, in a company-wide memo, the OpenAI CEO reportedly declared a “code red” effort to improve ChatGPT’s capabilities.OpenAI once had a clear technological edge. When the firm kicked off the AI race in 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT, Google was… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

The first time I visited Japan, I couldn’t help noticing all of the things that it does better than the United States. I rode bullet trains that top out at 200 miles an hour and spotted vending machines that serve fresh fruits and vegetables. But the worst part was the car envy: Why are America’s city streets clogged with enormous SUVs and trucks when we could instead have the Suzuki Hustler?An adorably rugged little box of a car, the Hustler looks something like a Hummer, but is closer in size to a Smart car. The U.S. has nothing like it, especially not for the cost. The Hustler has four-wheel drive, a hybrid engine, and a shocking amount of storage space for your gear—not bad for about $12,000.The Hustler, and others like it, is a kei car: short for kei-jidosha, meaning “light vehicle.” Kei cars (pronounced kay) are a category of… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Before Sam Kirchner vanished, before the San Francisco Police Department began to warn that he could be armed and dangerous, before OpenAI locked down its offices over the potential threat, those who encountered him saw him as an ordinary, if ardent, activist.Phoebe Thomas Sorgen met Kirchner a few months ago at Travis Air Force Base, northeast of San Francisco, at a protest against immigration policy and U.S. military aid to Israel. Sorgen, a longtime activist whose first protests were against the Vietnam War, was going to block an entrance to the base with six other older women. Kirchner,  27 years old, was there with a couple of other members of a new group called Stop AI, and they all agreed to go along to record video on their phones in case of a confrontation with the police.“They were mainly there, I believe, to recruit people who might be willing to… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

In the months leading up to last year’s presidential election, more than 2,000 Americans, roughly split across partisan lines, were recruited for an experiment: Could an AI model influence their political inclinations? The premise was straightforward—let people spend a few minutes talking with a chatbot designed to stump for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, then see if their voting preferences changed at all.The bots were effective. After talking with a pro-Trump bot, one in 35 people who initially said they would not vote for Trump flipped to saying they would. The number who flipped after talking with a pro-Harris bot was even higher, at one in 21. A month later, when participants were surveyed again, much of the effect persisted. The results suggest that AI “creates a lot of opportunities for manipulating people’s beliefs and attitudes,” David Rand, a senior author on the study, which was published today in Nature,… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Chatbots are marketed as great companions, able to answer any question at any time. They’re not just tools, but confidants; they do your homework, write love notes, and, as one recent lawsuit against OpenAI details, might readily answer 1,460 messages from the same manic user in a 48-hour period.Jacob Irwin, a 30-year-old cybersecurity professional who says he has no previous history of psychiatric incidents, is suing the tech company, alleging that ChatGPT sparked a “delusional disorder” that led to his extended hospitalization. Irwin had allegedly used ChatGPT for years at work before his relationship with the technology suddenly changed this spring. The product started to praise even his most outlandish ideas, and Irwin divulged more and more of his feelings to it, eventually calling the bot his “AI brother.” Around this time, these conversations led him to become convinced that he had discovered a theory about faster-than-light travel, and he… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.