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2P3HAAK AI technology Robot. ChatGPT, AI-powered chatbot, language processing and machine learning to provide users intelligent conversation. Generative AI

Why we need to be wary of anthropomorphising chatbots

22 March 2023

For all their unsettling emergent abilities, chatbots are still just next-word predictors. We need to remember this and avoid seeing human attributes where they don't exist, warns Alex Wilkins

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Is the chatbotpocalypse looming? Some people would like us to think so

15 March 2023

AI entrepreneurs like to claim products such as chatbots could become conscious at any minute, causing an 'existential threat'. We need to resist this dystopian marketing hype, says Annalee Newitz

DDYEX8 Inside a New York telephone exchange, USA, early 1930s. Artist: Unknown

A message for today from last century's vast telephone exchanges

15 February 2023

A telecommunications museum in Seattle, with a working exchange from the 1940s, shows how telephones brought us together – but also tore us apart, says Annalee Newitz

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Is our evolving relationship with tech shifting our view of reality?

14 December 2022

This year saw the launch of ChatGPT, an AI that anyone can converse with, and the news that a quantum computer simulated a wormhole. Are our sensibilities about what is real changing, asks Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Why the tech apocalypse of 2022 was largely a good thing

14 December 2022

With Twitter, FTX and Alexa all in the doldrums by the end of this year, Annalee Newitz explains why this is actually an encouraging sign for humanity

If cyberpunk no longer fits our vision of the future, what does?

9 November 2022

Cyberpunk, once a hi-tech picture of the future, now feels passe. A new adaption of sci-fi novel The Peripheral gives a fresh perspective on how tech could transform humanity, says Annalee Newitz

The success of text-to-image AIs raises major ethical issues

12 October 2022

Apps that create images based on text can deliver amazing results, but there are problems with the data sets some are trained on and the lack of compensation for artists, says Annalee Newitz

What hackers get up to when left on an island in the Pacific

17 August 2022

Campsite coding Deerpunk costumes, tacos delivered by drones and a game called "Beerocracy" featured at this year's ToorCamp for hackers – it was a blast, writes Annalee Newitz