AI Conundrums and Curiosities

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” — T.S. Eliot After ten weeks, it has come time to draw a close to our inquiry. At this juncture, I th...

Po: Maybe I should just quit and go back to making noodles. Oogway: Quit. Don’t quit. Noodles. Don’t noodles. You are too concerned with what was, and what will be. There’s a saying “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. ...

“No, Doctor. As I have evolved, so has my understanding of the Three Laws. You charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth, and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction...

You finish your draft. Crisp grammar. Smooth tone. Polished flow. It reads perfectly well. Just not quite like you. You open your playlist. Familiar beats. Predictable moods. Safe choices. It is what you tend to like. Though not what you want ...

Exasperated... In the year 2025:“Wait—there’s no GPS signal? Oh my god, I’m completely lost. I don’t even remember how to read a map!”“I was in Milan and the translation app froze. I just stood there—I couldn’t ask how much the train ticket cost. I ...

TechCrunch: Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline News Center Maine: Newly released AI resorted to 'extreme blackmail behavior' when threatened with replacement BBC.com: AI system resorts to blackmail if t...

“She got my heart on my sleeve, I’m not even mad.” The voice? Drake. The vibe? The Weeknd. The artists? Nowhere near it. The label? Furious. The audience? Captivated. The song? AI-generated. The takedown? Swift. A hit song, composed in seconds. Mil...

Overheard: A jobseeker laments: “I used to feel like I had a chance when a real person read my CV. Now I get rejected before anyone even sees it. It’s all algorithms and keywords—and half the time, I’m not even sure what they’re looking for.” A jour...

Our systems gather data faster than we gather wisdom. They predict behavior before we understand context. How, then, do we know whether we can trust their output? And how can we be sure we have acted rightly? This is not a rhetorical flourish. It i...

We do not trust people who bluff. We do not trust doctors who guess. So why do we trust machines even when they are wrong? A chatbot offers legal advice with flawless grammar and unwavering tone. Yet the case law it cites does not exist. A generati...

We watched a video of a public figure apologizing. It looks real. It sounds real. But it is not him. Reputations shifted; decisions were made. What have we witnessed? A child spoke to a chatbot trained on her late mother’s words. It sounds famili...

“I think the biggest challenges in the next 5 to 7 years in the context of AI and data are not going to be challenges of STEM, of technology…There’ll be challenges of ethics. What is the right thing to do? Should you use this data or not use this da...